Chapter 17. The Christian Home; Conclusion the Spiritual Conflict

Chapter 17.
The Christian Home; Conclusion the Spiritual Conflict Ephesians 6:10-20 "Principalities and powers, Mustering their unseen array, Wait for thy unguarded hours;

Watch and pray!"

—Miss C. Elliott

WE have now seen the interior of Christian home-life, as it was lived in the first century, and as it is lived (with differences, in regard of the last of its relations, due only to its own pure principles working themselves out) in the nineteenth. Such homes, such households, God be thanked, are scattered over our own dear Land in numberless points of brightness, radiating good around them. They are to be found in every Gospel-lighted region of Europe, in the Western World, in the young countries of the Southern Ocean. They begin to mark with spots of beauty the darkness of the non-Christian peoples; there is many a home now, true to the Ephesian model, in the cities and villages of China, in all the provinces of India, by the rivers and the lakes of what was lately unknown Africa, and in the islets of the Pacific. And every one of them is a precious contribution to the true evangelization of the world, and also, all the while, to its true temporal happiness and order.

"Home, sweet Home!" It is the "garden enclosed" of the Gospel; its nursery, from which blessing is planted out, even into the utmost wilderness of mankind.

I cannot forbear here the quotation of a poem, well known in Germany, where the true Home is set before us in lines which are a fit sequel to the Apostle’s precepts. It is Spitta’s hymn, "The Christian Household."[1] "Oh, happy house! where Thou art lov’d the best, Dear Friend and Saviour of our race, Where never comes such welcom’d, honour’d Guest, Where none can ever fill Thy place; Where every heart goes forth to meet Thee, Where every ear attends Thy word, Where every lip with blessing greets Thee, Where all are waiting on their Lord.

"Oh, happy house! where two are one in heart, In holy faith and hope are one, Whom death can only for a little part, Not end the union here begun; Who share together one salvation, Who would be with Thee, Lord, always, In gladness, or in tribulation, In happy or in evil days.

"Oh, happy house! where little ones are given Early to Thee, in faith and prayer,— To Thee, their Friend, who from the heights of heaven Guard’st them with more than mother’s care.

Oh, happy house! where little voices Their glad hosannas love to raise, And childhood’s lisping tongue rejoices To bring new songs of love and praise.

"Oh, happy house! and happy servitude! Where all alike one Master own; Where daily duty, in Thy strength pursued, Is never hard nor toilsome known; Where each one serves Thee, meek and lowly, Whatever Thine appointment be, Till common tasks seem great and holy, When they are done as unto Thee.

"Oh, happy house! where Thou are not forgot When joy is flowing full and free;

Oh, happy house! where every wound is brought, Physician, Comforter, to Thee;

Until, at last, earth’s day’s-work ended, All meet Thee in that home above, From whence Thou earnest, where Thou art ascended, The heaven of glory and of love!"
From this beautiful scene the Apostle leads us now direct to a field of battle, overhung with clouds. "Arms and the man he sings"; and the man urgently needs both the arms, and the skill and strength to wield them. For he is beset by the hosts of evil, under their dreadful king. It will be all he can do to hold his ground, in unshaken fidelity to his divine Commander.

We approach thus the memorable paragraph which deals in the first place, explicitly and fully, with the fact of organized assaults on the Christian company by unseen personal adversaries, banded together, and trying every avenue of temptation; and then with the parts and details of a panoply which is to enable the beleaguered saints to meet them, and to overcome. Taken in itself, the passage is one of extreme interest and significance. But we first ask ourselves why, being what it is, does it occur just here? Why so immediately pass from the tranquil duties of home to the very thick of the struggle with assailing spirits? The answer is, in part, if I am right, that a marked pause of thought takes place at the close of the previous paragraph. The Apostle is conscious of the close of his message, and draws his whole mind, as it approaches, to a closing topic which will leave his readers intensely alive to the solemn urgency of their position. He has been telling them, from the beginning onward, of the secrets of eternal grace and love, of the wonder of their salvation from spiritual death, of their peace and life through faith, of their sealing by the Blessed Spirit, of their union with Christ their Head, of His blissful indwelling in their hearts, and then of the resultant life of humility, purity, love, truth, and every gracious duty of social holiness. In closing, they must not forget that this beautiful life is all the while to be lived upon hostile ground. It is the life of a camp in the enemy’s territory, to be held till the supreme Commander advances to the eternal relief and triumph. Within, all is to be mutual loyalty and love, a scene of noble order and fellowship. But the ramparts are not for one moment to be left unwatched, nor is the saint ever for a moment to live and move unarmed. So this last passage gathers up the whole previous matter of the Epistle in the sense of an urgent reminder of the infinitely serious conditions under which the bright secrets of grace are to be lived out. The Christian is not only a servant but a soldier; he belongs not only to a home but to a citadel. And to recollect the formidable surroundings is of course vitally necessary if the life lived amidst them is not to be swept away in ruin.

