Ephesians 2:12 That at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise… "Without God in the world." Think! — what a description! — and applicable to individuals without number! If it had been without friends, shelter, or food, that would have been a gloomy sound. But without God! without Him (that is, in no happy relation to Him), who is the very origin, support, and life of all things; without Him who can make good flow to His creatures from an infinity of sources; without Him whose favour possessed is the best, the sublimest, of all delights, all triumphs, all glories. What do those under so sad a destitution value and seek instead of Him? What will anything, or all things, be worth in His absence? It may be instructive to consider a little to what states of mind this description is applicable; and what a wrong and, calamitous thing the condition is in all of them. We need not dwell on that condition of humanity in which there is no notion of Deity at all — some outcast, savage tribes — souls destitute of the very ideal Not one idea exalted anti resplendent above the rest casting a glory sometimes across the little intellectual field! It is as if, in the outward world of nature, they had no visible heaven — the spirit nothing to go out to, beyond its clay tenement, but the immediately surrounding elements and other creatures of the same order. The adorers of false gods may just be named as coming under the description. There is, almost throughout the race, a feeling in men's minds that belongs to the Divinity; but think how all manner of objects, real and imaginary, have been supplicated to accept and absorb this feeling, that the true God might not take it! It is too obvious almost to be worth noting, how plainly the description applies itself to those who persuade themselves that there is no God. The Divine Spirit and all spirit abolished, he is left amidst masses and systems of matter without a first cause — ruled by chance, or by a blind mechanical impulse of what he calls fate; and, as a little composition of atoms, he is himself to take his chance for a few moments of conscious being, and then be no more forever! And yet, in this infinite prostration of all things, he feels an elation of intellectual pride! But we have to consider the text in an application much more important to us, and to men in general; for, with a most settled belief of the Divine existence, they may be "without God in the world." This is too truly and sadly the applicable description when this belief and its object do not maintain habitually the ascendant influence over us — over the whole system of our thoughts, feelings, purposes, and actions. Can we glance over the earth, and into the wilderness of worlds in infinite space, without the solemn thought that all this is but the sign and proof of something infinitely more glorious than itself? Are we not reminded — "This is a production of His almighty power — that is an adjustment of His all-comprehending intelligence and foresight — there is a glimmer, a ray of His beauty, His glory — there an emanation of His benignity — but for Him all this would never have been; and if, for a moment, His pervading energy were by His will restrained or suspended, what would it all be then?" Not to have some such perceptions and thoughts, accompanied by devout sentiments, is, so far, to "be without God in the world." Again, the text is applicable to those who have no solemn recognition of God's all-disposing government and providence — who have no thought of the course of things but as just "going on" — going on some way or other, just as it canto whom it appears abandoned to a strife and competition of various mortal powers; or surrendered to something they call general laws, and then blended with chance; who have, perhaps, a crude Epicurean notion of exempting the Divine Being from the infinite toil and care of such a charge. The text is a description of those who have but a slight sense of universal accountableness to God as the supreme authority who have not a conscience constantly looking and listening to Him, and testifying for Him; who proceed as if this world were a, province absolved from the strictness of His dominion and His laws; who will not apprehend that there is "His" will and warning affixed to everything; who will not submissively ask, "What dost Thou pronounce on this? To be insensible to the Divine character as Lawgiver, rightful Authority, and Judge, is truly to be "without God in the world," for thus every emotion of the soul and action of the life assumes that He is absent or does not exist. This insensibility of accountableness exists almost entire (a stupefaction of conscience) in very many minds. But in many others there is a disturbed yet inefficacious feeling; and might not some of these be disposed to say, "We are not 'without God in the world,' as an awful Authority and Judge; for we are followed, and harassed, and persecuted, sometimes quite to misery, by the thought of Him in this character. We cannot go on peacefully in the way our inclinations lead; a portentous sound alarms us, a formidable spectre encounters us, though we still persist." The cause here is that men wish to be "without God in the world" — would, in preference to any other prayer, implore Him to "Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of His ways." They would be willing to resume the enterprise of the rebellious angels, if there were any hope. "Oh, that He, with His judgment and laws, were far away!" To be thus with God is in the most emphatical sense to be without Him — without Him as a friend, approver, and patron; each thought of Him tells the soul who it is that it is without, and who it is that in a very fearful sense it never can be without. The description belongs to that state of mind in which there is no communion with God maintained or even sought with cordial aspiration — no devout, ennobling converse held with Him — no conscious reception of delightful impressions, sacred influences, suggested sentiments — no pouring out of the soul in fervent desires for His illuminations, His compassion, His forgiveness, His transforming operations — no earnest, penitential, hopeful pleading in the name of the gracious Intercessor — no solemn, affectionate dedication of the whole being — no animation and vigour obtained for the labours and warfare of a Christian life. But how lamentable to be without God! Consider it in one single view only — that of the loneliness of a human soul in this destitution. All other beings are necessarily (shall we express it so?) extraneous to the soul; they may communicate with it, but they are still separate and without it; an intermediate vacancy keeps them forever asunder, so that the soul must be, in a sense, in an inseparable and eternal solitude — that is, as to all creatures. But God, on the contrary, has an all-pervading power — can interfuse, as it were, His very essence through the being of His creatures — can cause Himself to be apprehended and felt as absolutely in the soul — such an inter-communion as is, by the nature of things, impossible between created beings; and thus the interior central loneliness — the solitude of the soul — is banished by a perfectly intimate presence, which imparts the most affecting sense of society — a society, a communion, which imparts life and joy, and may continue in perpetuity. To men completely immersed in the world this might appear a very abstracted and enthusiastic notion of felicity; but to those who have in any measure attained it, the idea of its loss would give the most emphatic sense of the expression, "Without God in the world." The terms are a true description also of the state of mind in which there is no habitual anticipation of the great event of going at length into the presence of God — absence of the thought of being with Him in another world — of being with Him in judgment, and whither to be with Him forever; not considering that He awaits us somewhere, that the whole movement of life is absolutely towards Him, that the course of life is deciding in what manner we shall appear in His presence; not thinking what manner of fact that will be, what experience, what consciousness, what emotion; not regarding it as the grand purpose of our present state of existence that we may attain a final dwelling in His presence. One more, and the last application we would make of the description is to those who, while professing to retain God in their thoughts with a religious regard, frame the religion in which they are to acknowledge Him according to their own speculation and fancy. Thus many rejecters of Divine revelation have professed, nevertheless, a reverential homage to the Deity; but the God of their faith was to be such as their sovereign reason chose to feign, and therefore the mode of their religion entirely arbitrary. But, if revelation be true, the simple question is, Will the Almighty acknowledge your feigned God for Himself? — and admit your religion to be equivalent to that which He has declared and defined? If He should not, you are "without God in the world." (John Foster.) Parallel Verses KJV: That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: |
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