Ephesians 6

Chapter 6. Brought NearBut now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:13)Famous painters often heighten the effect of some beautiful landscape or portrait by putting in the foreground some hideous contrasted object. Over against a face of loveliness you may notice in the corner of the foreground a hideous reptile. The artist’s design is to emphasize the picture of loveliness by the repulsive contrast from which the mind instinctively turns to gaze with fonder complacency on the attractive contrast. So God in the present passage heightens the picture of our glorious place with Christ in the heavenlies by contrasting it with our former state of alienation and separation from His presence and favor. It was with some such thought as this that the ancient Hebrews mingled with their Paschal feast to celebrate their deliverance from Egypt the bitter herbs which reminded them of the years of bondage from which they had escaped. It is well for us to remember the rock from whence we were hewn and the pit from whence we were dug. A wholesome humility will intensify our thankfulness and help us to prize the blessings which have saved us from so dark and sad a fate. There are two sides to the picture: “far away” and “brought near.” “Faraway” There are four touches of strong color in this dark picture—Christless, godless, homeless and hopeless.

1. Christless “At that time you were separate from Christ” (Ephesians 2:12). To be without Christ is to be ignorant of God’s plan of salvation through the Mediator. You may know Him as the deist knows Him; you may know Him as the Creator, the Sovereign of the universe, as the ultimate fountain of all power and wisdom; but without Christ this God is nothing to you. The gospel is emphatically a revelation of Christ. God was in Christ, and until you receive Christ as God’s Messenger and Channel of all blessing, you have not met the God of redemption—you are without Christ. The very first step in the Christian life is to come to Christ, to receive Christ, to become united to Christ, and to find Christ the Channel, Condition and Source of every blessing and all intercourse with God. The question for every man is the Christ question. It is not: Have you informed your mind? Have you reformed your morals? Are you engaged in benevolent works? But, Have you received Christ? Do you know God in Christ? The saddest fact about the heathen world is that they are without Christ. The turning point of every life is its direct relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ. Some years ago I knew a man of culture and most attractive qualities, in whose salvation I became intensely interested, and for which I labored many years. This man was an inebriate and a Unitarian. Many and many a time have I labored with him, not to induce him to give up drinking, but to induce him to accept Christ as His Savior, for I knew that the other would soon follow this last act. But he politely, persistently, and at last defiantly refused to have anything to do with Jesus Christ. “I can be a gentleman, and I will be a moral man and master my appetite, but I will have nothing to do with your Christ.” From that hour my hopes died, and I saw him steadily go down in spite of every loving restraint that was thrown around him. My prayers seemed to strike an unbreakable wall, a voice whispered, “There is no hope, for ’there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12),” and at last one day tidings came that he had died suddenly in a saloon. Beloved, God has decreed that you can have nothing without Christ, and that apart from Him, Satan has the right to control you and will inevitably destroy you.
2. Godless To be without Christ is to be without God. No man comes to the Father but by Him (John 14:6). “Go to Joseph” (Genesis 41:55), was Pharaoh’s decree as the famine stricken land turned to the throne for help. “Go to Joseph. All help must come through him.” “Go to Jesus,” is the Father’s message to sinful men. There is mercy, there is grace to help in every time of need. There is all-sufficient power, but it is all centered in the Lord Jesus Christ. Apart from Him we cannot understand or know God; we cannot approach God, and we could not stand one flash of the light of His holiness. It would consume us to ashes. But “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:19), and “now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near” (Ephesians 2:13). Christless one, you have no God. There is no almighty love to shield you. Everything in the universe, everything in God is bound to be against you because you are not only separated from Him, but contrary to Him. You are “without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12).
3. Homeless “Excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise” (Ephesians 2:12). You have no right to the promises of this Book. You have no fellowship with a single immunity, right or privilege of the children of God. There are gracious words here, but they are not for you. “In all things God works for the good” (Romans 8:28), is true, but it is for “those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). You may kneel down and say, “Our Father in heaven,… forgive us our debts” (Matthew 6:9-12); but He is not your Father, and without Christ that forgiveness is not for you.
