Warnings against instability and deception.
The ministry has been appointed to bring the Church forward to maturity, and therefore it is concerned to carry it safely through the intermediate stages. We are consequently warned not to continue children, but to advance steadfastly towards manhood. There are two faults hinted at by the apostle.
I. CHILDREN ARE APT TO BE UNSTABLE. "Tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine." They have not become so firmly rooted in the truth as to be proof against unsettling influences either within or without them. Consequently, they are like "a wave of the sea driven of the wind and tossed."
1. The warning implies that truth is a matter of supreme moment. Holiness of character is impossible without it. Believers ought to be well founded in the truth; not mere babes, but such as "are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil" (Hebrews 5:14).
2. They are warned against the tendency to be blown about by the winds of doctrine that blow from-every quarter. The counsel is much needed in this age of startling suggestion, radical denial, and deep unsettlement. There are men who go the rounds of all the sects, swinging from side to side with a movement which indicates that they are true to nothing but the love of change. It is hard for unstable natures to hold the poise of their judgment in the midst of such terrible cross-fires of theological and philosophical speculation.
II. CHILDREN ARE APT TO BE DECEIVED. Their want of knowledge leaves them open to imposition and deception. The apparatus of theological seduction is always at hand. The language of the apostle implies:
1. That there were errorists either at Ephesus or elsewhere, identified with the Christian communion, marked by "the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive." It is a mere dream to suppose that the primitive Church was perfectly pure either in doctrine or practice. The apostle's farewell address to the Ephesian elders at Miletus anticipated the rise of serious error (Acts 20:29).
2. That such "false teachers" were marked by selfishness, deceit, and malignity. This is the character which the apostle usually ascribes to such men (Romans 16:17, Romans 16:18; Colossians 2:18; Galatians 2:4; 2 Corinthians 2:17). Error is, therefore, not harmless, though it may appear to be the mere sword-play of a speculative temperament. False teachers are not innocent. Yet our judgment in all cases of this sort must be exercised with charity and meekness, because men may be better than their creed, and may be influenced by the sounder parts of it.
3. That Satan often succeeds in seducing the unwary by the dexterous tricks of such teachers, who cunningly mingle the truth with such error as robs it of its healing virtues.—T.C.
The true method and conditions of Christian growth.
The apostle sees the conditions of Christian stability in a faith that worketh by love—the love being at once the sphere and the means of our spiritual growth. The expressive figure used by the apostle sets forth several important truths concerning the Church and its development.
I. THE SOURCE OF ITS GROWTH—CHRIST THE HEAD. As the Church is a spiritual body, so the characteristics of the natural body are found in it. It is a body divinely framed as truly as the natural body, and designed to bring greater glory to God than the body which types it. Its Head is the Lord himself. It has its being and form in him, as well as all its nurture, such as its life and light, grace and joy, strength and fruitfulness; it depends upon the Head for subsistence and for safety; it is united to the Head by a bond that is both close and indissoluble.
II. THE AGENT OF ITS GROWTH—THE HOLY SPIRIT. For "by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body" (1 Corinthians 12:12). As the one spirit of man wields at will all the functions of the body, and concentrates the various members upon its purposes as they arise, so the Holy Spirit gives each member of the mystic body its peculiar action and power in the divinely appointed diversity which contributes to its eventual unity.
III. THE RELATION OF THE MEMBERS TO EACH OTHER. "The whole body is fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth." Each member is in relation with all other members as well as with the Head. Each is dependent upon the other. No member can dismiss another as useless; none is so great as not to be indebted to the least. "God has tempered the body together." Now, just as the parts of the human frame are necessarily of different functions, and set, some in superior, some in inferior, places, yet all act together in the fullest sympathy; so all the members of Christ's body must keep rank and order, acting within their own sphere with due wisdom, harmony, and love, the eye not doing the work of the hand, nor the hand the work of the foot, but abiding each in his own calling.
IV. THERE IS AN INDIVIDUAL ACTION OF EACH MEMBER, "According to the effectual working in the measure of every part." Each must do its own proper work, according to its position. Just as a man is strong in the faculty which he most exercises, so the member who is strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus becomes individually efficient according to the operation of that grace. One member is thus apt to teach, another to convince, another to counsel, another to stimulate.
V. THE CHANNELS OF SUPPLY—"THE JOINTS AND BANDS"—ARE THE WORD AND ORDINANCES. They convey grace from the Head to the members. The Word of God is the grand means, in connection with baptism and the Lord's Supper. These two ordinances are, indeed, the two appointed symbols of the Church's unity—baptism representing the first action of the Holy Spirit in fitting the members for the body; the Lord's Supper, the drinking into one Spirit, who makes the table a visible center of union to these brought out of the world.
VI. THE ELEMENT OR SPHERE IN WHICH THE GROWTH OF THE BODY IS EFFECTED. "Love." It is not asserted that we are to grow in love, but that in love, as the sphere of growth, we are to grow in all the elements of perfection. That love which follows the things which make for peace and edification, and bears the infirmities of others, has peculiar faculties for edifying the body of Christ.
VII. THE RESULT OF GROWTH. "It maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself." The increase is twofold—in the addition of members to the Church, and in the growth of the members in all the elements of spiritual perfection.—T.C.