Chapter 07. The Main Theme Resumed: Prayer for the Indwelling and the Fulness: Doxology

Chapter 7.
The Main Theme Resumed: Prayer for the Indwelling and the Fulness: Doxology Ephesians 3:14-21 "My prayer hath power with God; the grace Unspeakable I now receive;

Through faith I see Thee face to face, I see Thee face to face, and live: In vain I have not wept and strove;

Thy nature and Thy name is Love."

—C. Wesley

I HAVE already attempted to explain the structure of this part of the Epistle. If I see it aright, we have in the paragraph, Ephesians 3:1-13, a digression from a main line of thought, of which line the characteristic note is Divine Indwelling. If the digression had not taken place, we should have seen the Apostle pass at once from the Indwelling as it concerns the whole Church, and the eternal future, to the Indwelling as it concerns the individual heart, and the present hour; this second theme being connected vitally with the first, because to the the Indwelling in the Church hereafter for ever the great, the glorious, preparatory step is the Indwelling in the heart now. But the digression broke in upon this sequence, though it did so only to give us a view, among other things, of an "unsearchable wealth" in Christ of which we shall presently speak again. But now, it is over. The stream of thought has run its majestic circuit at the side, and once more it flows straight onward, onward to the sea, to the deep. For it will conduct us to "all the fulness of God," to a power which can, and will, do wonders in us and for us "above all that we ask or think." And on its way to that Ocean it will waft us into the blessedness of the Indwelling of Christ in the Heart.

Look then, and listen. The Apostle is at prayer, "bowing his knees." The Pretorian at his side may or may not kneel also; he may be a pagan scoffer, but quite possibly he may be a convert and a brother. Disciples like Epaphras and Luke may be there, to kneel too; or it may be some time when all such friends are absent. But however, Paul is on his knees, and pouring out his innermost heart for the Asians. And what he asks for them, he asks for us; for it is for them as Christians that he prays. Let us thankfully remember here the marked absence of the local and the temporal in the allusions of our Epistle; it will bring home the truth and glory of the message more fully upon our own souls. Not for believers of one generation, or race, or station, or grade of civilization, or even of experience, is this man praying here. He is praying for Christians simply as such. And that means, for us.

We will give ear indeed. And we will remember that it is not only St Paul at prayer. The Lord is in him, that he may intercede. Never was he more inspired than now. It is not he that speaks about the heart, about the Presence, about the blessing; it is "the Spirit that maketh intercession." We are in the very line, in each petition, of the will of God.

Ephesians 3:14. For this cause, for the sake of your present blessedness, and your coming unimaginable glory as the Habitation of God, the "cause" present to my mind when that same phrase (τούτου χάριν) was used before ( Ephesians 3:1), I bow my knees towards, as looking up towards, the Father,[1] the ultimate and eternal

Ephesians 3:15. Fountain of all blessing, Him from whom, out of whom (ἐξ οὗ), as by a sacred derivation of thought and word, all the Family[2] (πατριά) in the heavens and upon earth, all the company, all the body, of believers here and of the blessed ones above, human and angelic spirits alike, gets its name,πατριά. And now, what is the petition? It is altogether for the disciples’ hearts, and for the Saviour’s glory, through the Spirit:

Ephesians 3:16. That He would give to you, (for it is a sovereign gift, under His own covenant of free grace,[3]) according to, on the scale and in the style of, the wealth of His glory, the resources of His ever-blessed Nature, manifested to us, to be with power made mighty,[4]by means of His Spirit, the Holy Spirit of Promise, the Lord of Pentecost, "Spirit of counsel and of might," deep in the inner man,[5] the region where the new life moves and grows, the regenerate consciousness itself. So the prayer is for power, divine in kind, and, as to its operation, penetrating to the depths of manhood. To what issue and effect? Is the result to be convulsive and formidable? Is the operation to come out in words and works of miracle, alarming the world into submission? No; it is a power full of life, life infinite and eternal, but so deep that it is still, with the peace of God Himself, and with a joy which is but heavenly love in movement. This "making mighty with power" is to have for its first and main effect just the opening of the heart’s inmost door to the personal presence of the Saviour, and then, and so, the full apprehension. of His salvation:

