03. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Occasion of the writing of the Epistle--St Paul’s residence and pastorate at Ephesus--The ’Colossian Heresy’--Its apparent characteristics--This Epistle was written to meet it in advance--By a full presentation of the glory of Christ.

We have devoted our attention thus far to the literary preliminaries to the Epistle to the Ephesians. In this further study we shall consider those circumstances of the Asian converts which apparently occasioned the message, and to the personal surroundings of the writer as he actually addressed himself to the writing. The apparent circumstances of the intended readers of the Letter. Those readers, after yesterday’s inquiry, we will take to be primarily the converts of the great mission-station at Ephesus, but with them also those resident at what the modern missionary would call the out-stations of the district. Such were Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis, the three points of Christian light in the valley through which Lycus, ’the Wolf-water,’ hastens to its confluence with Maeander. We may reckon also, as already containing ’Churches,’ for certain in some cases, in others probably, the towns of Smyrna, Pergamus, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Troas, Assos, Adramyttium, Miletus and Trogyllium. All these are places named in the apostolic Scriptures, and all lay within the limits of Proconsular Asia.

I need only in the briefest way recall the account in the Acts of St Paul’s three years’ continuous residence (Acts 20:18, τὸν πάντα χρόνον μεθ᾿ ὑμῶν ἐγενόμην, ’I was with you the whole time through’) at Ephesus. During that stay, while thus practically stationary himself, he yet, according to his hostile critic Demetrius, as well as in St Luke’s own narrative, not at Ephesus only but ’nearly all over Asia’ σχεδὸν πάσης τῆς Ἀσίας, Acts 19:26; St Luke speaks yet more strongly of πάντες οἱ κατοικοῦντες τὴν Ἀσίαν, Acts 19:10) spread the message of Christ. We remember well the little group of disciples of the Baptist with whom he began, and on whom he was permitted to shed the ’gifts;’ the three months’ work in the synagogue; the decisive and critical removal of the converts from the hall of Tyrannus; the immense labour of the long remainder of the stay, in which by deputed Evangelists (like Epaphras) he reached the other places of the province, and was himself always ready to meet the innumerable visitors who habitually flocked from the province to the city. We remember the abundant miracles, especially the victories over possessing spirits; the counterfeit of these by the sons of Sceva; the astonishing day when a vast literature of unhallowed ’arts,’ to the grief of antiquarians perhaps but to the glory of God, was burnt ’in the sight of all.’ The agitation of Demetrius and his fellows we recall here only as it evidences the enthusiastic and dangerous fanaticism which gathered round the Ephesian Artemis. It is a scene without any parallel in the Acts, unless indeed we seek one in the temple-courts of Jerusalem; at Corinth, at Philippi, at Thessalonica there is nothing like it. The closing Ephesian incident in the Acts is the gathering at Miletus of the Ephesian presbyters; it shows us in these representative converts men capable of a deep and pathetic affectionateness.

We go from the Acts to our own Epistle, and to Colossians, and we gather that in his Asian disciples St Paul found an intelligence and also a warmth which invited him to open to them the very depths and heights of the Gospel. He freely leads them into the heavenly arcana of eternal grace, and redeeming love, and rich experience, in words whose grandeur of outline and argument is impressively combined with a tenderness of appeal and application impossible where there is less than perfect sympathy between teacher and disciples. His long residence at Ephesus, and the intimate pastoral intercourse to which he alludes in his farewell words at Miletus, would seem to have made him intensely conscious in Asia of the life of Christian homes. No doubt he could recall among his immediate converts many a beautiful example of that masterpiece of the Gospel, a human home animated all through with the faith and love of the Redeemer; and he would fain see every hearth of the disciples adorned and beautified in all its surroundings with the same lovely light. It has been remarked, by the way, that in the missions of Asia the Gospel in its homeward aspect would be powerfully aided by one great local characteristic, the high place and influence of Woman in Asian social life. Much more than in some other missions, the evangelist there would find the mother a powerful, indeed a primary, influence and authority among her children, and with her for centre the home bond would be deep and strong. There were terrible contraries to this favourable fact. Nowhere in the old pagan world was the association of bodily impurity with idolatrous worship so intense as in Asia Minor. Inscriptions are quoted (see Ramsay, The Church in the Empire, p. 398) which record, as a thank-worthy incident of the votary’s life, her having spent a certain period in divinely-suggested prostitution. And, apart from such mysteries of sanctioned sin, the Levant was then as now a favourable soil, certainly in its cities, with their motley population, and in that luxurious climate, for a rank growth of moral corruption. Yet Asia did present, even from the view-point of nature, this brighter side, this instinct of affection and home. We may compare the fact that at the present day in France, in merciful contrast to the prevalence of neo-paganism and its moral fruits, we find splendid instances of a prevalence also of the influence of the home and the mother; a reluctant statesman is brought to accept the dangerous throne of the President by the ultima ratio of his mother’s appeal.

