“And made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus.” Verse 6, last part. Note 2.
4. What does He purpose to do for us?
“That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Verse 7. Note 3.
5. By what does He again say we have been saved?
“For by grace have ye been saved through faith.” Verse 8, first part. Note 4.
6. How does this salvation come to us?
“And that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” Verse 8, last part. Note 5.
7. Why may this salvation not be earned?
“Not of works, that no man should glory.” Verse 9. Note 6.
8. What is the believer in Him?
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.” Verse 10, first part. Note 7.9
9. For what are we created?
“For good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.” Verse 10, last part. Note 8.
Notes
1. “Raised us up with Him.”—The thought carries us back to the baptism of the believer. So the same apostle, in writing to the Romans, says, “We were buried therefore with Him through baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection.” Rom. 6:4, 5. And the same thought in another epistle: “If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God.” But we are not only raised up with Him symbolically in the act of baptism, but to a new life. Keep in mind the thought of the first verse, “And you did He make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins;”—not alive to the world, to do the world’s work, not alive to the passions and lusts and temptations of the world; but, living the new life in Christ Jesus here, despite the world, living above the world, walking as Christ walked, witness to the power of God.
2. “Made us to sit with Him.”—Another blessed privilege that He has given to Christians; we are not simply to count ourselves as existing in this life alone. Our adorable Head is in heaven, seated at the right hand of God. All authority is given to Him—He is the “Head over all things to the church”—and while He is there He has promised His church militant in the earth, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” He lives in them. So, as one who had partaken of the new life states, “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Gal. 2:20. But while our blessed Lord lives this life with His children, His children are to count themselves as living with Him in the heavens. We do not exalt ourselves to that place, but God in His great goodness and mercy counts us as dwelling with Him,—children of His own care, directly under His own guidance, sitting with Him, in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. These are the foretastes, the earnests, the pledge-moneys of the redemption of His people. They are the assurances of the promise which God will fulfil in the inheritance which He has for His children.
3. “Riches of His grace.”—We do not know the exceeding riches of God’s grace here. In the very nature of the case we can not know them. We may appreciate them to some extent. We may lay hold upon them, or apprehend them, but we never can comprehend them. The love and wisdom and power of eternity is in His grace, and it will take eternity to understand it. Great and rich was His grace that saved us as sinners. Of that we can comprehend something. It keeps us from sin, and of that, too, we may understand a little; and yet how very little we know of the mighty conflicts of spiritual forces which are waged in order to save those whom Satan claims as his lawful captives of sin. It will take more than this life to reveal it; consequently “the ages to come” await God’s children;—not this age, with its sin, alone; not the judgment age of the thousand years; but all the glorious ages which follow, ages in which sin shall have passed away forever. Then will be revealed anew, over and over, the great creative power of God in bringing new worlds into existence, in which His people, saved by grace from this sinful world, shall have part. In all these will God be showing to His children “the exceeding riches of His grace.” But as it is infinite in its depth of wisdom and knowledge, it will take eternity to learn it. As has been remarked by one devoted Bible writer, the great plan of salvation shall be the science and song of eternity.
4. “For by grace.”—It is always well to remember it. How natural it is for poor humans to boast that I have never done this, and I never would do that, and I have never stooped to this, or that. They forget the pit from which their own feet have been taken, the very mercy, perhaps, that surrounded their childhood days in kind father and mother who have kept them from sinning. It was John Bunyan who said, as he saw a criminal passing him on his way to execution, “But by the grace of God, there goes John Bunyan.” Many of us have not fallen to the low and degrading sins which even the world looks upon as debasing and disgraceful, but we have been kept from it simply through the kindness and favor of God in the restraining influences of the teachings of Christianity, and of firm and faithful friends in our youth. Just as truly as the veritable drunkard or libertine is saved by grace, so must every child of Adam be saved. Like Nicodemus, we may pride ourselves on our morality, but the eternal fact remains, “Except one be born anew, he can not see the kingdom of God.” It is not our ancestry or our birth or our works which commend us to God, but our great need, and our great need moved His heart of love and pity to reveal to us through grace, Jesus Christ. “For by grace are ye saved through faith.” Faith has simply yielded to the Master, and thereby opened a channel through which the exceeding grace could come into the heart.