Ephesians 3:17. So that our (τόν) Christ may take up His lasting habitation,[6]by means of faith, in your hearts; coming to them in a sense, in a respect, so deep and great, as to constitute a practically new arrival, and remaining where He so arrives not as a Guest, precariously detained, but as a Master resident in His proper home; and this, "by faith," "by your (τῆς) faith," through your taking Him at His word, taking Him for granted, and opening the door without misgiving to His entrance. Then, at once the ideas of resultant blessing develope themselves from this glorious germ; that, in love rooted and founded,[7] having stricken your root deep into the soil of the Love of God, having built your house of salvation firm upon its rock, you may

Ephesians 3:18. achieve strength (ἐξισχύσητε) to grasp,[8] in the insight and appropriation of the soul, with all the saints, with an experience all the deeper because consciously one with that of "the whole Family," what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of that mighty Love just mentioned, and just to be mentioned again, that Universe of blessing, with its vast horizons and its boundless sphere, its Purpose, Work, and

Ephesians 3:19. Covenant of glorious grace[9]; and to know, with an intelligence now wonderfully developed,[10]the knowledge-transcending love of our (τοῦ) Christ; yes, transcending for ever, while it invites and allures for ever, all that we call knowing, for it is infinite; so that, as the crown and issue of the whole blissful process of Indwelling, of Intuition, you may be filled[11]unto, up to, all the fulness of our (τοῦ) God; your whole happy nature flooded, as it were, with all which, being Grace in Him the Giver, can become Grace in us the receivers of the Gift. Is this too much to hope, to ask, to take? No,

Ephesians 3:20. because He is in the question. But to Him who is able to do beyond all things, to carry His work of blessing to lengths indefinite indeed, vastly beyond all[12]we ask or understand of His wealth and His ways, yet, all the while, according to the power of the Spirit

Ephesians 3:21. which is already at work in us; to Him be the glory, in the Church, (not by the Church only, but in it, for it is the occasion and matter of the ascription,) and in Christ Jesus,[13] who is supremely the Father’s Gift, and therefore supremely the Occasion of His Glory; unto all the generations of the age of the ages. Amen. Even so be it, even so shall it be, through that interminable Future which lies waiting for us in His Eternity; that "age," that "sum and circumference of ages," ages which again will themselves contain periods faintly imaged by the "generations" which make up the centuries of Time. So ends the Prayer, the "bowing of the knees," and then the Doxology, which seems to come less to close it than to waft it aloft into eternity. This is one of the great Scriptures, the Holy Spirit’s words of the first order. Let us recall it, let us ponder it, to be ourselves uplifted, and then abased, but only to be the better uplifted again in the power of God.

Adolphe Monod, in his unpretending but precious "Explanation" of the Epistle, writes thus of the profound paragraph before us:

"After the grandest promises which human language can express, the Holy Ghost here closes by declaring that all which can be expressed is infinitely below the reality which is in God. In vain we mount, even in the track of an Apostle; we can only contemplate, after all, ’parts of the ways of God’ ( Job 26:14), and we must always conclude with ’groanings that cannot be uttered’ ( Romans 8:26).. Yes, and nothing other can suffice us than this avowal of insufficiency; nothing less could respond to the vague and vast need of our heart. All that the mind comes to seize distinctly (netternent), and the mouth to enunciate with precision, is incapable of satisfying us. This conclusion accordingly, astonishing and unexpected, is just what we required.

"Nothing can restrain or bound the power of God towards us; nothing in Him, nothing even in us; no limits set to His power, for it knows no limits; not even the weakness of our prayers, and the imperfection of our knowledge, for He is able to transcend all our demands and all our conceptions.

"But alas for us, if this language, infinitely below the reality which is in God, should be infinitely above the reality which is in us! Imagine a practical Christianity conceived according to the text of the Scriptures only, and irrespective of the personal experience of believers; and then imagine a practical Christianity conceived only according to the experience of believers, and irrespective of the written Word. Should we not say that here were two different religions? To pass from Scripture to our experience seems like a fall from heaven to earth—not to say, sometimes, to hell! Let us class (assortissons) our Christianity aright. And may the Lord teach us how to bring our experience into harmony with His promises. Truly, we have need of a new baptism of the Holy Spirit."[14]

Reflections like these, the reflections of a saint such as Monod, at once abased and profoundly animated by the words we have studied, may well seem the best commentary upon them. The whole passage calls the believer away from a mere discussion of phrases to the inner chamber of faith and prayer. "You have your Bible, and you have your knees; use them"; so said a venerable Christian, my godfather, Carr John Glyn, who died in 1896, within twenty months of his hundred years. Let us "use them" indeed, that the treasures of this Ephesian paragraph may become in some measure the current coin of our lives. But this very end may be advanced by just such attention to the phrases in detail as may send us to our knees with more articulate aims and hopes. So let me take up some few out of the great words of the paragraph, and point to them, in all earnest, for faith and for expectant prayer.

