HKB
Deliverer will soon appear from heaven, clad in armour of salvation, as in the ancient passover songs, cleaving the darkness with his sword of light, and leading forth the captives.
In these themes, variously interwoven in Ephesians and Colossians, it is difficult to say whether it is the note of unity or the note of freedom which predominates. Certainly we can recognize the same great apostle of liberty who in the epistles of the earlier period had proved the power and value of his religious insight by seizing upon the doctrine of Son ship as the essential heart of the gospel. It is the same genius consciously taught of God who had demanded and obtained recognition on equal terms for his gospel of Grace and Son ship, a gospel given by revelation of God's Son "in" him, who now demands that the gift of the Spirit to Jew and Gentile be recognized as calling for reconstruction of the doctrine of the coming Kingdom. "He that ascended is the same also that descended to the lowest depths that he might fill all things." And he poured out the "gifts" in order that they might make one organism of the new social order, a new creation animated and vitalized by Jesus' spirit of loving service.
For just as in all the great earlier epistles the note of longing for peace and unity in love rings ever stronger and clearer above the strife, so in the later epistles, the note of triumph in liberty has a deep under-chord of thanksgiving for reconciliation achieved. The great pæan of reverent adoration for the glory of God's grace in Eph. i. 3-14, is a thanksgiving for the union of Jew and Gentile in one common redemption. The retrospect of the work of God in ii. 11-21 is the proclamation of "peace to him that was far off and peace to him that was nigh." It is described as the building of Jew and Gentile into one living temple, upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief corner-stone. The exhortation to the unity of the Spirit in iv. 1--vi. 9 rests upon an exultant application of the figure of the "one new man" in whose body all are members, that would be inconceivable if at the time of writing the church which had received the gifts from the ascended Lord was not indeed one body, but two bodies standing apart in mutual distrust and jealousy.
In fact we may say not of Ephesians only, but of Colossians likewise, and indeed of all the group: Their keynote is not so much the conquest of all things by Christ as "the reconciliation of all things in Christ, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens" (Col. i. 20). It is not unreasonable to infer from such undertones as these that the prayer was answered in which Paul when he set out from Corinth had besought the Roman church by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit to strive together with him, that his ministration which he had for Jerusalem might be acceptable to the saints, that so his coming to them in Rome through the will of God might be in joy, and that together with them he might find rest.