Sclater

There follows now a denunciation of certain and most severe judgment upon hypocrites, and is disposed very fitly unto a Rhetorical Dialogue, and communication. Wherein first he preoccupies the foolish thoughts of these hypocrites, after resolves of the certain issue, on this manner.

Tell me hypocrite, think you that when God’s judgment is against all that do such things, you shall amongst all be exempted? or that you shall escape the judgment of God? what madness is this? when as other men’s facts escape not your censure, which are but a man, you should thing your own evil deeds should escape the judgment of GOD; or how else? think you that because the Lord has hitherto forborne you, and heaped his blessings upon you, therefore he approves your courses? and sends these as testimonies of your righteousness? here see how ignorantly you abuse, and mistake the end and use of God’s bountifulness; which tends indeed, to bring you to repentance, no way either justifies your courses, or secures you from future judgment. The resolution follows: well how ever it be, whether one or other, this I am sure of, you by your hardness and unrepentance heart, heaps upon upon yourself a treasure of wrath,against the day of wrath, &c., this the disposition of the Text; in the words may be observed: first, an expressing of a secure hypocrite’s thoughts, with a confutation of them annexed: secondly, a denunciation of certain and most heavy judgment to be inflicted, and impenitency: secondly, the same pointed at, in the day of wrath, &c.

Vers. 3.
Obser.

Thinking thou this that thou shall escape?

Where first note, the fond perversion of a foolish hypocrite, thinking that though all other men’s sins be punished, yet he alone may escape God’s wrath: the Prophet Isaiah thus brings in these men triumphing we have made a Covenant with death, and with hell we are at agreement, though a scourge run over, and pass through, it shall not come to us; for we have made falsehood our refuge, and under vanity we hid [Isa. 28:15]: so little thing they of God’s impartial justice, all-seeing providence, and irresistible power.

Application.

And is not this conceit of our own people? still promising themselves impunity, even in those sins for which God’s wrath even in this world lights on some of the children of disobedience? how many drunkards see we clothed with rags? adulterers filled with rottenness, and brought to a morsel of bread? Robbers trussed at the gallows? Usurers plagued in their posterity, &c., and yet for all that, men living in the same sins, think they can escape the same judgment of God. The heathen could say and truly, Rex Jupiter omnibus idem; and here the Apostle, with God there is no respect of persons.

A second fond thought of a hypocrite here mentioned, is this; that as he escapes man’s judgment, so he may God’s; and things all well so man justify him, &c. But how vainly, the Apostle here shows by their own fact; reasoning from the less to the greater, you a man as another, judge the facts of others, and nothing can pass your censure, how then can you think that you can escape the strict censure and judgment of the Lord Almighty: John John’s speech is not much unlike, 1 Joh. 3:20. Compare it.

Vers. 4.

Or despisest thou, &c.

They are said to despise God’s bounty and patience, because they abused it to another end, then it tended unto: for whereas it was vouchsafed unto them to bring them to amendment of life, they abused it, as an occasion to encourage them in their sins.

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Baxter:

The fifth text which I shall insist on is 2 Pet. 2.1,

“But there were false Prophets also among the People, even as there shall be false Teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.”

And verse 20, &c:

“For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the World through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning: for it had been better for them not to have known the way of Righteousness, then after they have known it, ti turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them: But it happened to them according to the true Proverb, ‘The Dog is turned to his own Vomit again, and the Sow is turned to her own wallowing in the mire.’”

Whereunto for fuller explication add but Jude’s words of the same men, ver. 4. “Ungodly men, turning the Grace of our God into Lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ,” put all these together because they all speak of the same men.

Now 1. The Text expressly says, they denied the Lord that bought them.

2. That is it is the Lord Jesus that is the Lord appears.

1. In that it is expressly said in the 20. ver. that it was by the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that they escaped the pollutions of the World.

2. Jude expressly says, “They denied the Lord Jesus Christ.”

3. There have been few that have denied God among all the Apostates in comparison of those that have denied Christ: Nay, it is a great doubt whether it can  be proved of any, directly that were in those times.

4. Their Apostasy is described by “turning from the holy Commandment delivered to them,” which is called “the way of Righteousness,” and to their former Vomit (which must needs be the state they were in before they turned Christians) and to the mire, after they were washed; And this state of Apostasy is opposed to “escaping the pollutions of the World, by the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” so that it is left past doubt that it is the Lord Jesus Christ that bought them whom they are said to deny. And Jude says of them, that “they are twice dead, plucked up by the roots,” by which it appears that after their first death, they had received some kind of new Life by Christ.