5. “That not of yourselves.” This has been taken by some to refer to the faith, but it seems to us that it clearly refers to the grace, and more to the salvation which has come to us through grace. By grace ye have been saved, and that salvation not of yourselves. We could not purchase it, nor could our friends purchase it for us. It is a truth of the ages that none of us can by any means save his brother, or give to God a ransom for him. Psalm 49:7. “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” All have fallen below the perfect standard, and shut themselves out from a home in His kingdom, and therefore the saving is not of ourselves. It is the gift of God. His free, unmerited favor has been bestowed upon us. He gave Himself for our sins. By His death are we reconciled, and by the power of His endless life we are saved.
6. “Not of works, that no man should glory,”—that no one should boast. We can not earn salvation. Work as we will, it is impossible for us to rise above the very nature of the motives which dwell in the selfish heart of the human. Men have been trying this through all the weary ages of sin in the past. The long pilgrimages that are made on hands and blistered knees through the hot, sandy plains of India have been to earn salvation. The lying upon sharp spikes day after day and week after week, the wearing of stones in the shoes, the cutting, the lacerating, the long fasts to almost starvation, the hair shirts, the pitiable ways in which men have endeavored to mutilate themselves,—all these are mighty witnesses that there is no salvation in the works of men. And then, too, it is a denial of the great free grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. If Saint A could say that he had earned salvation by his wonderful works of humiliation and self-denial and flagellations, he could boast in himself. And if Saint B could say that he, through his fastings and mortifications of the flesh, had earned salvation, he could boast in himself; but in those glorious ages to come there will no one stand up and say that I have earned salvation. All the pitiful works of men will be seen to be righteousnesses which are as filthy rags, and the only garment which will then be acceptable will be the garment of the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ, woven in the loom of heaven and worked out amid all the temptations of earth through the perfect, abundant grace and power of God. And that righteousness of God wrought out in Him will cover all the sins of the past, and that life of God flowing out through Him will enable the sinner to live the righteous life, but the glory will be all given to the Master.
7. “For we are His workmanship.”—All these expressions are connected with the great gift of His grace,—“for by grace have ye been saved,” “for we are His workmanship.” They are the reasons for glorying in His grace, reasons for taking no glory to ourselves. For if we are changed beings, born from above, it is His own creative power that has wrought the work. And how clearly this scripture shows that redeeming power is creative power. Salvation by works is the power of evolution demonstrated through all the ages to be utterly futile in the salvation of men and in the formation of character. But salvation by re-creation has demonstrated even in the worst characters that the power of God is greater than all the inherited, transmitted, and fostered traits of character of the sinner. It re-creates the drunkard, and it gives him a new life. It takes away the appetite from the flesh, or gives him power to live above it. It makes the covetous man a liberal man, the profane man a reverent man, the niggardly, stingy man a generous man, the dishonest man honorable, the one who has hated his fellow men as one who loves them. It removes the old grudges from the heart. In other words, it re-creates all the motives and affections of the soul in Christ Jesus. How the verse carries us back, as do many other expressions in the New Testament, to the very beginning, to the bringing from chaos to cosmos of this old world, to the Sabbath which God gave to the children of men as a memorial of His creative power, and his use of that very Sabbath as a memorial of sanctifying and redeeming power! Just as He has told us in Eze. 20:20: “And hallow My Sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between Me and you, that ye may know that I am Jehovah your God,”—your Creator, your Maker, the one to whom you owe all. But more than that, in verse 12, “Moreover also I gave them My Sabbaths, to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am Jehovah that sanctifieth them.” The Creator is the only one who can be the Redeemer. The hope of mankind is not in evolution or education; it is in re-creation, in regeneration. But the power that regenerates, the power that re-creates, places the soul on vantage ground in a pabulum of life where there will be growth,—divine evolution and education in Christ Jesus.
