The Epistles to the Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians were written by Paul from a prison cell in Rome. Evidently his detention there was of a very mild nature, for, though under arrest, Paul was permitted to dwell in his own hired house alone, save for the presence of his military guard (Acts 28.16). Pending the hearing of his case at Nero's judicial bar, he was permitted to continue under house-arrest for two whole years, with no greater inconvenience than his chains. During these two years he was permitted to receive all his friends without check, so that he "received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him". (Acts 28.30-31). Thus, spared the awful severities of ancient prison cells, his own home became both a sanctum and a cell.

Under conditions such as these the mighty qualities of his master-mind blossomed forth into full flower. To his native in-born genius the operation of the enlightening influence of the Spirit of the Living God gave new and added powers, enabling him to develop and define those deeper things of God which mortal tongue had only once told before. No teacher save the Lord Jesus had trodden that path of truth. Even He had not spoken full and clear, because at that time none else could understand. The "many things" which He had wanted to say, but could not say (John 16.12) were left for Paul to say, when hearing ears had been opened by the Spirit of truth. Then under the enlightening power of the promised Comforter, Paul was able to develop all those special features of the Lord's good news—now Paul's good news—and set them out in all their force and beauty, both in his conversations with his friends and in these letters to Ephesus, Colosse and Philippi. We have in these three letters the very essence and cream of all extant (surviving) Christian literature, reaching the loftiest heights of sanctifying expressions of which human language is capable. To such incomparable altitudes of illuminating thought do some of these expressions soar that students are to be found who speak of these things as though they constituted another and better Gospel, distinct and separate from all the teachings of Paul's own earlier days. Distinctions are claimed between the Gospel of the Kingdom and the "fellowship of the Mystery" with suggestions that there is but little (if any) relationship between the two themes. It will be our privilege to investigate both these themes as our studies proceed, and we hope to be able to find that Paul wrote to his friends, exactly the same things which he spoke to those who visited his prison home (Acts 28.31). It is possible to assign other reasons than that of another and better Gospel for the super-excellence of these Epistles without detaching them from earlier writings from the same pen. We have only to call to mind the unresting journeys of his active days, from Asia to Europe, from Europe back again, with scarce a moment's cessation from activity in which to concentrate and reflect. We only need to think of the foot-sore evangelist harried from place to place by relentless foes intent only on discrediting him, and of gathering to themselves the fruitage of his labours, to realise how impossible it had been for him to sit for long at ease in cool, calm consideration of the deeper points of the Gospel story. He had them in his mind, in germ and bud, and sometimes they flower forth from his pen, but not with the full bloom and beauty of the later ripened truth.

It was only when the rush and turmoil of an overcrowded life gave place to the safe peacefulness of his quiet prison retreat, first for two years in Caesarea, and now again in Rome, that the undeveloped germs and unopened buds of earlier days blossomed forth into stately blooms, delightful to see and hear. Immature and rudimentary thoughts, difficult to express and harder still to pass along, assumed full-grown form and were clothed in words of rare beauty and great power. God cut those restless wanderings short, not only that Paul might testify at the Roman Court, but that he might have time to rest and open wide the portals of God's treasure-house, that all who later came to believe might see set forth the amplitude of their inheritance in Christ. Without that season of enforced rest Paul might have burnt away the wick of life too soon, before even he himself had grasped the full immensity of the mystery of the fellowship in Christ. Had that been so, not his alone would have been the loss, but three score generations since his day would also have been deprived of these deeper, priceless things of God.