Meanwhile this new paragraph, though separated by a solemn pause from the description of the Christian Home, is not by any means isolated from it, as if there were no fitness in the succession. For does not common experience bear out the remark that the evil powers often win their worst advantages against us Christians on the quiet and common ground of life? Where we are least upon our guard they are most upon their watch. It is above all for "our unguarded hours" that they are "waiting." And it is often exactly in the unanxious freedom of home that spiritual unguardedness comes on, and developes into habit. Just at home, alas, it is only too easy for the Christian to be inconsiderate in deed and word, to be quick or sullen in temper, to indulge self in small but dangerous ways, while yet a tolerable face of consistency is maintained in more public and exterior matters. So not for nothing does St Paul speak last of life at home just before passing to this great paragraph about the armed watchman of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:10. In conclusion,[2]strengthen yourselves always[3]in the Lord, your one possible Sphere and Magazine of inexhaustible resource, to be drawn upon by obedient trust, and in the energy of His might, sure so to be put forth on your behalf; a "strength made perfect in the weakness" ( 2 Corinthians 12:9) which gives it. room by

Ephesians 6:11. its reliance. Clothe yourselves with the panoply, the armour cap-à-pieof our (τοῦ) God; personally accepting and appropriating the defence which is already yours in Him[4]; with a view to your being able, as you thus shall be, aye, even you, to stand against the stratagems, the subtle "methods" (μεθοδείας), the calculated crafts and combinations, of the devil, the diabolos, the dread "Accuser" of the followers of his great Adversary, Christ,[5] always lying in wait for their unreadiness and failure.

Ephesians 6:12. Because our wrestling, the hand-and-limb encounter of our Christian life, is not against flesh and blood,[6] that is, against merely human opponents; no, for even when we have to meet hostility or actual cruelty from men, there are deeper and darker powers behind them[7];but against the principalities,[8]against the authorities, against the world-rulers of this darkness,[9] beings permitted a mysterious empire over the human "world" in its "darkness" of ignorance and sin[10]; against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places; the powers which carry on their dark campaign in the vast unseen, as it were the "birds of the sky" ( Matthew 6:28), hovering over the landscape of humanity.[11]

Such are the beleaguering forces, represented in their chiefs, which surround the children of God; at Ephesus then, in our modern life today. Who shall solve the riddle of their existence, and of its permission? Is it not a deeper thing than created intelligence can deal with? But are we not surrounded, in nature as well as in the spiritual world, with problems innumerable "going off into mystery"[12] where no thought can really follow, but which nevertheless are problems raised by fads? Our wisdom is to grasp the facts, and to meet them along lines of certainty, and to leave the ultimate enigma safe in the hands which alone can hold it, while meantime they are holding us. If these revelations of an invisible host around us, bent upon our calamity, do nothing else for us, they may at least render the inestimable service of driving us home, as for our very life, to personal dealings with our Personal Deliverer. He can indeed face for us the dreadful personalities marshalled in the shadows that surround our life. And now, to Him the Apostle bids us come. For is it not to Him? We shall read, in the splendid picture, of this thing and of that as our protection. But reduced to its essence, as Jerome remarked long ago,[13] the "panoply" means—Jesus Christ. The soldier, in other words, appears before us made strong for a victory which is otherwise impossible—by his relation to his Lord. He is safe, he is successful, because he is spiritually right with Christ in God-given "truth" and "righteousness"; because he is sure of Christ beneath his feet as "the equipment of the Gospel of peace" for his own soul; because he finds Christ the mighty buckler against the fiery volley when he uses Him in "faith"; because he "covers his head in the day of battle" with Christ as his assured "Salvation"; because Christ speaks through "the Word of God," and so makes Himself His servant’s sword to cut the "accuser" down; because "prayer in the Spirit" grasps Him, and holds Him fast.[14] Yes, here, to the last hour of our conflict and our siege, and here only, lies our victory. It is He, not it. It is the all-sufficient Lord, "objected to the fiend," while the believer stands safe behind Him.