We may trace the pastoral intimacy of St Paul with Ephesus and Asia in other directions besides that indicated by the domestic passages of our Epistle and Colossians. Nowhere else does he enter with the peculiar kind of fulness we find here into the holiness of common Christian intercourse in general. To be sure there is rich material in all his Epistles for our study on that surpassingly important side of Christian life. We can gather ample material from Thessalonians, from Corinthians, to enforce the call to the believing disciple totally to abstain from evil and unreservedly and impartially to practise good in matters of the temper, in the use of time, in cleanness of thought and speech, in a recollection of the sacredness of mutual sincerity, and of the greatness in Christ of the commonplaces of human social relation. But I do not think we find these precepts either in the same remarkable quantity elsewhere, or given with exactly the same manner--a manner so minute, so pressing, yet so intimate, so affectionate--as that in which they appear in Ephesians and Colossians. God be thanked then for those three years of local pastorate to which He called His servant at Ephesus in the very midst of the wider work of restless evangelization. To that period of close and stationary converse we owe, if I conjecture aright, these precious applications of eternal truths to literally our commonest intercourse and most week-day duties. To them we owe this fullest and tenderest of all apostolic reminders that nothing in the Christian’s life is for one moment meant to lie outside Jesus Christ; that he is hallowed all through and all over, and therefore in all his relations and functions, to the Lord who has bought him, and enlightened him, and in faith and love, by the eternal Spirit, has joined him to Himself. But we still have to examine the probable special occasion which prompted the writing of Ephesians. The call to domestic and social holiness in Christ was not a critical occasion for writing, though it was an abiding matter for the missionary’s prayers and counsels. The critical occasion, if we see at all aright, is to be found just outside our Epistle, in that to the Colossians. A special peril to Christian faith had, somehow or other, invaded the mission in the old country town of Colossae. In its acute form it was, apparently, local there. It may indeed have already affected the much larger Laodicea, Colossae’s near neighbour and district capital (Colossians 4:16); still, it is to Colossae, not to Asia, nor to any other station in it, that St Paul directly writes against this invasion of misbelief. But the evil was of course only too capable of quick diffusion. And this diffusion would best be met in advance. If so, the surest meeting of it would be by way of a clear and full, but not yet controversial, statement of the great revealed facts which it assailed, distorted, or obscured. Hence the Epistle to the Ephesians It was suggested by the mischief at Colossae, and in a sense it sprang out of the Epistle to Colossae. It is the larger and more ’encyclical’ discourse on truth and duty, with a special reference to imperilled faith; designed not so much to confute as to provide against the propaganda which had begun (we cannot now know why just there) with the smallest of the missions on the Lycus.

What was the ’Colossian Heresy,’ as we may infer its nature from the Epistle written expressly to refute it? It was apparently a new thing in its kind in St Paul’s experience of ’other Gospels, which were not other.’ Hitherto he had encountered persistent opposition from the Pharisaic party in the Church, an opposition continued up till quite recent days, in his Roman captivity, if we placed Philippians aright in our first Lecture. It was this indefatigable countermission which had called out the Galatian and Roman Epistles. It was this which was met in them by the exposition once and for ever of the sublime paradox of justification by faith alone and holiness by the power of the Spirit, received also by faith alone, and then applied to life with all the insight of the regenerate will. Those Epistles have in immediate view the Rabbinic disputant, though dressed in the Christian garb; we seem to see him, with his pride of privilege and pedigree, his ceremonial rigorism, his wistful quest of a righteousness of his own, constructed of observances and achievements, his consequent inward restlessness and weakness, his failure of assurance, his lack of peace with God, his internal separation from the divine secret of spiritual victory over the devil, the world and the flesh. It was the mistaken votary of the true God (mistaking, while he thought he accepted, the central message of the Christ of God) whom St Paul sought to meet in Galatians and Romans with those great watchwords--the Righteousness of God upon all them that believe; Death by the Law to the Law; Peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; Justification freely by His grace; Life lived in the flesh by faith in Him; Liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free; the Promise of the Spirit received by faith; the Witness of the Spirit with our Spirit; the Abba, Father, ’that cry of faith alone.’ But now a mischief emerged which, with some permanent elements of likeness, had a profound difference in it too. There was now a speculative as well as a ceremonialist element. There was the fascination of reverie along with an appeal to Moses and the past; a claim to satisfy the cravings of thought as well as, or perhaps much more than, to quiet the importunity of conscience.

