PAUL'S DOXOLOGIES
PAUL’S DOXOLOGIES
I believe that Paul’s doxologies and ascriptions of praise are intended to intimate to us the character of service Godward which is carried on in the holy places. They indicate to us the character of assembly worship, and bring us into view of the blessedness of God in a wonderful way. They came from a heart filled with God, who said of old, “None shall appear before me empty”; it is what the heart contains that gives pleasure to God.
In Romans 1 Paul speaks of the Creator, and this thought of God leads him to say, as it were aside from his subject, “Who is blessed for ever. Amen”. The vast realm of creation manifests the eternal power and divinity of God. Certain things come within man’s capacity of apprehension; there is enough in creation to make man honour and serve God as One infinitely great, and who gives witness to Himself as doing good, and giving from heaven rain and fruitful seasons, filling men’s hearts with food and gladness. There is evidence in creation that the Creator is blessed for ever, There is the beneficent design in all creation; it is marked by good; it was pronounced good by Him, and though sin has come into it and left its mark, there is a mighty volume of testimony in creation that the Creator should be regarded as blessed. All is good that is from His hand, and all exists and was created for His pleasure.
We have only one example of assembly prayer, I believe, in Scripture, and it addresses God as Creator. We are apt to lose the profound sense of sovereign power in God, but it is most essential to retain it, and especially at times when men seem to be having things their own way. They are simply doing “whatever thy hand and thy counsel had determined before should come to pass”. It is this great Being who gives to His bondmen boldness to speak His word (Acts 4).
Four thousand years passed over this world, filled on man’s side with evil, but filled on God’s part with promises which brought out how good God was. The promises are numbered by thousands, and they all give expression to the good that is in God. But it needed the Christ to give them fulfilment — that blessed One of whom Paul says, “the Christ, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen”, Romans 9:5. The Christ is God’s Anointed to do all that was necessary to bring [p. 115] in His pleasure in the very scene where sin had abounded, and to make it the portion of men so that He might have the glory of it from men. Who could do this but One coming of Israel according to flesh in true and holy manhood, but who was in His Person “over all, God blessed for ever”? The knowledge of this enters into, and forms, the worship of the assembly. Jesus is God’s Anointed to bring in His full pleasure. All the power of God was in Him to deal with Satan, sin, death, and every evil that has come into the universe. The more we see the ravages of sin and the terrible results of it coming in, the more we realise how great Christ is, for He has been able to deal with it all. The glad tidings are concerning Him; all that we get in this epistle to the Romans — salvation, redemption, divine righteousness, justification, peace, reconciliation, joy in God, the knowledge of the love of God, sonship, glory — all bring out the greatness of Christ. It is due to Him that He should be worshipped by all. Not only men but angels are to worship Him.
Then in Romans 11:33-36 we get another outburst of worship from the full heart of Paul. He is now in presence of the fact that men have become the subjects of the compassion of God. The Jews having been set aside because of unbelief, gentiles are now being brought into blessing in sovereign mercy, and the chapter shows that in due time the Jews will be brought in again in mercy. God’s dispensational ways are traced from Abraham right on to the millennium, and we see a vast range of divine activities all having their origin in God, and all brought about by Him as their great effecting Cause, and all for Him as their glorious End. In view of all this Paul worships, exclaiming, “To him be glory for ever. Amen”.
Then the last three verses of the epistle contain another utterance of worship, welling up in the soul of the apostle as he considers that his glad tidings and the preaching of Jesus Christ were “according to the revelation of the mystery”. There has been a great thought in the mind of God which in His wisdom He has kept silence about through the ages, but which is now made manifest, and is part of what is made known for the obedience of faith. The wisdom of God is known in the mystery; so in relation to it He is known and worshipped as the only wise God. He is bringing men by the glad tidings into that wondrous secret of His own mind that gentiles should be joint-heirs, a joint body, and joint [p. 116] partakers of His promise in Christ Jesus. God is to be worshipped in this connection, the adoration of His saints going up to Him by Jesus Christ. It is all identified with Him in its presentation so that its acceptability is assured.