Lastly, Note, that here are many benefits which they received, which could not have befallen them, but through the Death of Christ; They could no other way have been washed and have escaped the world’s pollutions, and have known the way of Righteousness, &c., yea Jude says,”They turn the Grace of God into Lasciviousness,” therefore it was a sin against Grace: and all Grace is by the blood of Christ: yea it iseems they had themselves some Grace, that is, (Mercy contrary to merit and tending to a recovery), which they so turned into Lasciviousness. And Peter in the next chapter shows that their Apostasy lay in a not-believing Christ’s second coming, because of his seeming delay, and therefore they gave themselves up to their Lusts, and said mockingly, “Where is the promise of his coming?” so that it is both evident that they were purchased by Christ, and that it is Christ that bought them whom they are said to deny.

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Bayne:

Doct.
By nature
wrath abides
on all.

Observe again, what is the state of men by nature, they are such on whom the wrath of God abides. We are from the very conception and birth, such on whom God’s indignation is poured out, yea such on whom the full vials of God’s wrath are poured out, together with our being God’s answer towards us, as in ourselves considered. Let us take notice of the evils which do accompany us from birth, that we may understand better that we are indeed children of wrath.

1. We are born such from whom God is separated; “Your sins have separated twixt you and your God,” “we are strangers to God from the womb,” [Esai. 59.2; Psal. 58.3].

2. We are given up to Satan; children of the Devil, of darkness, under the power of the Devil the Prince of darkness, and are in all kinds of darkness, of ignorance; “none understand, none seek after God” [Psal. 14.2]:Darkness of lists and ungodliness; darkness of condition; God’s anger abides on all that doe not believe; O most dismal cloud!

3. We are subject to every curse in this life, whether spiritual or corporal.

4. To death temporal.

5. To death eternal.

How comes all this to pass? Because we are all by nature sinful, together with our beings, we are defiled, we are sinners, and so “come short of the glory of God,” [Rom. 3.24.].

We further affirm that all of us are sinners deserving wrath for the lust and proneness that is in us to do evil: This also they grant to go with original sin, and to be a consequent of it; but they will not have it sin properly, to which wrath belongs.

It rebukes such as shift off and slight over their sins; we hope we are not the worst, we live homely, neighborly, and quietly, doing as we would be done by; for the Devil, we desire him; for the curse and hell we hope God will be merciful. These men would make them be persuaded their case is worse then it is: But these persons shall know one day experimentally, our reports come far short of the matter. Who knows the power of thy wrath? None but the damned. Believe it, and so avoid the mischief.

Source:  Paul Bayne, An Entire Commentary VPon the Whole Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians, (London: Printed by M.F. for R. Milbourne, and I. Barlet, 1643), 210. [Some spelling modernized, underlining added, some reformatting, marginal Scripture references included inline, and marginal comments not included.]

Shedd

1) It may be asked, If atonement naturally and necessarily cancels guilt, why does not the vicarious atonement of Christ save all men indiscriminately, as the Universalist contends? The substituted suffering of Christ being infinite is equal in value to the personal suffering of all mankind; why then are not all men upon the same footing and in the class of the saved, by virtue of it? The answer is, Because it is a natural impossibility. Vicarious atonement without faith in it is powerless to save. It is not the making of this atonement, but the trusting in it, that saves the sinner. “By faith are ye saved. He that believeth shall be saved,” Ephesians 2:8; Mark 16:16. The making of this atonement merely satisfies the legal claims, and this is all that it does. If it were made, but never imputed and appropriated, it would result in no salvation. A substituted satisfaction of justice without an act of trust in it, would be useless to sinners. It is as naturally impossible that Christ’s death should save from punishment one who does not confide in it, as that a loaf of bread should save from starvation a man who does not eat it. The assertion that because the atonement of Christ is sufficient for all men, therefore no men are lost, is as absurd as the assertion that because the grain produced in the year 1880 was sufficient to support the life of all men on the globe, therefore no men died of starvation during that year. The mere fact that Jesus Christ made satisfaction for human sin, alone and of itself, will save no soul. Christ, conceivably, might have died precisely as he did, and his death have been just as valuable for expiatory purposes as it is, but if his death had not been followed with the work of the Holy Ghost and the act of faith on the part of individual men, he would have died in vain. Unless his objective work is subjectively appropriated, it is useless, so far as personal salvation is concerned. Christ’s suffering is sufficient to cancel the guilt of all men, and in its own nature completely satisfies the broken law. But all men do not make it their own atonement by faith in it; by pleading the merit of it in prayer, and mentioning it as the reason and ground of their pardon. They do not regard and use it as their own possession, and blessing. It is nothing for them but a historical fact. In this state of things, the atonement of Christ is powerless to save. It remains in the possession of Christ who made it, and has not been transferred to the individual. In the scripture phrase, it has not been imputed. There may be a sum of money in the hands of a rich man that is sufficient in amount to pay the debts of a million of debtors; but unless they individually take money from his hands into their own, they cannot pay their debts with it. There must be a personal act of each debtor, in order that this suns of money on deposit may actually extinguish individual indebtedness. Should one of the debtors, when payment is demanded of him, merely say that there is an abundance of money on deposit, but take no steps himself to get it and pay it to his creditor, he would be told that an undrawn deposit is not a payment of a debt.  Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 2:440-441.

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