"Not me the dark foe fears at all, But hid in Thee I take the field;

Now at my feet the mighty fall, For Thou hast bid them yield."

Ephesians 6:13. On this account, take up, as laid before you on the ground by Him who wrought the weapons, by Him who is the victory, aye, "take up," in a strong appropriating act,[15]the panoply of our (τοῦ) God, that you may be able, as you shall be, to withstand these onsets, so formidable but then so vain, in the evil day, the crisis (as each crisis comes on) of temptation or of terror, and having accomplished all things which your Captain asks of you, thus armed with Himself, to stand, unmoved at your post, unshaken in your loyalty, ready to the last to

Ephesians 6:14. "tread down your enemies" in Him. Stand therefore, with a new conscious act[16] of spiritual resolve, girding your loins round in a belt of truth, that is to say, calm and strong in the reality and simplicity, through grace, of your relations with your King; and clothing yourselves with the cuirass of righteousness, that is to say, with holy loyalty, the work of God within you, to His

Ephesians 6:15. all-beloved Will and Law; and shoeing your feet, the feet which have to stand, "firm on the rock, and strong in Christ,"[17]in, with, the equipment of the Gospel of His (τῆς) peace, "peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," and the resultant "peace of God" in heart and thought, embraced and enjoyed for yourselves, as your feet thus feel certainty and security beneath them. For there is no "equipment" for the Holy War more needful, and more effectual, than the possession by the

Ephesians 6:16. warrior of that holy Peace. And then, against all things, to meet every shifting assault,[18] stand, taking up the great shield[19]of your faith, your reliance altogether on your Lord, that look wholly outward, Godward, which is the essence of faith, and which gives it the saving power it has; on which (ἐνᾧ) you shall (remember the positive promise) be able to quench all the missiles of the Evil One, those (τά) burning, "kindled" (πεπυρωμένα) missiles of his,[20] which can enflame the heart with anger, or with lust, "set on fire of hell."

Ephesians 6:17. And accept, for behold it is offered to your very hands, the helmet of God’s (τοῦ) Salvation (σωτήριον), even Him who is our Deliverance in Person, and whose presence and promise "cover the head" indeed as the soldier faces the battle; and the sword of the Spirit, wrought and edged by the Holy One Himself, the sword which is God’s utterance, His spoken Truth, to be your one sure weapon of offence against the enemy, as you, like your Prince before you, meet him with "It is written," "It is written again."[21] So the soldier is to dress, and to stand, and to handle shield and sword against the world-rulers of this darkness and their leader. Meanwhile he is enabled, and he is commanded, to keep in ceaseless communication with his own blessed Commander—a communication which no siege can interrupt; the "heliography," the "wireless telegraphy," of heaven:

Ephesians 6:18. By means of all prayer,[22]and petition, using every variety of worshipping approach to God (προσευχή) and of definite request from Him (δέησις), praying on every occasion, at each emerging crisis (καιρός) of need and trial, from greatest to least; in the Spirit, in contact with the Lord and Inspirer of supplication "according to the will of God" ( Romans 8:27); and, to this very end, that you may be "in the Spirit" indeed, keeping wakeful in the exercise of all, full, unstinted, persistence and petition, "praying and not fainting"; besetting the throne of grace as those who mean indeed "not to let Him go except He bless." And here comes in the holy collectivism of the Gospel. These warriors, sore bestead, would have urgent needs of their own to pray over, as the hosts of evil would seek to isolate them and bear them down. But through prayer they were also to maintain touch and continuity not with their Lord only but with "their brethren which were in the world" ( 1 Peter 5:9), and so to help both themselves, through the magnetic chain of remembered oneness in Christ, and them. Their "petitions" were to go up perseveringly—

