Eph 1,2 Grace, glory

I digress for a moment to point out that when we read our Bibles nothing is more important than that we should look at every word and question it as to its meaning. How easy it is to do a certain amount of Bible reading every day, followed perhaps by a brief prayer! If your main concern is simply to read a certain amount each day you may well skip over words such as these, these profundities of our faith. Here at the very beginning, in this preliminary salutation, the Apostle plunges at once into the very depths of the profoundest truth and doctrine that is to be found anywhere in the Scriptures. Or, to state it in a different way, this verse is a kind of overture to the entire Epistle. It is the characteristic of great pieces of music, certain types of music in particular, to have an overture. The musician starts by composing the main body of the work, which may have various movements or acts, each having its theme. Then, having finished the work, he goes back to the beginning and writes an overture in which he collects together the main motifs or themes that have emerged in the body of the work. He does so by throwing out a suggestion, perhaps in a few bars, to whet your appetite and in order that you may have some idea of what he is going to develop in the main body of the work. This second verse, I suggest, is the overture to this entire Epistle; its major themes are all hinted at here. We shall go into them in greater detail later, but let us note them at the very beginning - ‘grace’ and ‘peace’. ‘Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.’ No two words are more important in the whole of our faith than ‘grace’ and ‘peace’. Yet how lightly we tend to drop them off our tongues without stopping to consider what they mean. Grace is the beginning of our faith; peace is the end of our faith. Grace is the fountain, the spring, the source. It is that particular place in the mountain from which the mighty river you see rolling into the sea starts its race; without it there would be nothing. Grace is the origin and source and fount of everything in the Christian fife. But what does the Christian life mean, what is it meant to produce? The answer is ‘peace’. So, there we have the source and there the estuary leading to the sea, the beginning and the end, the initiation, and the purpose for which it is all meant and designed. It is essential for us, therefore, to carry these two words in our minds because within the ellipse formed by grace and peace everything is included. What is grace? It is a term notoriously difficult to define. Grace essentially means ‘unmerited favor’, favor you do not deserve, favor you receive but to which you have no right or title in any shape or form, and of which you are entirely unworthy and undeserving. We may call it condescending love - love coming down or stopping down. Or we may call it beneficent kindness. All these terms are descriptive of what is meant by this extraordinary term which is constantly put before us in the New Testament, by this amazing and wonderful word ‘grace’. It is not surprising that Philip Doddridge lived to contemplate it as he tells us in the words — Grace! ’it’s a charming sound, Harmonious to the ear: . . . It is one of the most beautiful words in every language. With regard to ‘peace’, the danger always present with this word is to give it a connotation, or attach a meaning to it, which falls short of its complete meaning. ‘Peace’ does not merely mean cessation of war, rest and quiet. Certainly, it means rest and quiet but it means much more. The ever-present danger with regard to ‘peace’ is to think of it as merely an absence of such things as boisterousness or discord or fighting. It may well be that because the nations of the world think of peace in those terms we have never had a true peace. The peace dealt with in history books is merely a cessation of war; but ‘peace’ in the Bible does not merely mean that you stop fighting; it goes far beyond that. It is interesting to find that the actual root meaning of the Greek word that is translated ‘peace’, is ‘union’, ‘union after separation’, a bringing together, a reconciliation after a contest and quarrel. The word finds a place in the expression ‘a peace offering’, as presented by a man making a proposal for peace. He is proposing a union, a bringing together, a reconciliation. In other words, two persons who have quarreled and have been fighting put down their weapons, and look at one another and shake hands. They are joined, there is a reconciliation; where there was contest and separation they have been brought together. This idea is brought out in the second chapter of our Epistle, where we read, ‘He hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us’ (v. 14). Two parties have been brought together, the middle wall of partition has gone, and by one Spirit they come together to the one Lord. That is the meaning of ‘peace’. ‘Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ’. There we have grace at the beginning and peace at the end; but we have not finished. The moment you confront such a statement you are driven to ask a question. Why does the Apostle wish this for these Ephesians? The answer to that question, as I have already been saying, is the whole of Christian doctrine. We must learn how to read the Scriptures; and there is no one thing that is more important when we do so than just this, to ask questions of it. Why do we need grace and peace? Why does the Apostle wish us to know them? Why does he use these terms rather than