I. "I bow my knees to the Father... that He would grant you." So then this is a matter of divine, personal, benignant gift. Free as the gift of pardon, of justifying righteousness, of adoption, of incorporation, is the gift of the Indwelling and its attendant bliss. For the moment, put away other aspects, other sides, other truths; they will be sure to be remembered in their place, if we are using "our Bible and our knees." Think just now of just this; "that He would grant you," "that He would give"ἵνα δῷ. "Cease from thine own works"; "cease from thine own wisdom." This is a gift, free and sovereign; address thyself in simplicity—to receive.

II. "To be with power made mighty... that Christ may take up His habitation in your hearts." This is to be the Spirit’s operation, "with power to make you mighty," that you may—not shake the earth, but receive the Indweller. And why do we need a supreme empowering just in order to receive our Life, our Light? Does the hungry wanderer need power in order to eat the food without which he will soon sink? Does the bewildered manner need power to welcome on to his deck the pilot who alone can steer him to the haven of his desire? No; but there is another aspect of the matter here. For the heart, though it immeasurably needs the blessed Indweller, has that in it which dreads His absolute Indwelling. Can it trust Him with complete internal authority? Will He not use it to purposes terrible to the human heart, asserting His position by some infliction, some exaction, awful and unpitying? So the hand, stretched out to "open the door" ( Revelation 3:20), the inner door—for the King is supposed to be already received into the porch, and hall, and more public chambers of the being—falls again, and shrinks from that turning of the key which is to set the last recess quite open to the Master. Here is the need for the Spirit’s empowering work. Come, Holy Ghost, and shew to the hesitating heart "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," that lovely glory, shewn in that fair Countenance; then it shall hesitate no more. Beholding His love in His look it shall not dread His power in His grasp. It shall be strong to welcome Him wholly in, for it shall see, in the light of the Spirit, that "in His presence is the fulness of joy," that "to serve Him is to reign."

III. "That Christ may take up His habitation in your hearts" What, has He not been in residence before? Can the Ephesian be a Christian indeed, with Christ still absent out of him? Is it not at Ephesus as at Corinth, where "Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be counterfeits, castaways" (ἀδόκιμοι: 2 Corinthians 13:5)? Well, all that side is vitally true, but there is another side. The Lord must, for our salvation at all, be so in living union with us that we are in Him, and He in us. But His presence in us has its degrees and advances, its less and more, its outer and inner. To drop metaphor, a life may be truly Christian and yet far from fully Christian; the man may have come really to Christ, and have really cast anchor on Him, and have really confessed Him, and be really seeking to serve Him, yet be keeping back, perhaps quite unconsciously, whole regions of the life from Him. He may be living rather as His ally than as His vassal. He may be rather treating Him as an august Visitor in His servant’s house than behaving as the loving bondservant in a house where Christ is always the Master at home. And St Paul cannot rest about the Ephesians till they have, all of them, accepted the Lord simply on His own terms in this matter. They will never satisfy their Apostle, for they cannot possibly satisfy the Lord, if they do not welcome the blessed, the beloved, the adorable Indweller to the heart, not only to the convictions, or even to the conduct, but to the heart. He must be inducted into the central chamber, for it is His proper place. And He must be always there.

"Christ" must be "hallowed as Lord in the heart" ( 1 Peter 3:15; the true reading). "Though all of us is a temple for Him," says the old Puritan pastor, Bayne, of Cambridge, on this passage, "yet the heart is the choir, where He properly sitteth."

There let Him sit, supreme and at the centre. In many a Christian’s experience it is as if the Christian life began anew, and in an almost heaven, when the will is "with power made mighty" deliberately and without reserve to seat Him there.