Ephesians 6:19. Concerning all the saints, in Asia, in Italy, in the new Christendom at large, and now, amongst others, (for the Apostle is himself insatiable of intercessory prayer,) on behalf of me; that word, matter and faculty in the deliverance of the message, may be given me, by the inspiring and enabling Lord, as shewn in opening of my mouth in freedom,παῤῥησία, unreserved proclamation of Christ, aye, even in the capital city of the world, to make known the Secret of the Gospel, the glory of its worldwide scope and its eternal issues, so long hidden, now

Ephesians 6:20. at length revealed[23]—that Gospel on behalf of which I am on embassy, as from sovereign Court and Power—in a chain, strange decoration for an envoy! Yes, pray on for me, for this gift of opportunity and speech, that in it, "in" the field, "in" the theme, of this blessed Secret, I may, as with a "new departure" of vigour and effect,[24]speak with freedom, even as it is my duty to express my tidings. So the long passage of deepest and gravest truth comes home at last—to the writer himself; but all for the sake of his work, which is the work of his Lord. He signals to his fellow-soldiers among "the dark mountains" to cry for him to Heaven, that he in his turn may sound louder and further, from his post of duty and danger, the silver trumpet call of "the unsearchable riches of Christ."

^[1]O selig Haus, wo man dich aufgenommen. The original is in Spitta’sPsalter und Harfe.I quote the excellent translation given inHymns from the Land of Luther.

^[2]Τὸλοιπόν: "From henceforth," R.V.margin(cp.2 Timothy 4:8). But this does not so well suit the general tone of the Epistle, which has made no allusion to spiritualweaknessas the special fault which "henceforth" the readers should amend.—The wordsἀδελφοίμουshould be omitted from the text.

^[3]The verb is in the present tense and suggests a continuous "strengthening."

^[4]For the thought of thus "making it our own" by consciously using the promises, cp.Romans 13:12,Romans 13:14;1 Thessalonians 5:8. We are to "possess our possessions" (Obadiah 1:18) with the promptitude and certainty of the simplest recollection and acceptance.—For passages closely akin to this cp. Rom. and 1 Thess., quoted just above, (both written earlier than this Epistle.) And see the grand versesIsaiah 59:16-17, and a fine apocryphal passage,Wis 5:17, etc., which perhaps is the echo of the words of Isaiah. In these latter passagesthe Lordis the Person who arms Himself with a "panoply."

^[5]See aboveonEphesians 2:2for considerations on the revealed personality of theδιάβολος, "the Accuser."—The Greek word is the regular equivalent in the LXX. of the HebrewSâtân,"the Adversary."For illustration of the significance of the wordδιάβολος, see e.g. the opening chapters of Job.

^[6]Lit. "blood and flesh"; but usage in English reverses the order. For the phrase, cp.Matthew 16:17,1 Corinthians 15:50,Galatians 1:16,Hebrews 2:14. It will be seen that the meaning is not (as sometimes in our popular parlance)our own feelings,as when we say, "it was hard for flesh and blood to bear"; but,mortal men,supposed to be enemies and opponents. "We have to encounter not men but spirits."

^[7]"See the language ofRevelation 2:10, and Abp Trench’s note upon it (Epistles to the Seven Churches,p. 104).... The Apostle not merely takes for granted the objective existence of a world of evil spirits; he carefully distinguishes it from the world of humanity." (Note in theCambridge Bible.)

^[8]See above, onEphesians 1:21,seeEphesians 3:10.—"The reference here... obviously is to personalevilspirits as members and leaders of an... organization under its head.... Cp.Matthew 25:41,2 Corinthians 12:7. Note also the ’Legion’ of evil spirits (Mark 5:9,Mark 5:15. ), compared with the ’more than twelvelegionsof angels’ (Matthew 26:53)." (Note in theCambridge Bible.) ^[9]Omit the wordsτοῦαἰῶνοςfrom the text.

