The Perfect Man

With reference to Ephesians 4:10-12; 5:30—This perfect man of the Ephesian phasis of the "One Body" had thus for sixty years "borne, endured, and labored for the sake of the Spirit’s Name, and had not fainted" (ii. 3). He drew his bow against all adversaries, whether lying pretenders to apostleship, and Nicolaitans within; or the Jewish and Pagan denizens of the rayless darkness without. They were all the prey of his devouring bow, which spared neither age, sex, nor condition, admitted of no neutrality, knew no compromise, and tolerated only that which was indisputably true. This Spirit-Man, whose head was Christ, his members in particular, those whom he filled with spirit-gifts for the work of the ministry and edifying of the body; and his flesh and bones, the faithful in general (Eph. iv. 10-12; v. 30) -- this Spirit-Man, I say, was a real and formidable potential existence in the empire of the Goat’s Little Horn. He had made Felix tremble; he had almost persuaded king Agrippa to be a bowman with himself; and he had so alarmed Caesar, that this imperial pontiff of the state superstition commanded him to draw his bow no more in the name of Jesus. But to this mandate he paid no regard. The louder the LION of the forest roared, the louder the echoes of his voice above the battle’s din, and the grander the execution of his bow; so that according to Pliny’s letter to Trajan (see vol. I, ch. ii, sec. ii, 5C) in the early part of his reign, the number of the bowman’s victims was so great as to call for the serious consultation of the authorities; for, he says, "the contagion of the superstition hath spread not only through cities, but even villages and the country: ... the temples were almost desolate, the sacred solemnities long intermitted, and the sacrificial victims could scarcely find a purchaser." This roused the priests, who had their wealth by the craft "by law established," to infuriate official Rome to the deadliest ferocity against him. But "the great iron teeth, and brazen claws," of the Dragon could not devour and rend him to death. The two-edged sword of the magistrate was too dull fatally to disable this Bowman of the Seal. His "fellow-servants and brethren might be laid under the altar, weltering in their blood (see fifth seal); but the power of Rome was not equal to the subjugation of what Pliny styles "their sullen and obstinate inflexibility." They obeyed Christ before Caesar, whose gods and imperial image were their abomination; and his power, though "dreadful and terrible," too impotent to compel them to invoke.