8. “For good works.”—God has not created us for a life of idleness. There must be no drones in the great hive of God’s workers. He has not only the good works for His children, but He has prepared these works before, that we should walk in them,—in that wonderful plan devised of Him before this earth came into existence, His plan must have been perfected. There must have been written the great Book of Life, and in that great Book of Life there must have been the names of the characters that should people the earth, characters that should be “to the praise of the glory of His grace” throughout all eternity: and those characters are to be developed through good works, and the good works that He Himself had marked out for the development of the character. Consequently, when He called mankind from the great depths of sin and iniquity, He did this that He might create us for the very purpose that we should manifest those good works to the children of men around us on every side. So said Jesus, “Ye are the light of the world. . . . Even so let your light shine before men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” Matt. 5:16. So we read again of Christ who “gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of good works.” Titus 2:14. But in those good works His children will not boast, because “It is God who worketh in you, both to will and to work, for His good pleasure.” Phil. 2:13. In fact, those who are living the nearest the Master, those who are devotedly and earnestly serving Him the best, see more and more of imperfection in the service which they render. They are more inclined to say, “I am an unprofitable servant,” rather than to say, “See the mighty works which I have wrought.” But the great God who understands the spirit and motive of His children puts down the heart that is in the works, and will say to them at last, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant!” They have appropriated His great grace, and He gives them credit as though they wrought it all.
Our London Letter
By W. T. Bartlett
The Concert of the Powers
The hope that London might have proved a city of peace where the Turks and the Balkan allies could come together and compose their differences has been disappointed, temporarily at least. The combatants have decided to go back to the ring and fight a few more rounds in order to settle the question whose views shall prevail in the final adjustment of terms. The collapse of the peace negotiations has vindicated the political strategy of the Greek premier, M. Venizelos, who, foreseeing the outcome, refused to participate in the armistice. This Cretan statesman is likely to make a name for himself in history if his future policy is as shrewd and farsighted as his plans have been demonstrated to be hitherto. The reports at hand from the districts where fighting is going on do not offer much prospect that the Turks will better their position by the continuance of hostilities.
How much has been accomplished by the meeting of the ambassadors in London simultaneously with the gathering of the peace delegates, does not yet appear. It is likely, however, that the joint note of the powers counseling Turkey to submit to the demands of the allies would not have been concerted but for this assembly of ambassadors. Europe feels considerable relief at finding that it is able to face a crisis of such magnitude as the virtual disappearance of the Turk from Europe without being plunged into war on a terrific scale. The rise of the Balkan States and their victory over Turkey has apparently simplified the Eastern question and made it possible to solve the Macedonian problem without the armed intervention of any one of the powers. An ineffective occupation of Constantinople by Turkey, and its exclusion otherwise from European soil, offers a plausible hope of peace for some time to come.
Asiatic Turkey
D. Lloyd-George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer
Indeed, so easily has this crisis been passed that European statesmanship is already allowing itself to ponder on what might be safely attempted in Turkey’s Asiatic dominions . The joint note of the powers intimated that submission to their proposals at the present time would constitute a claim on their kind offices in the future, but now that Turkey has decided to continue the war rather than give up Adrianople, SHE MAY EXPECT INTERFERENCE RATHER THAN PROTECTION IN ASIA. One of our leading journals, “The Nation,” gives expression to the general sentiment thus: “If Turkey insists on being yet more decisively crushed, and antagonizes the powers which have given her good and friendly advice, she will discover that while a process of amputation has relieved her of her European problems, the question of Asia has suddenly become acute. Since first the war began, the more conservative currents in diplomacy have striven to avoid that complication. But it presses with increasing urgency.
“The German ambassador, tho he used the language of friendship for Turkey, has very emphatically staked out a claim in Anatolia and uttered the Noli me tangere, which warns the rest of the world that Asia Minor is for Germany a ‘place in the sun.’ In France, the financial group which ‘studies’ colonial problems with a rather naive attempt to imitate the procedure of a learned society, has revived the traditional French claim to Syria. Russia long ago claimed the Armenian provinces as in some sense her political sphere of interests, and she has been able to reserve them hitherto by frustrating every proposal to build railways in them or through them.