some other terms? The answer leads us immediately into fundamental Christian truths. By desiring grace and peace for us he is telling us the truth about ourselves, he is telling us what we need. We need the grace which will lead to peace because man is what he is as the result of the Fall and of sin. What that means in detail is expounded fully by the Apostle in his second chapter. Man in sin is at enmity with God. Man by nature, as he is born into this world, is a hater of God. He is not only separated from God, but he fights God, he is an enemy and alienated in his mind from God; everything in him by nature is utterly opposed to God. Such is the truth about man, and the result is that man in this condition is fighting God, striving against Him, hating Him. Man in his natural state is ready to believe any claim in a newspaper that someone has proved that there is no God. Man jumps at such statements and delights in them because he is a God-hater. He is in a state of enmity against God. Furthermore, because man is in this relationship to God, he is also in a state of enmity against himself. He is not only engaged in this warfare against a God who is outside of him; but he is also fighting a war within himself. Therein lies the real tragedy of fallen man; he does not believe what I am saying but it is certainly true of him. Man is in a state of internal conflict, and he does not know why it is so. He wants to do certain things, but something inside him tells him that it is wrong to do so. He has something in him which we call conscience. Though he thinks he can be perfectly happy whatever he does, and though he may silence other people, he cannot silence this inward monitor. Man is in a state of internal warfare; he does not know the reason for it, yet he knows that it is so. But in the Scriptures, we are told exactly why this is the case. Man was made by God in such a way that he can only be at peace within himself when he is at peace with God. Man was never meant to be a god, but he is forever trying to deify himself. He sets up his own desires as the rules and laws of his life, yet he is ever characterized by confusion, and worse. Something in himself denies his claims; and so, he is always quarrelling and fighting with himself. He knows nothing of real peace; he has no peace with God, he has no peace within himself. And still worse, because of all this, he is in a state of warfare with everyone else. Unfortunately for him everyone else wants to be a god as well. Because of sin we have all become self-centered, ego-centric, turning in upon this self which we put on a pedestal, and which we think is so wonderful and superior to all others. But everyone else is doing the same, and so there is war among the gods. We claim that we are right, and that everyone else is wrong. Inevitably the result is confusion and discord and unhappiness between man and man. Thus, we begin to see why the Apostle prays that we may have peace. It is because of man’s sad condition, man’s life as the result of sin, and as the result of his falling away from God. He is in a state of dis-unity within and without, in a state of unhappiness, in a state of wretchedness. But it does not even stop at that; man has brought all this upon himself by his disobedience to God. He cannot get away from this. He has tried to put forward every other conceivable explanation of his condition, but none is adequate. He has tried the theory of Evolution and on the basis of that outlook and teaching man should by now have been emancipated and there should be peace; but peace has not come. So, man tries to explain his lot in other ways; but he cannot do so. Man has brought all this evil upon himself because of his desire to be a god. This is proved by the fact that he dislikes correction, and indeed the whole idea of law. He ridicules it and regards law as an insult; he does not recognize the need to be kept right by law, and he resents its interference. But the great message of the Bible is that though man has fallen into sin and has got himself into this wretched state, God has still been concerned about him, and God has both intervened and interfered. He has given laws and directions, but man has invariably rejected them. It is God who has appointed governments and magistrates in order to keep sin within bounds; but man is always fighting against order imposed from without. He dislikes it and thereby shows his terrible hatred of God and his enmity against God. Man has always rejected what God has provided for him, and so there is only one inevitable conclusion to come to with respect to man. Man, richly deserves the fate he has brought upon himself. Indeed, we can go further and say that man deserves something much worse; he deserves to be punished. But man is not only a law breaker who deserves to be punished, he is also a fool. He rejects and will not listen to God’s law, and therefore he deserves punishment, he deserves damnation. There is no excuse for man, he deliberately sinned and fell at the beginning, and he deliberately rejects God’s guidance still. There is no plea that can be offered for such a person. Give him the Bible and he laughs at it. Though we find in the Bible that the men who have conformed to it have found happiness and peace, men reject it; though it is clear that if all people in the world were truly Christian most of the problems would disappear, man still rejects Christianity. Such creatures deserve nothing but punishment and hell. Such is man’s condition as a result of his own fall into sin. But it is just