By this hidden wisdom, and through the might of His power, God has raised up His Son Jesus, as the beginning of the creation of God, to make in Himself of twain one new man, and seated Him where man never was before, “a glorious Christ,” “in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek,” and so forth. This unity being formed and established in Christ, as God’s eternal center and object, all things are being brought into their new relations around Him, and according to these divine rules and patterns for “the temple of the Lord” and “the habitation of God.” Sealed with that holy Spirit of promise in this unity with Christ, as the earnest too of our inheritance with Him in the purchased possession, and having access by one Spirit unto the Father, it follows that the new charter of our calling and portion in the house and habitation of God will be opened out to us. “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God;” for the new rule and order of oneness is—after the pattern of another genealogy than by flesh and blood; namely, “If ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” We may add in passing that the teaching of the Spirit, in the epistle to the Galatians, was to insist upon this heavenly “rule” with the family of God as “the household of faith,” and classing them as “the Israel of God.”
We all know how these elders, and patriarchs, and prophets (of whom, the Holy Ghost tells us, the world was not worthy) get their bright records in another epistle (Hebrews 11), and take rank under “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom every family is named,” as in God’s household of faith, and our “cloud of witnesses.” We may add, moreover, respecting whom “as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever.” Being Christ’s, we (who were Gentiles) are “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to promise,” and are distinguished in our turn among this family, to which else we never could have gained a title. But now who can challenge our birthrights, “if ye be Christ’s” for we take them from Him.
We have thus this oneness with the saints and this union with “the household of God,” and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone, as in Ephesians 2, in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto “a holy temple in the Lord”; “in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” Thus we, Gentiles in the flesh, are bidden to remember that in time past “we were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: but now in Christ Jesus... are made nigh by the blood of Christ;” for He is our peace who hath made both one. And having made in Himself of twain one new man, it is in this oneness, and union, and unity with Christ that we are now fellow-citizens with the saints. The middle wall of partition, and ordinances, and commandments were all condemned by God, and reckoned as out of date by Peter when he understood the lesson of the sheet let down from heaven, and the voice which said, “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.” God has still His household of faith, and we are fellows with the saints; for that we and they are Christ’s, and hold our title to the promises, because grace has widened its circle of blessing “to those who are of the faith of Abraham,” who is the father of us all, and we are made at home in their company.
This oneness with “every family” and with the household of God, and this union in the temple of the Lord, and this unity in the habitation of God through the Spirit, are the formations which He who built all things has come forth to create and maintain. “As God and Father of all,” whether in the families around Him, or in His house; as the Lord in His temple; and as dwelling in His habitation, by the Spirit, at this present time in the earthly places—how truly could Jesus say, in anticipation of this divine building and this master work, “Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth... and He will show you things to come. He shall glorify me: for He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore, said I,” and so forth.
Wicked spirits in heavenly places, with their leader, that old serpent, the devil, have found a fresh occasion for their enmity against God and His anointed One by the revelation of these mysteries of His will and these creations in Christ Jesus; and the saints have found out, in seeking to walk worthy of their vocation, that they wrestle not against flesh and blood, while endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, but “against wicked spirits in the heavenlies.”
The wiles of the devil very soon broke in upon the Pentecostal garden and the plants of the right-hand planting, and a new sin cast its blight upon God’s enclosure. A unity was violated by an outrage even against the glorifier of Christ, who was upon the earth, and when in divine operation too. Peter said, “Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie unto the Holy Ghost? and hearing these words he fell down, and gave up the ghost.” Another unity was violated even by this very Peter, whom Paul withstood to the face “For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he separated himself,” and did violence to the “sheet from heaven “and to the mystery of Christ, who had made “in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace.” There is danger still (if it be not too late to say so) of our limiting “the unity of the Spirit” to something we are endeavoring to keep; and thus reducing oneness, and union, and unity as of God, according to the revelation of His will, which He hath purposed in Himself, down to the littleness of “our” unity in the nineteenth century, of a divided Christendom. The truth of the gospel was also violated, and the unity of “the truth as it is in Jesus” invaded, when certain who believed rose up and said what they did in Acts 15 “Except ye be circumcised, and keep the law of Moses, ye cannot be saved;” and the apostles and elders came together in Jerusalem to consider of this matter. The oneness between Jew and Gentile, and their union in Christ, as well as their unity before God in the Spirit, was largely attacked by Satan in other places, and successfully too; so that Paul demanded of some, “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” In the Jerusalem council, Peter had boldly declared that God made choice among those who surrounded him, that the Gentiles by his mouth should hear the Word of the gospel and believe. And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as He did unto us, and put no difference between us and them. Or, as Paul said of the Gentiles afterward, “In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest,” and so forth.
