《The Biblical Illustrator – Ephesians (Ch.2b~3)》(A Compilation)
02Chapter 2
Verses 11-13
Verse 11
Ephesians 2:11
Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision.
Remembrance of our miserable condition by nature
It is good to be reminded of this, for it is
Miseries of a pagan condition, a motive to missionary zeal
I. The affecting condition described.
1. Upon his understanding.
2. Consider this subject as it affects the conscience. “The whole world is guilty before God” (Romans 3:19).
3. As it affects the character. Where Christ is not, morality sheds but a dim, a feeble, and Often a delusive ray.
4. As it relates to the happiness of man in the present life. Without Christ, you leave man as a sufferer under all the unmitigated weight of trouble; you leave him to grapple, unaided and unsustained, with the fierce and uncontrollable calamities of life.
5. Trace its operation on the civil and religious institutions of human society.
6. Consider the relation of the subject to the immortal destiny of man. To live without Christ is dreadful; but oh! what must it be to die without Him?
II. The duty of cherishing a distinct and constant remembrance of this condition.
1. The light of reason, and the custom of mankind, are sufficient to Show that we should cherish the grateful remembrance of eminent deliverances.
2. The express direction of Holy Scripture. On the Jewish Church such recollection was frequently and solemnly inculcated (Exodus 13:3; see also Deuteronomy 5:15).
3. We may appeal to the impulse of good feeling in every mind that is rightly, by which I mean religiously, constituted.
III. The practical effects which should flow from this remembrance.
1. This recollection should be productive of deep humiliation and self-abasement.
2. This recollection should excite sentiments of the liveliest gratitude for the happy change which has taken place in our condition.
3. This recollection should endear to us our native land, which the religion of Jesus has hallowed and blessed.
4. This recollection should engage us to demean ourselves in a manner answerable to the great change which, through the favour of God, has taken place in our moral situation.
5. This recollection should excite in our bosoms the tenderest compassion for those nations who are yet without Christ, deeply plunged in all the miseries of which we have been hearing.
6. Finally, this recollection will supply the amplest justification of missionary efforts, and urge us forward in the prosecution of missionary labours. (J. Burns, D. D.)
Remembrance of former sinful state
I. Show what uncircumcision denotes.
1. Rebellion (Jeremiah 9:25-26).
2. Exclusion from the privileges of God’s chosen (Ephesians 2:12).
3. Pollution (Ezekiel 44:7).
4. Liableness to death (Genesis 17:4).
II. The ends for which believers should remember their former state of sin.
1. To create shame and self-abhorrence (Ezekiel 16:60).
2. To create renewed views of Christ and His salvation (1Timothy 1:13).
3. To remind us of the awful state of the ungodly (1Corinthians 6:9-11).
4. To exclude boasting (Deuteronomy 9:6-7).
5. As a motive to forgive others (Ephesians 4:22).
6. As a motive to relieve the distressed (1Corinthians 8:9).
7. To increase our love to God. (H. Foster, M. A.)
Conversion a great change
“If I ever see a Hindoo converted to Jesus Christ,” said Henry Martyn, “I shall see something more nearly approaching the resurrection of a dead body than anything I have ever yet seen.” The entire number of native Christians in India is now about 600,000.
Then and now
Can you say, “I am not what I once was--I am better, godlier, holier”? Happy are you! Happy although, afraid of presumption, and in the timid modesty of spiritual childhood, you can venture no further than one who was urged to say whether she had been converted. How humble, yet how satisfactory, her reply! “That,” she answered, “I cannot, that I dare not, say; but there is a change somewhere. I am changed, or the world is changed.”…Our little child, watching with curious eyes the apparent motion of the objects, calls out in ecstasy, and bids us see how hedge and house are flying past the carriage. You know it is not these that move; nor the firm and fixed shore, with its trees and fields, and boats at anchor, and harbours and headlands, that is gliding by the cabin windows. That is but an illusion of the eye. The motion is not in them, but in us. And if the world is growing less to your sight, it shows you are retreating from it, rising above it, and, upborne in the arms of grace, are ascending to a higher region; and if to our eye the fashion of this world seems passing away, it is because we ourselves are passing--passing and pressing on the way to heaven. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Verse 12
Ephesians 2:12
Without Christ.
