Ephesians 3

Ephesians 3:1-13

THE EFFECT ON PAUL Ephesians 3:1-13IN beginning the study of Ephesians I felt sure it could be accomplished in three discourses, but this Epistle grows upon one as he continues his study until he realizes that every verse in it is not only worthy of remark, but tempts one to extended discussion; and even in expository work it seems impossible to do justice to more than a chapter at a time. There is a sense in which the third chapter of Ephesians links itself intimately with the second, namely, in that Paul was the one Apostle who saw most clearly and emphasized most wisely the three subjects of salvation—the Jew, the Gentile, and the Church of God; and in this third chapter, he is but rehearsing his personal relationship to this great subject. But, in his explanation of that relationship the Apostle says things of such supreme moment that one would be inexcusable for passing them over lightly or even for treating them briefly.In the first chapter we saw the three Authors of salvation; in the second chapter we saw the three subjects of salvation; in this chapter we may see the threefold effect on Paul, involving at once his appointments, his prayers, and his praises.THE APOSTLE’S “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, “If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward, “How that by revelation He made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, “Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ (which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy Apostles and Prophets by the Spirit;) “That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the Gospel: “Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of His power. “Unto me who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; “And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ; “To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God, “According to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: “In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him. “Wherefore I desire that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory” (Ephesians 3:1-13). This text gives occasion for certain important remarks, and more than a passing consideration of them.Paul was manacled on account of the Gentiles.“For this cause, I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles”. The reference is to his suffering in the prison at Rome, in which place the Epistle was penned. It was his proclamation that Christ stood ready to receive the Jew and Gentile alike, and that this was the Divine plan from the beginning, that had roused against the Apostle the bitter enmity of Jews, whose constant indictments against him finally effected a farce of a trial and a final imprisonment. On occasion they had cried, “Away with such a fellow from the earth”. And again, “It is not fit that he should live”. More than forty of these Jews had found themselves under a curse neither to eat nor to drink until they had killed Paul.

And their continued and bitter opposition made its impression upon the Roman officials who finally concluded that a man against whom so much was spoken must certainly be guilty of some crimes, and Paul was now suffering the penalty of that opinion. He was one of the first in that noble line of sufferers whose blood became the seed of the Church, and that for making no distinction between Jew and Gentile.

While William Tyndale, the noble Ridley, old Samuel Rutherford, John Bunyan, and others, have gone to prison for the same offense, namely, the preaching of the grace of God toward all men, and endured nobly, the great Apostle was to each of them, in turn, example and inspiration.Our modern missions to the heathen have effected a repetition of the Pauline experiences on the part of the Apostles of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Think of what Judson endured; of what Boardman suffered; and the hardships of Livingston; but the times of a hundred years since knew not all the noble martyrs! When the Boxer movement, in China, was on, Horace Pitkin was among those whose death had been determined upon by the Boxer crowd. His wife and child were in this country and as they led him out to the place where he was to be beheaded, he said to a friend, “If you survive, tell my son that when he is twenty-five years of age, I want him to come out here and take my place as a missionary of the Lord Jesus.” It is the spirit of Paul, living still, and offering itself in modern ministry. He was willing to be manacled that the Gospel might be preached to the Gentiles.God made him a minister of grace to them. “If ye have heard, of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me, to you-ward”. Upon one fact Paul forever continues to marvel, namely, that God should have chosen him to the high office of preaching His Gospel of grace to the Gentile world.

People sometimes speak of the minister and say, “He honors his office”! Certainly if the remark could ever have been made of any man it might have been spoken of Paul.

On the contrary, our Apostle feels that the office honored him. Prof. Findlay, of Leeds, says: “The immense favor humbles him to the dust. He strains language, heaping comparative upon superlative, to describe his astonishment, as the import of his mission unfolds itself; ‘Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given’.” We have no doubt that that favor seems all the more marvelous to Paul as he reminds himself of his former attitude toward the Saviour and the whole subject of the Gospel. He had been a Pharisee of the Pharisees and a persecutor of persecutors; and in his judgment, “the chief of sinners” in both. What a marvel, then, that God should make him to be a minister of grace to the Gentiles!

He scarcely writes an Epistle without reference to it. To the Galatians he said: “It pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen” (Galatians 1:15-16).

He can never forget his astonishment when “one Ananias, a devout man according to the Law, having a good report of all the Jews” came to him and said unto him, “Brother Saul, receive thy sight * * the God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know His will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of His mouth. For thou shalt he His witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard” (Acts 22:12-15). In that hour his narrowness gave place to a worldly breadth, and his Jewish bigotry went down before God’s commission to the Gentiles.It is little wonder that the Gentile Church reveres the name of this man as it does. We are told that when Florence Nightingale, worn and sick, appeared among the soldiers of the Crimean war, they looked upon her and said, “How homely”; but before she had finished her ministry to them, they declared her the most beautiful of women and believed her to be an angel from God. It is Paul’s ministry to the Gentile world that has so exalted him in the Gentile judgment. And, as God goes on fulfilling His promises to His Son that He should “have the heathen for His inheritance and the uttermost parts of the world for His possession”, the star of Paul will rise, for whilst he was not God’s original minister of grace to the Gentiles, he was easily God’s greatest minister of that all-inclusive truth.He was also the master of the mystery of the ages.