Paul was a deep thinker, and that was exactly what the Christian Church needed at the time. All other Apostles were untrained fishermen—men who had received no special training for their task. The Pharisees classed them as ignorant and unlearned men. Jesus had departed from the world leaving these untrained, untutored men to represent His cause. And while the propagation of truth was not intended to be accomplished by human power and intellectual might, its deeper aspect needed to be comprehended and stated by at least one penetrating well-balanced mind. Paul was a chosen vessel into which and through which Jesus could issue forth the things which He had to leave unsaid. Paul's mind could not leave a theme till he had traced it back to its first cause, nor until he had outlined its fullest sequences. Not enough was it for him to know that Jesus was the Son of God—he must dissect that statement into its compound elements, and know precisely what it meant. Not enough to know that Jesus died for sin. He wanted to know why and how that death could offset sin, and till he understood he deeply probed the records of the Word of God. He had to do among believing men the work which Jesus Himself could not do, because men could not understand. Hence Paul had to say the things Jesus could not say. These things became the theme and topic of Paul's enquiring mind and under the Spirit's influence the unsaid things of Jesus were said, in the main, by Paul. His writings, when arranged in chronological order, show that his mind was always getting deeper and still deeper into the things of his Lord; truth, roughly and immaturely stated at first utterance, became developed and complete as years rolled by. With progressive thought, ripeness of expression kept step, giving to the later products of his pen a mellowness rich and mature. Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians and Philemon are the rich ripe fruits of Paul's mellow years. We may well thank God for Paul's restraining chain, even though at times it may have deeply chafed his flesh. It set free his soul to soar up to the heavenly heights to give form and words to lofty thoughts, high as the heavens themselves, and more enduring than eternal hills. Only God Himself can estimate the debt which we all of later day owe but cannot pay, to this diminutive giant of a man.

From that little prison cell, the enforced home of a little wandering Christian Jew, set at the heart of the world's metropolis, with all the tawdry trappings of Imperial Majesty on every hand, the soaring mind of Paul swept forth throughout heaven and earth, and told, under the unseeing eyes of Rome's sceptred prince, in language superb and sublime, that God was creating a universal throne at whose feet even proud Imperial Caesar. would have to bow. No bricks nor walls, no chains nor praetorian guard could chain down that Spirit-led mind of Paul and make him mindful only of his little day and his fettered circumstance. Back to times before the world began, forward to better days, when heaven and earth are cleansed from sin, the Spirit led that receptive mind, and as he grasped the great design, he wrote it down in rich superlatives. Ordinary diction was poor and tame; he must spin phrases of his own, phrases which seem meaningless to the profane, but phrases, each of which is a rich coronet clustered with gems to those who know the truth. Here are a few — "blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ"; "chose us in Him before the foundation of the world"; "holy and without blemish, before Him"; "foreordained us unto adoption as sons....unto Himself"; "the glory of His grace which He bestowed on us freely in the Beloved". This and much beside is almost all new coin, never issued from any mint before, but all required to set forth the abundant grace of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Rome may have had her senators and orators, but no Cato or Cicero could speak like this. Rome may give her little men her franchise, and set them in her ranks of free-born men, but she could not make them sons of God! Rome may hoist her chosen Caesar to her throne, but she could not lift her candidate to the heavenly Throne! Within the very shadow of Roman majesty itself, the words and thoughts which told of One who could elevate a beggar to joint-heirship in that Throne, took shape and form. How near together, therefore, in that little cell came the sordid and the sublime—only a length of chain which, binding their ambassadors together, separated those two worlds. Guard and prisoner constituted together a miniature of this present world—one, the emblem of the supreme power of these Gentile Times, one, the token of the persecuted Christ, whose day of power is yet to come.

From that small spot, abounding with such great contrast, flowed forth doctrine which has changed the world. It has been both food and light to help God's child along his way. It has developed faith and gendered hope, and kindled love in many hearts. There is no contradiction between this and the earlier themes. Ephesians and Colossians are built on the broad foundations laid in Romans and Galatians, but times and conditions were under change. The nation as a whole was drifting to its doom while the small elect remnant was growing up into Christ. In the early days Paul dwelt much on the First Coming of the Lord as the point towards which the history and destiny of the Hebrew race had long been tending; in his later days it is the Christ Who is Lord of angels and worlds, and to Whose Second Coming the whole array of the universe is moving. In the first days he sought to convince his kith and kin of their opportunity to accept and rally to the Messiah whom God had sent into their midst. Hence, he stressed repentance and justification from sin. But when the nation was bent on plunging to its doom it was to the treasure within the field he paid greatest heed. He dwelt less on the redemptive work of Christ, and more on its Head and constitution; less on the justification of the repentant sinner and more on the sanctification of the elect saint; but all these later things had been implicit in his Gospel from the first. Just as the earlier themes were never wholly absent from the later and more explicit themes. Throughout his ministry the burden of teaching sought to show the union of the believer with his redeeming Lord and for the description of this unity he has coined a whole vocabulary of phrases and illustrations; believers are "in Christ" and Christ in them; they bear relation to Him as stones to a foundation, as members to a Head, as a wife to her husband. This unity he shows to be "ideal" for before time began the Divine Father made the destiny of Christ and the destiny of the believer one.

TH