IV. "By faith"; "by means of your (τῆς) faith." Take fullest notice of that phrase, so strong in its simplicity. The Indwelling is, from one side, the sovereign gift of God. From the other, it is a matter for the simplest and most personal reception by man. And then, the form of that reception is just this—faith; reliance, submissive trust; not animated action, not exalted aspiration, but acceptance. Wonderful "faith," pregnant of all imaginable blessings, but itself single and simple; pathway to all virtues, but itself no virtue, for it is just the taking of the infinitely Trustworthy at His word; is not this the mere act of reasonable self-preservation?

True, faith is the gift of God—but in order that it may be the act of man. Let it be our act today.

V. "In love rooted and grounded,... that you may know the knowledge-transcending love of Christ." "From faith to faith" ( Romans 1:17) is the order of the Gospel from one side; from love to love is its order from another. The Apostle prays that in the Eternal Love (I think we have adequately seen already that it is of that Love he is speaking) they may so feel their "root and foundation" that they may look around from it and contemplate in peace the universe of salvation, and that now, in particular, they may "grasp the love of Christ." As if the apprehension of His love were something very different from only the vestibule and introduction to the Eternal Love in its highest aspects; rather, the soul is seen advancing from an enjoyment of the divine love in general to that of the special love of Christ, as to a sanctuary within the temple.

Wonderful is the testimony of the words, so placed, to the divine glory of the Redeemer. Such is His love in kind that to "know" it is the very hope of the soul. Such is it in measure that it for ever transcends all our knowing. If St Paul had written down in so many words, "Christ is God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God," he could not have preached His Deity more fully. But let us not take the words only as a contribution to a true Christology. Let us so receive the Indweller by faith that we may be for ever knowing this love of His—yes, His love even to us, just as we are—which yet we can never wholly know.

"O Son of God, who lovest me, I will be Thine alone; And all I have and all I am Shall henceforth be Thine own."

VI. "Filled, unto all the fulness of God." No fanatical rhetoric is here, nor the least dream of a mingling and confusion of the finite and the Infinite. "Neither the Church, nor the soul, can contain the Infinite. But they can receive the whole, the plenitude (πλήρωμα), of those blessings which the Infinite One is willing and able at each moment to bestow upon the finite recipient." "The idea is of a vessel connected with an abundant source external to itself, and which will be filled, up to its capacity, if the connexion is complete."[15] "Lord, we ask it, hardly knowing What this wondrous gift may be;

Yet fulfil to overflowing;

Thy great meaning let us see.

"Make us, in Thy royal palace, Vessels worthy of the King; From Thy fulness fill our chalice, From Thy never-failing spring.

"Father, by this blessed filling, Dwell Thyself in us, we pray;

We are waiting, Thou art willing;

Fill us with Thyself today."[16]
So we shut the Apostle’s letter once more. Let us do so with that great word of his doxology upon our lips, τῷδυναμένῳ, "To Him who is able." To read such a passage, and to look to ourselves, is despair. To read it, and to look "to Him who is able," is "everlasting comfort and good hope through grace." May it be with us somewhat as it was, a hundred years ago and more, with Dr William Conyers, Vicar of Helmsley, in Yorkshire. Earnest, conscientious, but as yet spiritually unilluminated, he toiled among his parishioners with vast diligence, but always inwardly disappointed. One day, reading his Bible, he lit upon those words which we studied a little in our last chapter, "The unsearchable riches of Christ" They struck him with a profound surprise, and a strange misgiving; could the Christ, who had seemed to him hitherto a Figure in his theology so august yet so intelligible, so familiar, be the Christ of those words? And he did not rest till he had found Him indeed in the glory of His salvation, and had felt life transfigured in His light.

You may think, perhaps rightly, that you stand further on in the knowledge of the Lord than Conyers did when he read of the wealth unsearchable. But you can never be so far advanced in it that new worlds cannot yet open before you. For Christ, as to His riches, is a Labyrinth no clue can traverse; and as to His love, it passeth knowledge.

"Thou art able; we adore Thee;

We ascribe to Thee the power, And glad anthems to Thy glory We would sing each day and hour;

While the joy of now possessing In Thyself each promised blessing Is our glad unending dower."

Miss J. S. Pigott.