4. Hopeless The future is all dark. A thousand dangers beset your path on earth. Danger and death lurk on every side. The gloomy grave lies before you. The dark mystery of eternity frowns with inconceivable dread. The depths of despair yawn before you. There is no hand that can hold you back. You are without Christ and without God in the world. Like the lonely orphan that lays its head down at night on the pavement and cries itself to sleep—homeless, hungry, fatherless and friendless—so you some night shall lay your head down upon the cold pavement of the tomb, and sink into the terrible sleep of a sorrow that will have no glad awakening, and a night that will have no bright dawning, Christless, godless, homeless, hopeless, “far away.” How sad! How dark the picture of what we were and how pitiful to think of the multitudes that are there! “Brought Near”
5. By the Blood of Christ An atonement was necessary. A settlement was demanded. A wrong had to be righted. A debt had to be satisfied. A penalty had to be paid. Somebody must take the place of the guilty; somebody that had a right to represent them; somebody that had worth and weight sufficient to meet their every obligation. This Jesus Christ has done. This is the meaning of His blood. His life was offered as a ransom for the forfeited lives of sinful men, and now, through His atonement, God and the sinner can meet with perfect understanding on both sides, for every claim has been settled, every difficulty adjusted, every obligation met; and the soul that has put its trust in that precious blood has a right to stand, not in a place of toleration but of vindication and say, “Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” (Romans 8:34).
6. By the Person of Christ “For he himself is our peace, who has… destroyed the barrier… to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace” (Ephesians 2:14-15). This applies not only to the settlement of the long-standing alienation between Jew and Gentile, but to the settlement of the breach between man and God. Not only has Christ made a settlement for us on God’s side, meeting all claims of His law, but He comes to the sinner and meets his need by reconciling him to God and taking away the old natural heart of enmity and alienation, and giving him the Spirit of Christ as a Spirit of trust and love. He lifts us into the new creation. He puts His own nature within us, and He puts us into the very relation with the Father that He Himself sustains. Thus He becomes in our heart the Spirit of peace as well as the Mediator who brings us to God. Like the dying mother who called her husband and boy to meet by her bedside after long years of alienation, and joining their hands in the clasp of her own, bade them to be reconciled for her sake, so Jesus Christ stretching out one hand to God pleads, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34), and extending the other to sinful men, He cries, “Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).
7. By the Gospel There is the word of peace which forms the basis of reconciliation. So we read, “He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near” (Ephesians 2:17). This is the gospel of reconciliation which God proclaims to every sinful man. It is not enough that there should be peace between God and man definitely arranged, waiting for acceptance, but it is necessary that we should know it and accept it. So we read, “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors” (2 Corinthians 5:20), and “God… reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18); wherefore “we implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20). In the last war between America and England, peace was made in Great Britain between the ambassadors of the powers several weeks before it was known on this side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile the conflict went on, and one of the greatest battles of the war was fought and won several days after peace was made. But they did not know it, and therefore it was null and void. Many a soul is separated from God simply through ignorance of the divine message of mercy, and therefore God bids us to announce to every soul separated from His love that peace is made. You do not have to make your peace with God. Christ has made it. He offers it to you, and He comes to undertake your part of the agreement as well as to guarantee God’s promise to be your peace. If you will this moment accept His terms and be reconciled to God, you may enter into the eternal friendship of the Lord of heaven and earth, and rise to all that is meant by being “brought near through the blood of Christ.”
8. To the Father This includes much more than mere reconciliation. It brings us into the most intimate relations with God. The first of these is the relation of sonship; for He says, “You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household” (Ephesians 2:19). We come into His household. We become members of His family. We are treated as His sons and daughters. We call Him Father. We stand nearer to Him than the highest angels in glory. We are “heirs of God and coheirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17). We are firstborn sons in the firstborn One. We are born into His very nature and received into the bosom of His love. “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!… now we are children of God” (1 John 3:1-2).