^[10]"For allusions to the mysterious ’authority’ of the Evil Power over the human ’world,’ in its ethical aspect at least, cp.Luke 4:6;John 14:30,John 16:11;2 Corinthians 4:4;1 John 5:18." (Note in theCambridge Bible.) ^[11]I thus attempt an explanation of a phrase which is still mysterious when all is said.

^[12]Omnia abeunt in mysterium,writes Bacon.

^[13]In his commentary here: "From what we read in the passage following, and from the things said in all the Scriptures concerning the Lord our Saviour, it most clearly results that by ’all the arms of God’... the Saviour is to be understood."

^[14]It will be observed that I explain "truth" and "righteousness" (Ephesians 6:14) as referring to the believer’s sincerity and fidelity in dealing with his Lord, and not as referring to theLord’s"truth" in His promises and His "righteousness" in justification. Not without hesitation I do so; for certainly it would be perfectly in St Paul’s manner to mean justification here by "righteousness." And we can never too clearly remember that the armour is the armour "of God"; it is not human character merely but divine grace. ButI thinkthat the language ofIsaiah 59:16-17, suggests the view advocated here. Meanwhile the inmost thought all through is that the manreally uses his Lord.

^[15]May we, without incongruity, illustrate the thought from Virgil? In the eighth AEneid, Venus brings the invulnerable armour to her son AEneas, perfect and prepared: then
 "He, glorying in the beauteous prize,
 From point to point quick darts his eyes
With ever-new delight.
 Now; wondering, ’twixt his hands he turns
 The helm that like a meteor burns,
The sword that rules the war,
 The breastplate shooting bloody rays,
 As dusky clouds in sunlight blaze
Refulgent from afar,
 The polished greaves of molten gold,
 The spear, the shield with fold on fold,
A prodigy of art untold."
 (Conington’s Version.)
 Shall our "wonder," "delight," anduse,be less?

^[16]Observe the aorists in this whole context.

^[17]The thought here is not of running the errands of the Master, but of holding the fort for Him.

^[18]So I would explainἐπὶπᾶσιν. although the rendering"overall things," as a shield is theoutworkof the armour, is of course grammatically possible.

^[19]Θυρεόν: "thedoor-shield," the largest sort of shield, about 2¹/2; by 4 feet in size.

^[20]The metaphor is taken from the fire-arrows of ancient warfare. Sometimes the "arrow" carried a bulb filled with burning matter. Sometimes the point was merely wrapped in burning tow.

^[21]"Doubtless the reference [of ’God’s utterance’] is not to be limited to the very words of Scripture.... But the evidence of Scripture itself, as it indicates historically the principles and practice of the Lord and the Apostles in regard of the Written Word, is altogether in favour of interpreting the phrase here, as to its main and permanent meaning, of the believing use, in spiritual conflict, of the Scriptures; the Written Word, revealing the Living Word. It is true that when this Epistle was written the Spirit, whose work in producing Scripture was still in progress, was also speaking direct to the Church in other modes.... But that this was a greatpassingphase in the Church’s experience is indicated by1 Corinthians 13:8, and by the broad facts of history.... Above all observe that the Lord Himself, in His Temptation, the history of which should be compared carefully with this whole passage, uses exclusively verbal citations, written ’utterances,’ from the Scriptures, as His sword; and this, immediately after His Baptism and the Descent ofthe Holy Spirit....No suggestion could be more pregnant than this as to the abiding position of the Written Word under the Dispensation of the Spirit." (Note in theCambridge Bible.)

^[22]"So Christian was forced to put up his sword, and betake himself to another weapon, called All-prayer; so he cried, in my hearing, ’O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul.’" (Pilgrim’s Progress.)

^[23]See the previous occurrences of the wordμυστήριονin this Epistle:Ephesians 1:9;Ephesians 3:3-4,Ephesians 3:9;Ephesians 5:32.

^[24]Observe the aorist,παῤῥησιάσωμαι.