The Epistle to the Ephesians gives us the richest exposition of the blessings of the saints individually and of the assembly, setting forth at the same time the counsels of God with regard to the glory of Christ. Christ Himself is viewed as the One who is to hold all things united in one under His hand, as Head of the assembly. The assembly is placed in the most intimate relationship with Him, as those who compose it are with the Father Himself. The heavenly position is dispensed to the assembly by the sovereign grace of God. Now these ways of grace to the assembly reveal God Himself, and in two distinct characters: He is the God of Christ, when Christ is looked at as man; He is the Father of Christ when Christ is looked at as the Son of His love. In the first character the nature of God is revealed; in the second, we see the intimate relationship which we enjoy with Him who bears this character of Father. It is this relationship to the Father, as well as that in which we stand to Christ as His body and His bride, that is the source of blessing to the assembly of God.
The Secret of the Assembly’s Place in the Counsels
The secret of all the assembly’s blessing is that it is blessed with Jesus Himself, and thus — like Him, viewed as a man — is accepted before God, for the assembly is His body, and enjoys in Him and by Him all that His Father has bestowed on Him. Christ stands in two relationships with God His Father. He is a perfect man before His God, and He is a Son with His Father. We are to share both these relationships.
The two relationships between man and God are the relationships in which Christ Himself stands. He ascended to His God and our God, to His Father and our Father. We share all the blessings that flow from these two relationships. He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings; not one is lacking. But this flows from the heart of God Himself, from a thought outside the circumstances in which He finds us in time. Before the world was, this was our place in His heart. He purposed to give us a place in Christ. He chose us in Him. Paul begins in Ephesians entirely with God, His thoughts and His counsels, not with what man is.
A Sufficient Object
for God’s Counsels
What blessing, what a source of joy, what grace, it is to be the objects of God’s favor, according to His sovereign love! Take special notice here of the way in which the Holy Spirit keeps it continually before our eyes, that all is in Christ — in the heavenly places in Christ — He had chosen us in Him — unto the adoption by Jesus Christ — made acceptable in the Beloved. He is completely and adequately the delight of God. The heart of God finds in Him a sufficient object on which to pour itself out entirely, towards which His infinite love can all be exercised. It is with Himself and before Him, to gratify Himself, to satisfy His love.
What God Can Take Delight in
God could find His moral delight only in Himself and in that which morally resembles Him. This is a universal principle. God could not endure that which is in opposition to His holiness, since, in the activity of His nature, He must surround Himself with that which He loves and delights in. Christ is this in Himself. He is personally the image of the invisible God. Love, holiness and blameless perfection in all His ways are united in Him. And God has chosen us in Him. He brings us into His presence. The love of God must do this in order to satisfy itself. The love which is in us also must be found in this position to have its perfect object. It is there only that perfect happiness can be found. This being so, it is needful that we should be like God. He could not bring us as we were into His presence in order to take delight in us. He has therefore chosen us in Christ, that we should be holy, without blame before Him in love. So God takes delight in us, and we, possessing a nature like His own as to its moral qualities, are capable of enjoying His nature fully and without hindrance, and of enjoying it in its perfection in Him.
Counsels of Love
God our Father, in His sovereign goodness, according to His counsels of love, chooses to have us near Himself. The Father chooses to have us in an intimate relationship with Himself as sons. We are sons to Himself by Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will. If Christ is the image of the invisible God, we bear that image, being chosen in Him. If Christ is a Son, we enter into that relationship. These then are our relationships, so precious, so marvelous, with God our Father in Christ. These are the counsels of God. All the fullness of this grace reveals itself in His ways towards us — the original thoughts, so to speak, of God. These counsels have no other source than Himself, and in and by which He reveals Himself, and by the accomplishment of which He glorifies Himself.
If it is in Christ that we see our position according to the counsels of God, it is in Him also that we find the redemption that sets us there. We have redemption through His blood, the remission of our sins. Those whom He would bless were poor and miserable through sin. He has acted towards them according to the riches of His grace. The Spirit brings out in this passage the eternal counsels of God with regard to the saints in Christ, before He enters on the subject of the state from which He drew them, when He found them in their condition of sinners here below. In His counsels He has revealed Himself; He is glorious in grace. In His work He thinks of our misery, of our wants, according to the riches of His grace; we share in the counsels, as being their object in our poverty, in our need. He is rich in grace.
God Reveals His Counsels Concerning His Son
God, having placed us in this intimacy, reveals to us His thoughts respecting the glory of Christ Himself. This same grace has made us the depositaries of the settled purpose of His counsels, with regard to the universal glory of Christ, for the administration of the fullness of times. This is an immense favor granted us. We are interested in the glory of Christ as well as blessed in Him. Our nearness to God and our perfectness before Him enable us to be interested in the counsels of God as to the purposed glory of His Son. And this leads to the inheritance. God our Father has given us to enjoy all blessings in heavenly places ourselves, but He would unite all things in heaven and on the earth under Christ as Head, and our relationship with all that is put under Him, as well as our relationship with God His Father, depends on our position in Christ; it is in Him that we have our inheritance.
