01.04. ESSAY NO. 4

ESSAY NO. 4

Paul had no sooner ended his great sentence about the wonders of God’s grace than he began a new one almost as long (Ephesians 1:15-23), dealing with human response to grace. With good psychology, Paul, after graciously commending the Ephesians for their faith in Christ and their love for all the saints (essential marks of all Christians), told them of his thanks to God for them and of his ceaseless prayers on their behalf.

Prayer

Paul was a man of prayer. He believed that when God created the universe with all of its marvelous interplay of physical and moral forces, he provided for prayer. Divine energies are released, and chan­nels through which God may act are opened by it; instead of working separately it blends with and works with other forces. Paul knew the mind and method of God too well to be mistaken about prayers. The fact that he, a man of exceptional mental and moral powers, prayed so much is proof that prayer “availeth much in its working.” If prayer does not work, what is to be thought of Paul? Sensible, honest men just do not continue to fish a lifetime in water that contains no fish. God designed his world to operate in conjunc­tion with human cooperation. He fuses both the prayers and the deeds of men into the final order of run­ning his whole creation.

Consequently, prayer is not a miraculous or magical substitute for human effort. Paul, Moses, and all other men who pray most work most too. Men who believe the Bible have no doubts, despite mysteries on the human level, about the reality of prayer. When men realize that God can use laws with which they are acquainted, as he used the law of gravity for un­told ages before men dreamed of its existence, they pray in faith and learn by experience that prayer works. And is not this enough? Is there a man so foolish as to refuse the benefits of an intricate ma­chine that works because he cannot see how it works?

Paul’s General Prayer That God “may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him (Christ); having the eyes of your heart enlightened . . .(Ephesians 1:17-18). In this prayer Paul is not talking about the spe­cial miraculous knowledge of his day, but about the general spiritual understanding and discernment by which Christians still know Christ to be a real, liv­ing person. This intimate, personal acquaintance with Christ himself, which leads into perpetually increas­ing knowledge, appreciation, and appropriation of him as the very bread and light of life, so that studying the Bible and living the Christian life result in his becoming more and more a wise, practical revelation, is what Paul means by “a spirit of wisdom and reve­lation in the knowledge of him.” It is a very different thing, not only from the miraculous gifts of the first century, but also from the prevalent academic knowl­edge about the Bible and Christ of the twentieth cen­tury.

Before a man can acquire this knowledge, the eyes of his heart must be enlightened. Since what the heart “sees” is the urge and ground swell of human activ­ity, what a man loves, more than what he thinks, en­ters into his making. Christ gives the place of domi­nant, central power in his kingdom of love, “the vita­min of the soul.” Honest study of the Bible, confid­ing prayer, intimate communion with God, and, grow­ing out of the moral sympathy and spiritual affinity between Christ and Christians, the rich, energizing emotional experience of being fused with Christ into an organism, animated by his Spirit and instinct with his life is, in Paul’s sense, “the knowledge of him.”

Paul’s Specific Prayer

Paul prays that the Ephesians may know, first, “What is the hope of his calling”; second, “What the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints”; third, “What the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe” (Ephesians 1:18-19). This is Paul’s prayer of the three “whats.”

Because there is no more bracing tonic for the hu­man will than hope, Paul prays that they may con­sider the substance and worth of their Christian hope, which is to be consummated when they “shall see his face” in eternity. If they but see the contrasting emp­tiness and hopelessness of life without “Christ . . .the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27), they can never, thinks Paul, go back to the Christ-less life.

Leaving the saint’s inheritance in Christ, the prayer moves on to the second “what,” God’s inheritance in the saints. The truth that God has in his church “a people for his own possession,” “a heritage,” which he purchased at a piteous cost, and which is as prec­ious to him as a goodly pearl of great price, should touch a Christian to the heart, the area in which Chris­tianity works, primarily, and bring to his lips the questions: “What returns is God receiving on his in­vestment in me? The eyes of my heart seeing that in his saints, evermore than in suns and stars, he has a medium through which to manifest his wisdom and goodness, how can I, who profess to be loyal to him and jealous of his honor, ever be false and grieve his great heart by disgracing his church?” With such masterly instruction and exhortation, Paul hopes to wed each Christian to Christ forever. The Christian standard is so high that some decline the endeavor to be Christians. Others, trying and fail­ing so often, become discouraged and quit. The third “what” of Paul’s prayer deals with this situation at some length. Men in Christ have access to God’s in­vincible power and need not suffer defeat and despair. The same “exceeding greatness of power” that raised Christ from the dead, enthroned him in heaven far above every other name, and “gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body,” re­sides in and empowers every member in his body. Men who abide in Christ cannot be defeated unless Christ is. In another connection, Paul distills these verses into, “The Lord hath power to make him stand” (Romans 14:4). Paul, personally, out of much experience with God’s power, witnesses: “I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me” (Php 4:13). And behold, what a powerful, vital man God’s power made of him!