^[1]The wordsτοῦΚ.ἡμῶνἸ. Χ.. must certainly be omitted. The evidence of MSS. and patristic quotations is against them, and St Jerome expressly says that the "Latin copies" which contain them are in error. And context favours the omission; theΠατήρis here regarded, immediately and mainly, in His relation not to the blessed Son but to the redeemed Family. That relation is indeed only "in" the Son. But it can be contemplated occasionally by itself; and so it is here.

^[2]Πατήρ, πατριά: it is a real misfortune that in English we cannot keep the verbal point of the Greek, by words which have a verbal kinship. We might perhaps renderπατριά, "father’s-house,"or"father’s-family"; but it would be cumbersome at best. The R.V. here renders "every family," or (margin) "fatherhood." And this would no doubt be right in view of classical usage, according to which "the whole family" would almost certainly demandπᾶταἡπατριά. But the usage of N.T. Greek is not so strict, and we may and must accordingly consult context along with wording. What does context say? Does the Apostle seem most likely here to take up the thought of God’s spiritual Fatherhood as the archetype of all family unions, spiritual or not, in earth and heaven?orthe thought of the family oneness of saints and angels under the "Father of spirits"? To me the answer seems clear for thesecondalternative. All through this great passage he is full of the thought of the spiritual anduniversalcommunity. The phrase, "in heaven and earth," itself (compared withEphesians 1:10) suggests such thoughts rather than those of "families" in detail. I advocate therefore the Authorized Version. The Rabbis called the angels "the upper family" and Israel "the lower." The parallel with St Paul’s language is not perfect, but it is near enough for illustration; the phrases may be as old as St Paul’s time, and may have partially moulded his language here.

^[3]See, on the mightygift to the heartunder the New Covenant,Jeremiah 31:31, and the related passages in N.T.;2 Corinthians 3,Hebrews 8, 10. See also the close of the present chapter of this book.

^[4]Κραταιωθῆναι: observe the aorist, with its suggestion of decision and crisis.

^[5]Εἰς τὸνἔσωἄνθρωπον: lit. "intothe inner man." My translation may fairly represent this; the thought is of the inward direction of the Gift; no surface-work.

^[6]Κατοικῆσαι: observe the compound, and the tense. It is to be asettledresidence,κατοικεῖν. And it is to be a decisive, critical,beginning—indicated by the aorist.

^[7]Ἐνἀγάπῃ ἐῤῥιζωμένοι καὶτεθεμελιωμένοι: placed here at the beginning of a new sentence, the words seem to amount almost to a sentence by themselves, as if he had said, "that you may be in love rooted, etc., and so may be able, etc."—Ἐνἀγάπῃ: the reference seems almost certainly to be to the Eternal Love. Nothing less in the way ofἀγάπῃcould be thesoilof the Christian’s root, therockof his foundation.

^[8]Observe again the significant aorists,ἐξισχύσητε, καταλαβέσθαι,

^[9]"Some curiosities of interpretation attach to this verse. Severianus (cent. 4, 5)... finds here an allusion to the shape of the Cross, and in that shape to the Lord’s Godhead (’height’) and Manhood (’depth’), and to the extent of the apostolic missions (’length and breadth’). St Jerome in his Commentary here interprets the words at some length, and finds in the’height’the holy angels, in the’depth’the evil spirits, in the ’length’ those of mankind who are on the upward path, and in the ’breadth’ those who are ’sinking towards vices. Forbroad and ample is the way which leadeth to death.’The Calvinist Zanchius adopts from Photius (cent. 9) the explanation that the reference is to ’the mystery of the free salvation through Christ of the Gentiles and the whole human race’; calledlong,because decreed from eternity;broad,because extended to all;deep,because of the descent of Christ to Hades, and because of the resurrection of the dead;high,because Christ ascended above all heavens." (Note in theCambridge Bible.)

^[10]Γνῶναι: again remark the aorist. The whole passage is full of the thought of "new departures" in the life of grace.

^[11]Once more an aorist,πληρωθῆτε

^[12]Construct togetherὑπερεκπερισσοῦ ὧν. Observe this grandly characteristic passage, with its repeatedὑπέρ.

^[13]Almost certainly readκαὶ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ.

^[14]Explication de l’Éfître aux Ephésiens,pp. 206, 207.

^[15]Notes in theCambridge Bible.

^[16]Miss F. R. Havergal.