Counsels for Time
and Counsels for Eternity
The good pleasure of God was to unite all that is created under the hand of Christ. This is His purpose for the administration of the times in which the result of all His ways shall be manifested. In Christ we inherit our part, heirs of God, joint-heirs of Christ. Here the Spirit sets before us the position, in virtue of which the inheritance has fallen to us, rather than the inheritance itself. It will be a grand spectacle, as the result of the ways of God, to see all things united in perfect peace and union under the authority of man, of the second Adam, the Son of God, ourselves associated with Him in the same glory with Himself, His companions in the heavenly glory, as the objects of the eternal counsels of God. The eternal state, in which God is all in all, is another thing. The administration of the fullness of times is the result of the ways of God in government; the eternal state is that of the perfection of His nature. We, even in the government, are brought in as sons according to His nature. Wonderful privilege!
The Inheritance? Not yet.
Concerning the inheritance, the Holy Spirit is but an earnest. We do not yet possess anything of the inheritance. Then we shall be to the praise of His glory. The glory of His grace is already revealed. Thus we have here the grace which ordered the position of the children of God — the counsels of God respecting the glory of Christ as Head over all — the part which we have in Him as Heir — and the gift of the Holy Spirit to believers, as the earnest and seal (until they are put in possession with Christ) of the inheritance that He has won.
The Inheritance of
the Whole Universe
The inheritance of the whole universe, when it shall be filled with glory, belongs to Him, but He inherits it in the saints. It is the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. He will fill all things with His glory, and it is in the saints that He will inherit them. By the calling of God we are called to enjoy the blessedness of His presence, near to Himself, to enjoy that which is above us. The inheritance of God applies to that which is below us, to created things, which are all made subject to Christ, with whom and in whom we enjoy the light of the presence of God near to Him.
Christ and the Members
Raised From the Dead
Christ raised up from among the dead is set at the right hand of God, far above all power and authority, and above every name that is named among the hierarchies by which God administers the government of the world that now is, or among those of the world to come. God has established Him as Head over all things, uniting the assembly to Him as His body, and raising up the members from their death in sins by the same power as that which raised up and exalted the Head. Thus the assembly, His body, is His fullness. He fills the universe with His glory, but the Head is not isolated, left, so to speak, incomplete as such, without its body. It is the body that completes it in that glory. Christ is the Head of the body over all things. He fills all in all, and the assembly is His fullness. We may observe that it is when Christ having accomplished redemption was exalted to the right hand of God, that He takes the place in which He can be the Head of the body.
Unsearchable Riches
The riches of Christ were unsearchable. No one could trace to the end the accomplishment of the counsels and the revelation of the nature of God. They are the incomprehensible riches of a Christ in whom God reveals Himself, and in whom all God’s thoughts are accomplished and displayed. These purposes of God with regard to Christ, the Head of His body, the assembly, are now made known and being accomplished. God, who created all things, had this thought, this purpose before creation, in order that, when He should subject all creation to His Son, that the Son should have companions in His glory, who should be like Himself, members of His spiritual body, living of His life.
He who had created all things, as the sphere of the development of His glory, had kept this secret in His own possession, in order that the administration of the mystery, now revealed by the establishment of the assembly on earth, should be in its time the means of making known to the most exalted of created beings the manifold and various wisdom of God. They had seen creation arise and expand before their eyes; they had seen the government of God, His providence, His judgment, His intervention in loving-kindness on the earth in Christ. Here was a kind of wisdom altogether new, a thing outside the world, hitherto shut up in the mind of God, hid in Himself. It was a new creation, a distinct manifestation of the wisdom of God, a part of His thoughts which until then had been reserved in the secret of His counsels, the actual administration of which was made known on the earth in time by the Apostle’s work, in the wisdom of God according to His settled purpose, according to His eternal purpose in Christ Jesus.
The Practical and Proper Effect
of the Counsels
The proper and immediate effect is the perfecting of individuals according to the grace that dwells in the Head. Christ has been revealed in all His fullness. It is according to this revelation that the members of the body are to be formed in the likeness of Christ. He is known as filling all things, and as the Head of His body, the revelation of the perfect love of God, of the excellency of man before Him according to His counsels, of man the vessel of all His grace, all His power, and all His gifts.
With this precious object of the ministration of grace for the growth of each member individually unto the measure of the stature of the Head Himself, each member being in its place to the edifying itself in love, ends this development of the counsels of God in the union of Christ and the assembly. The assembly has the double character of the body of Christ in heaven and the habitation of the Holy Spirit on earth. These truths cannot be separated, but each has its distinctive importance, and reconcile the certain immutable operations of grace in the Head with the failures of the assembly responsible on the earth.
J. N. Darby, excerpts adapted
from Synopsis on Ephesians