The principle seems to be set forth in David that the one who has most understanding of the mind of God is the one who can most fully and suitably praise Him. It seems to me that God has been pleased to bring this principle into the present period, not only in Christ but in that chosen vessel who had by the Spirit the pattern of the house and its service as it is to be known today. Not that it is brought out in a formal way, or as a prescribed service, but in the spontaneous outbursts that break forth from the heart of Paul I think we may get some idea of how Paul would speak to God in the assembly. They are very brief, for it is God’s way in wisdom to bring the greatest things into small compass, but they are sufficient to give us a true impression of what Paul was as a worshipper. We know a good deal of what David was as a praiser and worshipper, and I think we have enough to let us know what Paul was in that character. I think we can well understand that Paul’s ascriptions of praise and doxologies suggest to us something of the true character of assembly worship.
When we come to Ephesians we come to the fulness of things in the whole counsel of God. There is nothing greater to be made known; the most elevated thoughts of God are here. And the expressions of worship rise up to the greatness of what is made known. It is well to notice that in the New Translation Ephesians 1:3-14 is all one sentence. The whole is linked up with verse 3, and is therefore to be read in connection with it as an utterance of worship. If the sentence is considered it will be found that there is no point in it where one could rightly make a break by putting in a full stop. Every statement is linked with “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”. It is, perhaps, the longest sentence in the Bible, and God has been pleased that this glorious accumulation of thoughts which bring out the good pleasure of His will, the mystery of His will, and the counsel of His will should take the form of an utterance of worship. This is the kind of worship which is proper to the assembly, and it is voiced by one who was in the light of all that is in the will of God.
[p. 117] God has blessed us in a heavenly Christ, according to a choice which was made before the world’s foundation. Before He created Adam as an innocent man He had planned to have men before Him in love, holy and blameless, and also marked out for sonship. All this would be the result of Christ becoming Man and going into death; God will have many sons. This is the good pleasure of His will, and it is to the praise of the glory of His grace. He has taken us into favour in the Beloved, and the Beloved is Christ as now glorified in heaven. Everything positively delightful to God and calling forth His love is in that blessed One, and the glory of God’s grace appears in His taking us into favour in Him. And it is all brought about on redemption ground, for it is brought to pass for persons who were once lost to God and who needed His forgiveness. The riches of His grace come out in this.
Now grace has abounded toward us in all wisdom and intelligence. Then all that He proposes to do requires wisdom and intelligence on the part of His sons to apprehend it. All is working up to a great result in what is spoken of as “the fulness of times”. God is going to head up all things in the Christ — in that divine Person who has become Man. This is God’s tomorrow. And the sons are going to have their part in it; they have an assigned inheritance. God will head up all things in the Christ so that His sons may have a blessed portion in it all, and that they may be to the praise of His glory. Gentile believers have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is also the earnest of our inheritance. Until the acquired possession is redeemed by power we have the Holy Spirit as Earnest so that the assembly can be even now to the praise of God’s glory. These words “to the praise” (verse 6), “to the praise” (verse 12), “to the praise” (verse 14), have all a present bearing. The sons, as divinely taught in wisdom and intelligence, have knowledge of all this vast scope of things, and can praise God in relation to the glory of His grace, and in relation to His glory as it will be known in the world to come, for they have the Spirit as Earnest. And it is God as thus known who is intelligently worshipped by His sons.
In Ephesians 3: 21 we have an utterance of worship which reaches the highest possible point, and which contemplates the assembly in eternal relations. It is “unto all generations of the age of ages”. Being “rooted and founded in love” is that the very nature of God becomes the source from which the saints draw support, and “the breadth and length and depth and height” are of that immensity which the love of God will fill eternally. But there is a Centre in that immensity to which creature hearts can turn, and find a love disclosed in a Man so that it is known in a way that brings it within our range. It surpasses knowledge, and yet it is knowable. It is all that the assembly as wife of Christ can rest in, and be cherished by, eternally. But it has in view the being filled to all the fulness of God. That is the eternal portion of the assembly. So we can understand that in the new earth in eternity she is seen as the tabernacle of God. She will not cease to be the wife of Christ — the true Eve — but she will be filled to all the fulness of God. She comes down from God — the wondrous and eternal result of His work. So that the note of worship at the end of Ephesians 3 has in view what is secured for God in the assembly eternally. “But to him that is able to do far exceedingly above all which we ask or think, according to the power which works in us, to him be glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages. Amen”.