CHAPTER 1
It has been remarked that the definite article is frequently used to introduce a contrast25. It might be of interest to note that it is employed more than twenty times in this epistle as applied to Christ, and three times in the first chapter. Does “the Christ” thus used bring before us what He is in connection with the church—the heavenly company—as His name, Christ, connects Him with the earthly?
This word Christ (Messiah) had its primary application to Israel (although Christians know Him by the same name, only it is as the “exalted” Christ, Acts 2: 33. It is the translation of His name “the Messiah”, only found as a proper name in Dan 9: 25, 26, and there distinctly connected with Israel; although it is found in many other places as “the anointed” in the Old Testament. To Israel He will always be Christ, “the Messiah” of Daniel, and they His earthly people.
But when we come to this epistle, it is not of Him connected with an earthly company that we read. The middle wall of partition is broken down (chap 2: 14) and He is found here in connection with a heavenly people; “the Christ”, with members on earth, whose place is where the Head of the body is. They are in heavenly places “in him”.
Faith thus connects “the faithful” (v 1) with Him there in a living union, as “members of his body; of his flesh, and of his bones”, Eph 5: 30.
In John 1: 39 we read the remarkable and all important invitation to men, “Come and see”. If this was the invitation of those who had found their own delight in 25 There are over twenty references to “the Christ” in the New Translation of the epistle to the Ephesians, all of which were rendered “Christ” in KJV. The author’s quotations were originally a mix of NT and KJV. Given that his subject is a term which KJV does not use in this epistle, all the quotations in this group of articles have been changed to be NT throughout. AB
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Him then, much more is it the delight of the Spirit now to draw attention to Him. He was then on earth, He is now in the glory of God. It is only in proportion as a Christian sees Christ where He is, and knows his own union with Him there, that he is drawn out of what is earthly. Christ, where He is now, is the wondrous Object for the heart which the Spirit sets before us in this first chapter. The heart is thus drawn after Him who from all eternity was God’s Object, and the Object of God’s heart in this way becomes my Object. I think that only then my walk and ways must and will be formed in accordance with God’s thought for me.
Redemption work having been accomplished, I see here that God takes Christ out of death. He came into the world in grace, and went down under all the ruin and the misery, and accepted as His own what was due to me. The whole question now is, What has God done with that blessed Christ? Why, God having been glorified in His death comes in, in all His mighty power. He raised Him “from the dead, and he set him at his own right hand in the heavenlies”, v 20. That is where He is now, and that is where He is presented to me in this chapter. He is not in the earthly places now. He will be there by-and-by with His earthly people. He is not under all the ruin and misery of sin now.
He is in the “heavenly places”, having taken into living association with Himself there a heavenly people. Not that there was before anything heavenly about them. He has made them heavenly; they must be that in union with Him.
But remark another thing which proves it. This chapter insists that He is set there as Head of a body. He is not set there merely as the rejected Messiah of Israel, although He is that. He is there as “head over all things to the assembly, which is his body”, v 22. This is how we Gentiles come in. It is said that the mighty power of God “wrought [not ‘in Christ’, but] in the Christ, in raising him from the dead”, v 20. It is the new Man, completed by the church. “The fulness [or completion] of him that filleth all in all”, v 23.
Redemption is referred to in this chapter (vv 7-14), for it is the acting of God in power. God has brought us out, 275
and He has in Christ brought us in, chap 2: 6. The redemption of Israel out of Egypt, and the setting them down in Canaan, was a type of what God has done for us.
It was from one place to another. But if I have seen Christ in the one place, and He is not there now, I must see Him now in the other. This is how I have found my place since I have found His. My place as one of the redeemed is where the Redeemer is. All my blessings too are there. We are blessed “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ”.
In the heavenly places Christ is now, and we in Him.
He is there after all the power of darkness had done its worst against Him, for we have His death here. He “raised him from the dead”. And the place in which He is, is above all that power, and above every other: “above EVERY
principality and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come”, v 21. Here all is calm, all is rest, all is peace; God’s action towards His beloved Son is before us, and we are “in him” (v 11) in whom God has purposed to
“head up all things”, v 10. He is there and we in Him.
But when we come to the close of the epistle, there is another way of looking at the “heavenly places”, namely as the sphere of conflict. This is also a necessary way of looking at them, because my body is still on earth, and I have to meet Satan, who is resisting my practical entering while on earth into all the peace and rest in which Christ is personally. If I were there as to my body, I should be above all these efforts of Satan, and with Him, “with the Lord”, and there is no conflict there, because He has been set up above all power, so that He says, “All power is given unto me, both in heaven and in earth”, Matt 28: 18. “I have the keys of hades and of death”, Rev 1: 18.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 23, 1889
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