“We suppose that if any formal partition of Asiatic Turkey in zones of interest or influence were to take place, Mesopotamia and Arabia would fall to this country.”
Of course there is an element of speculation in any such forecast as this, but its appearance indicates a noticeable advance in current ideas on the future of Asiatic Turkey. And it is also worthy of notice that according to this extract, if the European powers find themselves under the necessity of taking measures to appropriate Turkey’s Asiatic possessions, it will not be their fault; Turkey alone will be to blame. The weak have always been to blame!
Whatever may be the outcome of the struggle, we have without doubt entered upon a new chapter of international developments which will not be concluded until some of the Great Powers find themselves seated in the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan, the very region where, according to the prophecies, the last struggles will be fought.
England and Germany — Relative Navies
It has been a source of satisfaction to the peace-lovers of England to see her working hand in hand with Germany for the preservation of European harmony, apparently wielding a strong influence to that end. The speech made last week by Admiral Von Tirpitz is hailed by such as a pledge of good feeling on Germany’s part and evidence from an unexpected source of a genuine desire for friendship between the two nations. The Admiral has always figured in the English mind as the zealous and determined advocate of a strong navy for Germany, and that he should express willingness to see England supreme on the water by a sixty per cent margin of superiority is as welcome as it was unlooked for.
There is, however, in this country a strong sentiment in favor of the policy called “two keels for one,” which demands in season and out of season that England should build two ships for every vessel laid down by our Teutonic rivals; and the principal spokesmen of this party are protesting against any agreement with Germany short of a superiority of one hundred per cent. They point out that since Mr. Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, spoke some months ago of a minimum margin of sixty per cent, the situation in the Mediterranean has been disturbed, so that we are obliged to maintain a stronger fleet in that sea; also that the gifts of warships now coming in from our over-sea dominions require of us that we maintain an imperial fleet in their waters, so that a mere sixty per cent margin would make but slender provision for the demands of the Empire and leave us facing Germany in the North Sea with little or no margin of superiority.
In Germany also the advocates of a vigorous policy of naval enlargement are asking how the sixty per cent is to be calculated. Will it be figured on the number of ships alone, or will it take into account speed, weight of broadside, and other details that determine the comparative efficiency of a battleship; also, will the sixty per cent include the colonial contributions to England’s navy or not?
The problem is a complicated one at the best, and there is very little prospect indeed that the two countries will ever agree to restrict their naval preparations. The militarist party in Germany hopes that England will at some time or other fall into difficulties far afield that will leave her inferior in home waters and so nullify her old supremacy; and the corresponding party in England entertains the hope that Germany will sooner or later find it unendurable to meet the cost of a vast navy in addition to the burden of keeping up her enormous army. Neither will trust the other sufficiently to place itself in the slightest degree at the mercy of the other; altho without doubt, neither of the countries has any plan except to protect itself from the hostile intentions of which it suspects the other. Both are victims of the militarist madness which reduces to impotence so many good plans adopted by the nations in their saner moments.11
Prospect of Home Rule for Ireland
The Irish Home Rule Bill got safely through the Commons and was promptly thrown out by the House of Lords. But since the passing of the Parliament Act the Upper House has ceased to present a serious obstacle to the passage of radical legislation. All that the Liberal Government needs to do is to pass the bill expeditiously once more through the House of Commons and send it up again to the Lords. They may reject it once again, and that represents their limit. After the bill has been sent up twice to the House of Lords, and been rejected by them, it automatically becomes the law of the land without their consent. Therefore, if the Coalition of Liberal, Irish, and labor members can hold together for another year, and a little more, the Home Rule Bill will come into operation, and we shall see how self-government works in Ireland. The resistance of the Unionists of Ulster to the bill was somewhat discounted at the last by the circumstance that Londonderry, the most famous city in the North of Ireland, returned a Nationalist Home Ruler at a by-election, and this Nationalist victory made the Home Rule members from Ulster outnumber the Unionists from that province by a majority of one. Thus Ulster is divided equally against itself, and this fact, of course, makes it difficult for the Orangemen to carry out their threat of resorting to civil war rather than submit to a Parliament in Dublin.