Their oneness with each other in Christ as Jews and Gentiles was denied; and the newly—developed mystery that Christ had made in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace, was violated on every hand; so that no wonder “the prisoner of the Lord” beseeches the Ephesians to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all long-suffering and lowliness and meekness, forbearing one another in love; endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” In Christ Jesus, the Head of the new creation, the man in glory, no longer known after the flesh, “the mystic man above,” there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, male nor female, bond nor free. All the contrarieties are abolished which existed under the sun, and a blessed unity is opened out according to the wisdom and power of God upon a new center and on another basis, where “Christ is all and in all.” And this is maintained in the power and unity of the Spirit in all the other circles and relations which are connected with “the good pleasure of His will “in Christ Jesus throughout the everlasting ages.
If we come down into our own ecclesiastical times, and consider the altered forms of our own difficulties in these last and closing days, and the dangers and snares of the devil which surround us in our path of service for God and for Christ, they are most assuredly of a very different character; and it is on this account that so many parts of the epistles, which contain practical directions as to circumcision and the law of Moses, and meats and drinks, and days and weeks, or holydays, new moons, and sabbath days, are misunderstood by many and copied by others. A huge Christendom has come into place, and has been formed upon this handwriting of ordinances with its eastern and western churches as by law established, which had no existence in Pentecostal time, when Christianity was formed by the ascent of our Lord Jesus Christ to the right hand of God as Head of His body the Church, and by the descent of the Holy Ghost to gather the members of Christ together into this unity, in hope of the nuptial-day when the marriage of the Lamb shall have come, and His Bride have made herself ready. Other and more serious violations and corruptions and outrages upon the oneness and unions and unities in the revelation of the mind of ‘God overspread what is now called “the Christian world,” and the Jews are personally nowhere to be seen, as converted men, like the three thousand who were added at Jerusalem, or the many thousands of Jews of whom the apostle James afterward spoke to Paul. Nevertheless, these two were the constituent and component parts of the Church of God, as in Ephesians 1, and such were made one in Christ and builded together. Nor can other parts of the epistles in the apostles’ days be understood, which insist upon the blessed fact that through Him “we both have access by one Spirit to the Father,” unless the middle wall be recognized, which once divided and shut us out. The law of Moses has since come in by the craft of Satan in a counterfeit way, and almost frustrated the gospel of the grace of God; and confidence in the flesh, without actual circumcision it is true, is everywhere, and the world, yes, a Christian world, is in the ascendant by the denial of the separating power of the cross, so that the wrong man is the outcome and rampant.
Moreover, the prince of this world has set up in imitation a oneness for mankind under the assumed fatherhood of God, and an open union of churches and states under the sun, and a widespread unity by a spurious confederacy which aims at “an Eirenicon,” or a united Christendom. The epistle to the Galatians was written to expose the violation of this “unity of the Spirit,” and comes more and more to the front every day, and is as applicable in this century as it was eighteen hundred years ago; for wherever the law is introduced as a schoolmaster it must have man in the flesh for a scholar, and the world for its college, with its high class too. In proof of the departure from Christ crucified at that time, and from union in life by the Spirit, Paul wrote to them, “Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods. But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain.” The pope, the patriarch, and the newly-enthroned primate of Great Britain are the three great ecclesiastical heads out of heaven, to say nothing of the prophet of Mecca; and it is enough to call attention to their power and activity in proof of the varied but combined denial and apostacy from the revelation which God has made of Himself, and His Son Jesus Christ as the only and exalted Head over all things to the Church which is His body, “the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.”
The vocation wherewith we are called of God in Christ, “who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places” with Him, is outraged by these counterfeits and assumptions, and the unity of the Spirit violated on this giant scale. God’s declared purposes and counsels for His own glory, and the glory of His Son, and the Church’s glory now and hereafter, and the blessing of every creature in heaven or on earth, are sought to be supplanted. No doubt in Scripture “the unity of the Spirit” may in application come down into other relations in which we stand one with another; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you,” though the primary object in the mission of the Holy Ghost be, as we have been considering, to glorify Christ, and to take of His things, and show them unto us.