at this point that the marvelous message of the gospel comes in. The whole message of the gospel is introduced by this word ‘grace’. Grace means that in spite of everything I have been saying about man, God still looks upon him with favor. You will not understand the meaning of this word ‘grace’ unless you accept fully what I have been saying about man in sin. It is failure to do the latter that explains why the modern conception of grace is so superficial and inadequate. It is because man has an inadequate conception of sin that he has an inadequate conception of the grace of God. If you want to measure grace you must measure the depths of sin. Grace is that which tells man that in spite of all that is so true of him God looks upon him with favor. It is utterly unmerited; it is entirely undeserved; but this is the message of ‘Grace be unto you’. It is an unmerited and undeserved action by God, a condescending love. When man in sin deserved nothing but to be blotted out of existence God looked on him in grace and mercy and dealt with him accordingly. So, this one word ‘grace’ at the beginning of the Epistle introduces the entire gospel. This is the great theme of the Scripture in all its parts. For instance, Paul write in Romans 5, ‘While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.’ He says that we were not only sinners but enemies; not only had we fallen from God and disobeyed Him, and found ourselves in this wretchedness, but beyond that there is this enmity, this hatred, this antagonism in the spirit. The gospel asserts that, in spite of our enmity towards God, He has given His Son for us and our salvation. What He has done is to make peace. In the second chapter of this Epistle, we read that He has reconciled us unto Himself and has brought us into a state of union with Himself. His looking upon us in grace has resulted in peace, and it is a perfect peace. God’s grace in action undoes completely everything we have described as resulting from sin. First and foremost it gives a man peace with God: ‘Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God’ (Romans 5,1). We have been reconciled to God; the enmity between us and God has gone because of what God has done in His grace. But the result of grace is not only peace with God, it gives a man peace within. It enables a man for the first time in his life to answer an accusing conscience; it enables a man for the first time in his life to have rest in mind and heart. For the first time a man is able truly to live with himself, and to know that all is well. The conflict has ended in this fundamental sense, and he understands for the first time the cause of all his troubles. He sees a way of overcoming all his difficulties and glimpses the final victory that is awaiting him in Christ.  That, in turn, leads him to a state of peace with other people. We shall deal with this in detail later, but here it is in a nutshell at the very beginning. The moment a man becomes a Christian nothing remains the same, and nobody else remains the same to him. The person he formerly hated he now sees as a victim of sin and of Satan, and he begins to feel sorry for him. Knowing the grace of God and experiencing this new peace which has been given to him, his former enemy has become someone for whom he prays. He begins to carry out his Lord’s injunction to ‘love your enemies and pray for those who despiteful lie uses you’. The enmity is abolished by the new view. He now desires to be reconciled, and to be at peace. But to this peace with God, peace within, and peace with others, the Scripture goes on to tell us that something further is added which is called ‘the peace of God’. This means that whatever may be happening round and about you, you have within you ‘the peace of God which passed all understanding’ and it ‘keeps your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 4,…). God has not only given you peace, but He has also provided for the preservation of peace. You are garrisoned by a power and a Person which will keep you at peace. Many things may happen to you, you will be the victim of temptation to sin, and you may not know what to do, but this peace of God which passed all understanding will garrison your hearts and minds. Those are some of the elements in the peace to which the grace of God leads, but what I am anxious to emphasize above everything else is that all this comes to us as the result of the grace of God. ‘Grace be to you, and peace from God.’ We deserve nothing, we do not even desire it, we cannot achieve it; but God gives it. It is all by grace, it is entirely a free gift of God. But we must ask a second question: How does all this happen to us? on what basis can all this happen to us? The answer is given immediately in the two words ‘our Father’. ‘Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father’. Grace at once changes our whole attitude towards God because it has changed our whole conception of God. To the Christian God is ‘our Father’. To the Christian God is not just some philosophical X in the distance, whom he talks and argues about cleverly in his philosophical books; God is not some great force, some mighty power away in some distant heaven; He is the Father, my Father, our Father. The whole relationship between man and God has been entirely renewed and changed. God is no longer some terrible far-distant lawgiver waiting to punish us; He is still the lawgiver, but He is also ‘my Father’. But we must be careful with there are pitfalls all around us. In what sense is God my Father? ‘God’, says someone, ‘is the Father of all men’. It is true that there is a sense in which God is the Father of all men. Paul in preaching to the Athenians says God is our Father in this sense, that we are all ‘his offspring’ (Acts 17:28). That refers to God in His relationship to us as Creator. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews writes similarly when he describes God as ‘the Father of spirits’ (Hebrews 12:9). God is the Father of all spirits as He is their Maker and Creator, and in that sense, He is the progenitor of the spirits of all men. But when the Apostle says ‘our Father’ here, he is not speaking in that sense. God is not Father in the general sense only, but ‘our Father’. Every man, having sinned, has fallen from that initial relationship, and therefore our Lord was able to say to certain Jews, ‘Ye are of your father the devil’ (John 8:44). Clearly, they were not the children of God. So, the Apostle, here, is not simply describing God in general terms of Fatherhood, in terms of creation. There is a new element and that is introduced in the next word, ‘Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.’ This is the differentia of Christianity; this is the element that changes everything. It is the Lord Jesus Christ. Lest there be any uncertainty or confusion let us note what Paul says in this very salutation: ‘Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.’ The grace and peace come equally from the Lord Jesus Christ and the Father. This is vital doctrine. There is no such thing as Christianity apart from the Lord Jesus Christ; there is no blessing from God to man in a Christian sense except in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. Anything which claims to be Christianity without having Christ at the beginning and the center and the end is a denial of Christianity, call it what you will. There is no Christianity apart from Him; He is everything. Who is this Person whom the Apostle links with God the Father? Look at the terms employed. He is the Lord, that is to say, Jehovah. The word here translated by ‘Lord’ was the word used by the Jews in the old dispensation for ‘God’. It was the greatest name of all, the Name that was so sacred that they did not even dare to use it. ‘Jehovah’ is the Name of God, the Covenant God. The Name Jehovah is used of God the Father; and it is also the Christian’s claim for Jesus Christ. He is the One who is described in the Gospels as Jesus of Nazareth, but Paul does not hesitate to say that He is God. He puts Him by the side of God, He is coequal with God, He is co-eternal. He can be put there without any irreverence, He can be put there without blasphemy. He can be put there by the side of our true and living God, the Father. He is the Eternal Son of God, one with God from eternity. But He is also Jesus. That means that He is also truly a man. A babe was born in Bethlehem and the Name given to Him was ‘Jesus’. He was later a boy in the temple - Jesus of Nazareth. He was a carpenter, the Son of Joseph and Mary, and we read of His brothers. He is the Man who started preaching at the age of thirty, Jesus, the miracle-worker. But in the next verse we are told still more about Him, ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’. He is the Lord, He is Jehovah, He is God, but God is also His God, and God is His Father. This is a great mystery. He Himself said just before the end of His earthly life, T ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God’ (John 20:17). He had already said, ‘The Father is greater than I’; yet He Himself is the Lord Jehovah. He is also ‘the firstborn among many brethren’. He is Jehovah, but He is also Jesus - the God man. The amazing doctrine of the Incarnation is here in the second verse. Christ is the second Person in the blessed Holy Trinity who has come down in condescending love to reconcile us to God. He is the Lord Jehovah become ‘Jesus’, taking upon Himself our nature, taking upon Himself our problems, and even our frailties, and eventually our sins. He went to the darkest depths, even to the extent of feeling deserted by God while He bore our punishment. That is ‘grace’, the condescending love of God. ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.’ The next word is ‘Christ’ - the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Savior, the Anointed One, the Messiah, the One who is sent to redeem mankind. He has come down from the glory into this world, but He went even lower than that. He was not ashamed to put on ‘the likeness of sinful flesh’. He bore our punishment on the Cross, His blood was shed for us, and we are reconciled to God and have ‘peace with God’. But yet more wonderful, having taken our nature upon Himself He then gives us His nature. For Christ does not merely give us forgiveness, He gives us a new birth, and we become ‘children of God’. ‘The Son of God became the Son of Man, that the sons of men might become the sons of God’, as John Calvin once said. It means that not only have we this peace with God and with others, but we enjoy the favor of God, because we are the children of God in Christ. God who is His God and His Father has become our God and our Father. So, the Apostle could say, including us, who are Christians, with himself, ‘Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ’. The highest honor of all, the greatest gift of God’s grace to us is that we become ‘children of God’ and that as such we shall spend our eternity in the presence of our Father. ‘Grace’, all undeserved, leads to peace, sonship, and ultimately to eternal glory.