Spiritual misery
1. The head of all spiritual misery is to be without Christ.
2. A second degree of misery, is to be barred from communion and fellowship with the Church of God.
3. Naturally, we hate the means of salvation.
4. It is a great misery to be without the doctrine of the covenant of God.
5. The Lord left the Gentiles without the means of calling them to salvation.
6. It is a great misery to be without hope. (Paul Bayne.)
Life without Christ
The greatest event by far in the history of our world was the visit of Christ. From that moment, everything upon this earth measures itself by its relation to the Cross. Could it be otherwise? For he was “the Son of God.” What must that man be to God the Father, who treats that death of His dear Son as he would treat a mere matter of business? We may say of the man who is “without Christ,” that that man stands before God just as he is in himself, and nothing else. There is nothing to better him; there is nothing to excuse him. There is nothing to palliate or extenuate a fault. There is nothing to add any righteousness to amend. There can be no heaven for him except there be fitness; and there can be no pardon except there be a claim. Now, how would the best of us like to be dealt with on that principle? To stand before God in your own real individual character! No Intercessor to plead for you! No refuge to fly to! And consider this. A man “without Christ” has no motive, no motive sufficient to rule his life. The motive, the only secure and effective motive of life, is love. But you cannot love God unless you believe that God has pardoned you. You cannot love an angry God. But there is no pardon out of Christ. But, out of Christ, there can be no love because there is no forgiveness. So Christ makes the motive of life; and a man “without Christ” must be motiveless. Let me add another thing. All nature looks out for sympathy. Sympathy, in a degree, God has given to every man; but perfect sympathy belongs to Christ. It is His unapproachable prerogative. Therefore, if you do not know Christ, really know Him, as a believer knows Him, you do not yet know what sympathy can mean; for the rest is all very well, but it will stand you in very little stead in some dark hour. But that sympathy is perfect. You cannot find anyone else who has been, and who can be, “touched with the feeling of your infirmity”: always tender; always capable; always wise; true to every fibre of your being; matching all its cravings. That is not given to any creature upon earth. That is Jesus. And if you are without Jesus, you are without sympathy. And when that lonely passage comes, which is to take you out into the unknown, we must all die alone. What, if there be no arm--no companionship--no sweet voice to say, “I am with you!” No finished work! No Jesus in the valley! What will it be to die “without Christ?” An awful thing! And the more awful, the less you feel it!(J. Vaughan, M. A.)
The Christless state
I. The misery of our past estate.
1. The man who is without Christ is without any of those spiritual blessings which only Christ can bestow. Christ is the life of the believer, but the man who is without Christ is dead in trespasses and sins. So, too, Christ is the light of the world. Without Christ there is no light of true spiritual knowledge, no light of true spiritual enjoyment, no light in which the brightness of truth can be seen, or the warmth of fellowship proved. Without Christ there is no peace, no rest, no safety, no hope.
2. Without Christ, beloved, remember that all the religious acts of men are vanity. What are they but mere air bags, having nothing in them whatever that God can accept? There is the semblance of worship--the altar, the victim, the wood laid in order--and the votaries bow the knee or prostrate their bodies, but Christ alone can send the fire of heaven’s acceptance.
3. Without Christ implies, of course, that you are without the benefit of all those gracious offices of Christ, which are so necessary to the sons of men, you have no true prophet. Without Christ truth itself will prove a terror to you. Like Balaam, your eyes may be open while your life is alienated. Without Christ you have no priest to atone or to intercede on your behalf. Without Christ you are without a Saviour; how will you do? and without a friend in heaven you must needs be if you are without Christ. Without Christ, though you be rich as Croesus, and famous as Alexander, and wise as Socrates, yet are you naked and poor and miserable, for you lack Him by whom are all things, and for whom are all things, and who is Himself all in all.
II. The great deliverance which God has wrought for us. We are not without Christ now, but let me ask you, who are believers, where you would have been now without Christ. I think the Indian’s picture is a very fair one of where we should have been without Christ. When asked what Christ had done for him, he picked up a worm, put it on the ground, and made a ring of straw and wood round it, which he set alight. As the wood began to glow the poor worm began to twist and wriggle in agony, whereupon he stooped down, took it gently up with his finger, and said, “That is what Jesus did for me; I was surrounded, without power to help myself, by a ring of dreadful fire that must have been my ruin, but His pierced hand lifted me out of the burning.” Think of that, Christians, and as your hearts melt, come to His table, and praise Him that you are not now without Christ.
1. Then think what His blood has done for you. Take only one thing out of a thousand. It has put away your many, many sins.
2. Bethink you, too, now that you have Christ, of the way in which He came and made you partaker of Himself. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Without Christ
I. When it can be said of a man, that he is “without Christ.
1. When he has no head knowledge of Him. The heathen, of course, who never yet heard the gospel, come first under this description. But unhappily they do not stand alone. There are thousands of people dying in England at this very day, who have hardly any clearer ideas about Christ than the very heathen.
2. When he has no heart faith in Him as his Saviour. Many know every article of the Belief, but make no practical use of their knowledge. They put their trust in something which is not “Christ.”
