Continuing Chapter 4 and referring to Ephesians vi. 6:
Such blessed lives – were they not blessed indeed then, as they are eternally blessed now in the life of glory? – St. Paul contemplates, takes for granted, and writes for, in this passage. He knows that the experience is not visionary, for he knows these slaves as Christians indeed. That is to say, he knows them as redeemed, regenerated, sanctified. He knows them as Christ’s purchased ones, ransomed with the blood of the Lamb, and united by the Holy Spirit to the plenitude of their Redeemer’s life and power. They were human, mortal, sinful. Of themselves they could do nothing. But they were in union with Christ by grace, and by grace they could receive out of Him “all sufficiency” for all actual demands, for all the will of God expressed in circumstances. Each one of them was “joined into the Lord, one Spirit.” Therefore, “in Him that strengtheneth, they could do all things – all things of the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning them.” His commandments were for them no longer “grievous,” not because of their strength of resolution and long-practised fortitude, but because their will was most meekly yielded up to their beloved Possessor and Life. Were they not blessed? Was not their life one of far more than imperial liberty, wealth and peace?
I have written on, and on, about this case of the slave of old. But it has been because for myself I feel that every realized detail of that case bears with wonderful directness, a fortiori, upon that of each Christian in real life now. It is difficult to imagine the lot and path in which we may not feel that argument to us from them, those dear elder brethren at Ephesus, is strong and tender indeed.
Believer in the same Lord who enabled them to do His will from the heart, can He not enable you, here and now, to do that will from your heart in your surroundings? Are you sorely tried by those surroundings? Are they in themselves humiliating to you, or exasperating to you? Are they full of acute heart-pangs, or heavy with chronic heart-ache? Is your sphere of work and influence seemingly very narrow? Is the exterior of your daily duties very secular, very earthy? Not one of these things is forgotten before your Lord. Your slightest pain finds response in His sympathy. But let that thought be but the stepping stone to this, that for you as for the slave-saint of Ephesus there lies open in that same Lord the blessed secret of a life which shall move amidst these same unwelcome surroundings as a life free, and at leisure, and at peace, full of love and rest, blessed and blessing; a life hid with Christ in God; a life in which everything, from your rising up to your lying down, private trial and anxiety, wrong or peril in Church or State, the smallest cross and the largest, is seen in the light of the holy, the beloved, will of God, and so is met not with a sigh, or a murmur, but “from the soul.” “The will of God, done from the soul,” shall be to you – yes, indeed, it shall be – a whisper of life unto life. You have “yielded yourself to Him, as one that is alive from the dead”; what are these things, while they last, but opportunities, dear opportunities for His sake and in His peace, of expressing that Holy fait accompli?
I have written on, and on, about this case of the slave of old. But it has been because for myself I feel that every realized detail of that case bears with wonderful directness, a fortiori, upon that of each Christian in real life now. It is difficult to imagine the lot and path in which we may not feel that argument to us from them, those dear elder brethren at Ephesus, is strong and tender indeed.
Believer in the same Lord who enabled them to do His will from the heart, can He not enable you, here and now, to do that will from your heart in your surroundings? Are you sorely tried by those surroundings? Are they in themselves humiliating to you, or exasperating to you? Are they full of acute heart-pangs, or heavy with chronic heart-ache? Is your sphere of work and influence seemingly very narrow? Is the exterior of your daily duties very secular, very earthy? Not one of these things is forgotten before your Lord. Your slightest pain finds response in His sympathy. But let that thought be but the stepping stone to this, that for you as for the slave-saint of Ephesus there lies open in that same Lord the blessed secret of a life which shall move amidst these same unwelcome surroundings as a life free, and at leisure, and at peace, full of love and rest, blessed and blessing; a life hid with Christ in God; a life in which everything, from your rising up to your lying down, private trial and anxiety, wrong or peril in Church or State, the smallest cross and the largest, is seen in the light of the holy, the beloved, will of God, and so is met not with a sigh, or a murmur, but “from the soul.” “The will of God, done from the soul,” shall be to you – yes, indeed, it shall be – a whisper of life unto life. You have “yielded yourself to Him, as one that is alive from the dead”; what are these things, while they last, but opportunities, dear opportunities for His sake and in His peace, of expressing that Holy fait accompli?
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