Disestablishment in Wales
Another bill which will come into effect through the operation of the Parliament Act rather than by the good-will of the Lords, is a measure disestablishing the church in Wales. As originally framed, the measure was also one of disendowment, but so many financial concessions have been made during the passage of the bill that the church loses very little of its income by the step. It has been calculated that if its members will each give a penny extra per month they will put the church in as good a position from a pecuniary point of view as it was before the bill was introduced.
Miss Pankhurst, Daughter of the Famous London Militant Suffragette
Remedial Legislation for the Labour
Thus two considerable measures have been carried by the present government which they regard as urgently demanded reforms. They do not intend to cease their efforts, however. Mr. Lloyd-George has already begun an agitation in favor of Land Reform. Official particulars have not been given, but it is announced on good authority that the reform will consist partly in securing to every farm laborer a minimum wage of five dollars per week. At present the average falls far below this figure, but it is supplemented by the landlord providing a cottage at a very low rent and granting certain favors to the laborer which enable him to exist and bring up a family, as long as he keeps on good terms with his employer. If, however, he is dismissed, he has to leave his employer’s cottage, and since there is always a shortage of these dwellings, there is usually nothing for him but to leave the neighborhood and go to some city where he becomes an unskilled worker.
Clinedinst
It is thus that the population of the cities has increased at the expense of the countryside, and by this process the physical standard of the population is steadily lowered. The promised reform is to pay the laborer a higher wage, so that he can rent a state-provided cottage for himself, independent of his employer, and so that he may be able to stay in this cottage as long as he likes, whether employed in the immediate vicinity or not. There is to be connected with it a piece of ground sufficient to provide food for his family. To enable the farmers to pay their laborers a higher wage, they must be assisted to work their land more scientifically, and be secured in turn from oppressive landlords, so that one part of the scheme will be the creation of rent courts.
The Militant Suffragettes
Another reform which the government had in hand, in the shape of an Adult Suffrage Bill, it has been compelled to drop owing to a pledge given that, in connection with this measure, they would allow the advocates of women’s suffrage to take the decision of the House of Commons. The Speaker, however, ruled that any such addition would make the bill a radically new one and necessitate its re-submission to the House. So the whole question was deferred until the next session. This delay has enraged the militant suffragettes who have become more violent than ever in their attacks on property. They now put envelopes containing phosphorus into the post, and large numbers of letters have been consumed. Windows are being freely smashed again, and this week the orchid house in the famous Kew Gardens was wrecked. Such proceedings do not advance the militant suffragettes in popular favor, and indeed have made their cause hateful to many who otherwise would have been inclined to approve it.
Losses from Strikes
The labor statistics for 1912 have been published and constitute a record in the item of time lost by strikes. It is estimated that over 60,000,000 days were lost in connection with the coal strike, and that this dislocation of business inflicted a total loss of $250,000,000 on the community. Another 9,000,000 days were lost by other strikes during the year.
Falling Off in Church-Membership
The churches that publish figures of their membership again show a serious falling off. The Congregationalists and Baptists record a loss between them of about 4,500 members, and their Sunday-school attendance drops by over 8,000. The Wesleyan Methodists continue, as for several years past, to show a further decrease. A few years ago the “Daily News” organized a census of church attendance, and was proposing to repeat the enumeration this year; but a number of Free Church leaders have protested12so vigorously against the census as an unfriendly act, that the “Daily News” has abandoned its intention. The argument of the ministers was that it would be misleading to place an undue emphasis on mere figures at the present time, but the public makes a shrewd guess that the ministers were afraid of the figures they knew would be brought to light.
It is only in comparatively few churches that the Sunday morning congregation now consists of more than a handful of people, while prayer-meetings have almost gone out of existence. All the devices adopted of late years by the churches for making religion more popular with the masses seem only to have had the effect of indisposing their own members for serious worship. At the same time, churches that have adhered faithfully to the gospel feel the need of no more powerful attraction; they continue to be centers of Christian life and activity.