Nor can the two comprehensive prayers in Ephesians, or that in the Colossians (to which I only now allude) be omitted either in the truth of the Spirit or as regards the Spirit’s unity. In Ephesians 1 The apostle prays that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you “the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,” and so forth. In the prayer of chapter 3 it is to the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom every family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant on, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints,” and so forth. The unity itself and our vocation are surely embraced in these two prayers, and the vast proportions and objects declared; and moreover the spirit of wisdom, and strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, are seen to be our necessary qualifications for entering into this unity of the Spirit, and with this blessed purpose “that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith,” or as in Colossians 1, which is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” And these actings of the Spirit are essential to the unity itself, and equally so to our fellowship in this oneness and union and unity of the Spirit with the Father and the Son.
We may turn now to the lower ground of our own individual and collective and corporate relations as being likewise included in this unity of the Spirit, but where each of us views himself as a unit, and yet in this unity of life and love and glory with Christ, and through Him with the Father. It is written of us as individuals, “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, whereby we cry, Abba, Father;” and again individually, “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us;” and further to us collectively, as in the comprehensiveness of this unity in life, and these relationships in love, and in the hope of glory too, The Spirit itself beareth witness, that we are the children of God: and “if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.” Possibly the epistle to the Romans, from which these quotations are made, opens out our individual relations with Christ from another point of view as beginning with “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus which hath made us free from the law of sin and death.” As a consequence of this power of life out of death, it is written, “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” As respects life by the indwelling Spirit, and our individual relationship in love with the Father as children, it is said, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father;” nor can anything separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. This epistle to the Romans (as we know) does not treat of the Church or its Head, nor of our corporate relations to Christ as the Head of His body; but the Holy Ghost is equally true to His mission as the glorifier of Christ, by setting us in these individual relationships with Christ and the Father in life, and love, and glory as the adopted family, and brought into this unity of the Spirit by the Spirit of life, and the Spirit of adoption.
The epistle to the Philippians is likewise occupied with our individual and practical relations as having “the mind of Christ,” and with believers as united to Christ, who has made in Himself of twain one new Man, so making peace; and they are diligently endeavoring to keep this unity, and in the uniting bond of peace, when they say with Paul, “We are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have’ no confidence in the flesh.” It is not here or in the Romans that we read, “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body being many, are one body; so also is Christ.” Nor, “by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” Such relations as these are corporate, and are found in the Corinthian and Ephesian epistles. Perhaps it is not important to distinguish our collective relations, as they so run together in the Romans and Philippians and elsewhere, with our individual ones; though the epistle to the Hebrews addresses us distinctly as “holy brethren, and as partakers of the heavenly calling,” and bids us consider the apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus. Indeed this may be the reason why it is collective and congregational, as Jesus is presented in His personal and official glories in the midst of a professing people, though as Christ He is “a Son over His own house, whose house are we,” and ourselves as having “an High Priest over the house of God.” Such relations would be out of place between Christ as the Head of His body, and ourselves as His members, of His flesh and of His bones; for He could not be High Priest, to that of which He is the Head, without becoming so to Himself.
The popular idea that everybody may worship God as he likes, has moreover violated the holy order and the unity of “the sanctuary, which the Lord pitched, and not man,” and is the bold refusal, if not the denial, of the veil which God has rent from the top to the bottom, and by which we now draw nigh as worshippers into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. It falsifies also the truth of worship, and the qualifications of a real worshipper; namely, “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth;” and it vitiates the essential fact for unity in worship that there is one God and Father of all who is above all, and through all, and in you all. Finally, this will-worship set up in Christendom is an outrage upon the prerogatives of our great High Priest passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God; for this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God, from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. “Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us” as the testifier of Jesus come down to maintain His glory in the sanctuary as the great High Priest, “the Father seeking such to worship Him, as worship Him in spirit and in truth.” In all these relations of ours with Christ, and with God in the holiest, whether individual or collective, we see the power of the Holy Ghost in bringing souls into union, and fellowship with the revelation of God’s will, and in the unity of the Spirit, and our responsibility to keep it in its large dimensions.