3. When the Holy Spirit’s work cannot be seen in his life. Who can avoid seeing, if he uses his eyes, that myriads of professing Christians know nothing of inward conversion of heart?
II. The actual condition of a man “without Christ.”
1. To be without Christ is to be without God. St. Paul told the Ephesians as much as this in plain words. He ends the famous sentence which begins, “Ye were without Christ,” by saying, “Ye were without God in the world.” And who that thinks can wonder? That man can have very low ideas of God who does not conceive Him a most pure, and holy, and glorious, and spiritual Being. How then can such a worm as man draw near to God with comfort?
2. To be without Christ is to be without peace. Every man has a conscience within him, which must be satisfied before he can be truly happy. There is only one thing can give peace to the conscience, and that is the blood of Jesus Christ sprinkled on it.
3. To be without Christ is to be without hope. Hope of some sort or other almost every one thinks he possesses. There is but one hope that has roots, life, strength, and solidity, and that is the hope which is built on the great rock of Christ’s work and office as Redeemer.
4. To be without Christ is to be without heaven. In saying this I do not merely mean that there is no entrance into heaven, but that “without Christ” there could be no happiness in being there. A man without a Saviour and Redeemer could never feel at home in heaven. He would feel that he had no lawful fight or title to be there; boldness and confidence and ease of heart would be impossible. (Bishop Ryle.)
Without Christ
It is not long since that a prominent business man, when closely pressed by his pastor, who had lately come to the church, replied with a calm force which was meant to put an end to further pertinacity, “I am interested in all religious matters; I am always glad to see the ministers when they call; but I have in the years past thought the subject over long and carefully, and I have come to the decision deliberately that I have no need of Jesus Christ as a Saviour in the sense you preach.” Only two weeks from this interview the same man was suddenly prostrated with disease; the illness was of such a character as to forbid his conversing with anyone, and the interdict from speaking was continued until he was within an hour of death, A solemn moment was that in which a question was put to him, intimating that he might talk now if he could--nothing would harm him. The last thing, the only thing, he said, was in a melancholy and frightened whisper, “Who will carry me over the fiver?”
Having no hope.--
Hope abandoned
Over the huge hideous iron gates of the Prison de la Roquette, in Paris, which is set apart for criminals that are condemned to death, there is an inscription, which sends a thrill of horror through those who read it--“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!”
Hopes for eternity, what they rest on
When John Wesley lay on an expected death bed (though God spared him some years longer to the world and the Church) his attendants asked him what were his hopes for eternity? And something like this was his reply--“For fifty years, amid scorn and hardship, I have been wandering up and down this world, to preach Jesus Christ; and I have done what in me lay to serve my blessed Master!” What he had done his life and works attest. They are recorded in his Church’s history, and shine in the crown he wears so bright with a blaze of jewels--sinners saved through his agency. Yet thus he spake,
“My hope for eternity--my hopes rest only on Christ--
‘I the chief of sinners am But Jesus died for me.’”
(T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Mournful ignorance
I have seen a child in ignorance of its great loss totter across the floor to its mother’s coffin, and, caught by their glitter, seize the handles, to look round and smile as it rattled them on the hollow sides. I have seen a boy, forgetting his sorrow in his dress, survey himself with evident satisfaction as he followed the bier that bore his father to the grave. And however painful such spectacles, as jarring our feelings, and out of all harmony with such sad and sombre scenes, they excite no surprise nor indignation. We only pity those who, through ignorance of their loss or inability to appreciate it, find pleasure in what should move their grief. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Having no hope
I have read of a tribe of savages that bury their dead in secret, by the hands of unconcerned officials. No grassy mound, no memorial stone guides the poor mother’s steps to the quiet corner where her infant lies. The grave is levelled with the soil; and afterwards a herd of cattle is driven over and over the ground, till every trace of the burial has been obliterated by their hoofs. Anxious to forget death and its inconsolable griefs, these heathen resent any allusion to the dead. You may not speak of them. In a mother’s hearing, name, however tenderly, her lost one, recall a dead father to the memory of his son, and there is no injury which they feel more deeply. From the thought of the dead their hearts recoil. How strange! How unnatural! No, not unnatural. Benighted heathen, their grief has none of the alleviations which are balm to our wounds, none of the hopes that bear us up beneath a weight of sorrows. Their dead are sweet flowers withered, never to revive; joys gone, never to return. To remember them is to keep open a rankling wound, and preserve the memory of a loss which was bitter to feel and still is bitter to think of: a loss which brought only grief to the living, and no gain to the dead. To me, says Paul, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. They know nothing of this; nothing of the hopes that associate our dead in Christ with sinless souls, and sunny skies, and shining angels, and songs seraphic, and crowns of glory, and harps of gold. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)