9. By the Spirit Not only are we brought into the relation of children, but we enjoy the fellowship of children, “For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit” (Ephesians 2:18). We draw near to Him in the fellowship of prayer. We commune with Him about what is within our hearts. We roll over on Him all our cares, fears, griefs, and sins. We “approach the throne of grace with confidence” (Hebrews 4:16), and may ask largely not only the greatest but the least thing that our life can need. We are invited to abide continually in His presence, to dwell in His communion, and to know the fellowship more perfect, unclouded, and eternal than it is possible to know with the fondest human friend.
10. To the Family Not only are we “brought near” to the Father, but we are introduced to the fellowship of the family. We become related to an illustrious circle of the glorious company of apostles and prophets. The glorious company of the apostles, the noble army of the martyrs, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the saints of all ages—these are our brethren, our associates in the high and glorious employ in the ages and principalities yet to come.
11. To the Kingdom We are introduced to lofty and noble citizenship, for we are “fellow citizens with God’s people” (Ephesians 2:19). We come into another kingdom. We become subjects of the divine commonwealth, and while we still retain our human relationships, and our aspirations of earthly patriotism, yet we have “a better country—a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16); and we are waiting for the “kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Hebrews 12:28), and a King who will be worthy of our highest loyalty and our eternal devotion. We are being trained to be the rulers of that kingdom. Some day that kingdom is to embrace not only all the things of this world, but all the realms of the heavenly world, and its vast colonies will extend from star to star, and we shall be rulers over many cities and principalities.
12. To Be the Habitation of God But there is still a higher honor and place involved in His bringing us “near.” It is brought out in the last verses of the chapter. It is a great thing that we should be brought into His family and that we should find our home in God; but it is a much greater thing that God should find His home in us, and that He, whom the heavens cannot contain, should condescend to seek and find His dwelling in these houses of clay, in these hearts of human sympathy and love. But so it is, for we read, “In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling [habitation] in which God lives by his Spirit” (Ephesians 2:21-22). The heart of God looks out in vain to the mighty worlds that roll in space for a response to His affection. Vainly He turns for fellowship to the glowing seraphs that sing and shine around His throne. They can worship and adore; they can fly and obey Him, but they cannot meet the longing of His heart of love. Have you not seen some human heart, surrounded with splendor, wealth and troops of admiring friends, turn wearily away from all the magnificence of a palace, longing only for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still? All these things cannot satisfy love nor fill the void of a human soul. So we can think of God alone amid the majesty of the universe, reaching out for love and forming the heart of man to meet His own, and to give him that understanding, fellowship, sympathy and devotion which are worth more than shining constellations or treasures untold. God wants our love and wants to find in our hearts a home. This is the mysterious promise of Christ: “If anyone loves me… My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23). So He stands knocking at the door of His lukewarm Church, and crying, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will go in and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). Two phrases are used here to denote two aspects of His indwelling. The one is the word “temple” and the other “habitation.” The temple is the place of worship. A habitation is a place for residence. God wants to find both in the human heart. He comes as our Lord and King to claim our submission, our homage, the adoration of all our being. But He comes also, as of old when He came to Bethany, to dwell at home with us, to find rest for His heart in our communion, to rest in His love, to joy over us with singing (Zephaniah 3:17), to enter into all the minutiae of our lives, to take care of the household, to look after the body and keep it in repair, to meet the little trials of every day and every moment, to rejoice with us when we rejoice, to weep with us when we weep, to be our Brother, our Bridegroom, our Friend, our Mother God, the God of our life and the Guest of our heart. This is what it means to be “brought near” by the blood of Christ. In conclusion, there are two lessons:
13. Come home, prodigal child, come home to God.
14. Draw near and dwell in the shelter of the Most High (Psalms 91:1), and give Him a dwelling place in every chamber of your heart. Will we not meet His love and say: “He is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation” (Exodus 15:2)?