Lightfoot, in his Colossians (Introduction, § ii.), has discussed ’the Colossian heresy’ with even more than his usual fulness and care, and incidentally has written an essay on the Essenes whose completeness is still, I believe, unrivalled in any language. Hort (in Lectures of which memoranda have been kindly lent to me) has criticized some points in Lightfoot’s resultant theory, inclining, so far as I understand him, to see not much more than a variation of Pharisaism in the false teaching at Colossae. But I must confess that for me Lightfoot’s main positions are unmoved. The tone and direction of the Colossian Epistle itself seem conclusive proof that the Epistle was directed against a really different type of error from that which attacked Galatia. Two or three points stand out above all others in this regard. One is the reference in Colossians to angelic powers. Another is the reference to ’neglect of the body.’ Another, and that a supreme point, is the great passage in chapter in which the unique glory of the Son of God is set forth; His eternal pre-existence, while yet He is the Son; His relation to His believing Church, not as Prophet only, nor even only as Mediator, but as Head, in all the significance of that word; and Head not of His Church only but of the created Universe in all its ranks and orders, seen and unseen. The Galatians were attacked by an error which, distorted and undervalued Christ’s finished work and perfect gifts. The Colossians must have been attacked by an error which, consciously or not, assailed His Person. It was undoubtedly more or less Judaic, but it also carried in it at least the seeds of what afterwards came out in history as Gnosticism. We seem to gather, as we ponder Colossians 1:1-29; Colossians 2:1-23, that those Asian disciples were invited to become, up to a certain point, strict ascetics, with at least some of the Judaic rules to guide them (Ephesians 2:16; Ephesians 2:20-22), and apparently (Ephesians 2:11) with circumcision for their initiation. But then they were also asked to become mystics, to receive an esoteric doctrine, to think of the unseen world in its hidden depths, to listen to teaching about intermediary existences between them and the Supreme, to lose sight of the eternal and historical Lord Jesus Christ behind, or at best in the midst of, a pantheon of ’principalities and powers’ filling the gulph between them and the Supreme. This, if the facts were so, was the later Gnosis, in its essentials. To meet this class of error directly the Colossian Epistle was written. The motto of its great dogmatic message is the personal glory of Christ the Son of God, Head of the Church, Head of the Universe, Son of the Father’s love. Never, of course, here or elsewhere, does St Paul forget Christ’s work, His finished work. ’He made peace by the blood of His Cross’ (Ephesians 1:20). ’He nailed to His Cross the handwriting of ordinances that was against us’ (Ephesians 2:14). But the glorious speciality of the message, its immediate burthen, is the unutterable greatness of the Person whose work that is, and from whom the work gets its virtue. The work appears now not so much as the magnificently legal satisfaction of the broken law (which it is, for ever,) as the divinely natural outcome of the interposition of--such a Person. And the Christian as an individual, and the body of the Christian Church, are now more prominently regarded as vitally related to this Person’s life-giving Headship than as sheltered (as they are, for ever,) under the righteousness of His merits. I would repeat once more what I said above, so great is the importance of the remembrance, that never does the Apostle forget, for Colossae, the eternal foundation--truths which he has explained to Galatia, and to Rome. A true and adequate theology of justification, though the word and its cognates are never used in either writing, might be constructed from Colossians, and abundantly from Ephesians. No step, however brief, is ever taken by the Apostles away from the precincts of the Cross; no substitute is ever suggested by them for the profound simplicity of faith in the Lord who died for our sins, the Just for the unjust, the ἀντίλυτρον, the substituted Ransom, in our stead. But then, while resting there, they discourse also, as occasion calls, upon the vast truths which in their full glory can only be seen from thence, and which they lead us thither to see; the Sonship and the eternity of the Lord; His vital as well as His legal relation to His people; His wonderful headship; His ’preeminence.’ Long years ago, I heard the late Dean Howson describe his recollection of one of the last sermons preached by the Rev. Charles Simeon in Trinity Church in Cambridge. His text was Colossians 1:18 :

’That in all things He might have the preeminence.’ The old man--he was already seventy-six--seemed, as he discoursed to a great multitude on the beloved theme of his Lord and Redeemer, to rise and as it were dilate into youthful stature. With all the fire that burned in him to the end he burst into an exposition quite unconventional: ’That He might have the preeminence! And He will have it! and He must have it! and He shall!’

Such, but along with the calm majesty of apostolic revelation, is the tone of the Colossian Epistle. The ascetic theosophists were to be met by the preeminence of Christ. Christ’s unapproachable glory and preciousness, for the universe, the Church, the soul; for pardon, for holiness, for heaven; this was to be the overwhelming answer.