The stream will remember its fountain; the children of God will gather to their childhood's home. The world will hear the gospel in the recovered accents of its prophets and apostles.
[80] Rom. xii. 1; 2 Cor. i. 3; Phil. i. 8, ii. 1; comp. Luke i. 78. The =oiktirmoi tou Theou, splanchna kai oiktirmoi=, rendered in our Version "mercies of God," denotes something even more affecting,--God's sense of the woefulness of human life,--"the pitying tenderness Divine."
[82] On _grace_, comp. _The Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor's Bible), Chapter X.
[83] Compare also, on Faith, _The Epistle to the Galatians_ (Expositor's Bible), Chapters X.-XII. and XV.
[84] =Este sesôsmenoi=: for the peculiar emphasis of this form of the verb, implying a settled fact, an assured state, compare ver. 12, =ête ... apêllotriômenoi=; Col. ii. 10; Gal. ii. 11, iv. 3; 2 Cor. iv. 3, etc.
[85] Rom. viii. 31-39; comp. vv. 9-17; also 1 Thess. v. 23, 24; 2 Thess. iii. 3-5; 1 Cor. i. 4-9; Phil. i. 6, iii. 13, 14; 2 Tim. i. 12, iv. 18, for St Paul's doctrine of Assurance.
"Wherefore remember, that aforetime ye, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision in the flesh, made by hands; that ye were at that time separate from Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: but now in Christ Jesus ye who sometime were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ."--EPH. ii. 11-13.
The apostle's _Wherefore_ sums up for his readers the record of their salvation rehearsed in the previous verses. "You were buried in your sins, sunk in their corruption, ruined by their guilt, living under God's displeasure and in the power of Satan. All this has passed away. The almighty Hand has raised you with Christ into a heavenly life. God has become your Father; His love is in your heart; by the strength of His grace you are enabled to walk in the way marked out for you from your creation. _Wherefore remember_: think of what you were, and of what you are!"
To such recollections we do well to summon ourselves. The children of grace love to recall, and on fit occasions recount for God's glory and the help of their fellows, the way in which God led them to the knowledge of Himself. In some the great change came suddenly. He "made speed" to save us. It was a veritable resurrection, as signal and unlooked for as the rising of Christ from the dead. By a swift passage we were "translated from the power of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love." Once living without God in the world, we were arrested by a strange providence--through some overthrow of fortune or shock of bereavement, or by a trivial incident touching unaccountably a hidden spring in the mind--and the whole aspect of life was altered in a moment. We saw revealed, as by a lightning flash at night, the emptiness of our own life, the misery of our nature, the folly of our unbelief, the awful presence of _God_--God whom we had forgotten and despised! We sought, and found His mercy. From that hour the old things passed away: we lived who had been dead,--made alive to God through Jesus Christ.