We pass on now to consider our ecclesiastical and our corporate relations with Christ as Head of His body the Church, to which our vocation, and the unity of the Spirit, and our endeavoring to keep it (as in chapter 4) have been too much limited. Why should we not allow “the unity of the Spirit” to embrace and cover the immensity of the revelation which the Ephesian epistle unfolds, for the glory of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Ghost, according to His divine mission? Besides this we may ask, Is the unity of the Spirit restricted to our corporate and Church relations? What then do the individual relations in the Romans as children of the Father, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ, unite us in? What again do our collective and priestly ones in the Hebrews consist of, if not included in “the unity of the Spirit,” and in virtue of the anointing, which we have received of Him as worshippers in the holiest where God dwells? Again, if the Spirit, and the unity of the Spirit, are not co-extensive with the original revelation of God and with Christianity, as at Pentecost when the Holy Ghost came down to baptize all into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free, it follows that those who say so will limit the Spirit’s action to the period in which they are living, and become Protestants. Or else reduce the unity still lower, and to something they are endeavoring to keep, as the various denominations of this century have done under the generic term of Dissenters. On the other hand, if the comprehensiveness of the Spirit’s action and “the unity of the Spirit” be today the same as it ever was, and we endeavor to keep this square with the meaning of “our vocation” as at the first, and to walk worthy of it, we shall most assuredly refuse to act upon points of difference with one another, much less to divide upon them as the sects do. But, on the contrary, “speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Hint in all things, which is the Head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.”
There is a peculiarity “for us Gentiles” in chapter 3 which remains to be noticed—how that by revelation God made known to Paul the mystery of Christ, whereby “the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel.” He was also to preach among the Gentiles “the unsearchable riches of Christ,” who aforetime were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. Moreover, “this mystery of Christ” as Christ (who hath made both one) was not in other ages made known to the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. He was also to make all men see “what is the fellowship of the mystery,” which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God. These precious records lead one to ask, how could there be any oneness, or union, or unity outside man in the flesh except by this mystery of Christ, and only then by His making in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace? and further, that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, “having slain the enmity thereby.” How little this mystery of Christ has been before us Gentiles, as showing us the way, and the only way, by which we could have Christ, and be in Him, who were once without Christ; or have access by one Spirit to the Father, who were once without God in the world, and aliens, strangers, and foreigners, these quotations must plainly tell us. How little “this mystery of Christ” for you Gentiles, and by which we reach “the unsearchable riches of Christ I” or how little this parenthetical chapter (as it is called), which reveals it to us, has stood side by side “with the mystery of God’s will” elsewhere, we may well inquire!
In truth, whatever “the mystery of God” may be, or whatever “the, mystery of Christ,” whether in Colossians or Ephesians or elsewhere, all is revealed by the Spirit, and substantiated by Christ and the Spirit, and kept by us in “the unity of the Spirit.” This mission of the Spirit embraces the scope of divine revelation, and these mysteries which were hid in God till Christ had taken His new place on high, and abolished in His flesh the boasted advantages of the Jew, equally with the disqualifications of the Gentile. The Spirit opens out “the mystery of Christ” for to make in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace; for in Christ Jesus where He now is there is neither Jew nor Greek; but Christ is all and in all. “Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more;” so if anyone be in Christ he is a new creation, whether Jew or Greek.
The fitting counterpart of this mystery of Christ, the new Man at the right hand of God, is shown forth by the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to Paul, and which is to usward who believe. “Ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard Him, and have been taught by Him, as the truth in Jesus: that ye have put off concerning the former conversation the old man... and have been renewed in the spirit of your mind; and have put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
Consistently with the fact of this new creation in life, and holiness, and truth, and this unity in the mystery of Christ and of God, our apostle says, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying,” “neither give place to the devil.” He closes up this wondrous mystery of unity, and its completeness in us by adding, “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption;” and “be ye imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love.” Nor must this comprehensive unity maintain or accept any other standard than Christ in any of our relations below, ecclesiastical or otherwise. “Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” So that, in brief, whether as fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, or as in the habitation of God through the Spirit, or as quickened, and raised, and seated in heavenly places in Christ as the head over all things to the Church, which is His body, or as in the hope of God’s calling, and of the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, we are in this oneness, and union, and unity by the Holy Ghost as the witness, and power, and seal of our vocation. Nor ‘must we limit this vast unity of the Spirit, and what we are exhorted to keep, down to a given century, whether Luther’s or our own, though thankful to God for any past or present action of the Spirit in recovering grace for today. J. E. B.
There is no calling for the Christian but the calling to a risen and glorified Christ. Christ glorified is his object; but Christ down here is the pattern for his walk.