And that he has voiced in the text, claiming that “by revelation” there had been made known unto him “the mystery, (as I wrote afore in a few words whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ)”.What is the mystery of the ages? It is not that the Gentiles could be saved!

That was a long known truth! That is what God meant when He sent Abraham to live among Gentiles, and by precept and practice show them the way. That is what God meant when He permitted Joseph to go down into Egypt. That is what He meant when, by the lips of every Old Testament Prophet, He proclaimed the truth to the nations round about Judah; that is what He meant when Jonah preached in the streets of Nineveh and was a Prophet to the Gentiles. That is what Jesus meant when He carried His blessing, as well as the truth beyond Judea! That is what He meant when He sat with sinners and ate with them and received them.

That is what He meant when He said, “The Son of Man is come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance”. “To seek and to save”, not the favorites of God, but “the lost!” The Gentile of the Old Testament, as the Jew, is pointed to the Messiah to come, and in Him they that sat in darkness, were to see a “great light”. “The mystery”, now announced, is the fact that the saved Jew and the Gentile, should form one temple, one body, one Church of the living God—moving on to the inheritance of the saints in light, that the middle wall of partition should be ‘broken down, and in the Divine plan there should be no longer a distinction between Jew and Gentile. That is “the mystery” made known to Paul.The very definition of this mystery occurs in the sixth verse, namely “that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the Gospel”.

This is the unsearchable riches of Christ that Paul was to preach to the alien—or heathen people. What an announcement for a Jew to make! What excitement it must have wrought when one who had been most high among them in official station, and most arrogant in his exclusive opinions, came out to boldly declare that those opinions were born of bigotry and nothing better, and were hatched of self-esteem, and came not from that God who was no respecter of persons. I can never forget the effect upon Americans when forty and more years ago Ward Beecher went about the country delivering his famous lecture on “Immigration.” It was a time when the descendants of the Puritan fathers were asserting their superiority and expressing regret that the typical American was in danger of degradation by reason of the great influx of common folk. Legislation had been proposed to shut our doors, in order to save the purity of our blood. Beecher’s famous illustration was “Brethren, if I eat bear I do not become bear: bear becomes me.

America ought to be great enough to receive and transform and also improve all peoples who put their feet upon her shores. I stand for open doors!” Religiously, that is the thing for which Paul stood.

He wanted the Gentile world to believe that the God of the Jew was their God; that the Father of the Jew, Abraham, by faith had become their Father; that the grace which the Jew had so long enjoyed was freely offered to the Gentiles; that, in Christ Jesus, “no good thing will He withhold”, and whether there would ever be a universal salvation or not, there was universal provision for it, and Christ was profitable to all men.It was a new era in religion; it was a spiritual Magna Charta; it was the revelation of the Divine mind; and Paul was God’s appointee as teacher of the Gentiles in this faith and verity (1 Timothy 2:7).It seems strange to us now that such a declaration could ever have stirred the world and astounded students of the Scriptures, and yet, when we recall that it is only a little more than one hundred years ago that the first man, constrained by the Spirit, started on a mission to the heathen nations of the world; and what he did and endured that they might know that God was as ready to save the East Indian as He was the German, the Englishman or the American, we should easily understand the Apostle’s attitude and interpret the national stir growing out of the same.Think now, if you please, upon the fact that the manacled man is made the minister of this grace, and the master of this mystery, and you will be ready to turn from the Apostle’s appointments toTHE APOSTLE’S PRAYERS We call attention to the fact that the Apostle started in to pray and had not far proceeded before he broke out into teaching, so full was his heart of the great truths that must find deliverance. But when he has made his declaration, so far as his appointment as a minister of grace, he returns to his prayer, and bowing the knee, “unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named”, he makes certain petitions:That the Gentile believers might have spiritual power. In his exact language to the Gentiles “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to he strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man”. It is a prayer as pertinent as needful The language of it is another illustration of verbal inspiration. Paul did not come near saying what he meant; he said it with exactness. “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man”. It was a prayer for the Gentiles.

It was a prayer resting in the riches of God’s glory. It was a prayer that looked to the Holy Spirit for the answer.

It was a prayer that involved strength Divine for the inner man. Oh, how many of us need to have such a prayer answered! We go on thinking our needs for the outer man are great; we go on asking for food and clothing and houses and lands and position and fame and power. It is a fool’s petition. These are not our needs! The great need is for the inner man. If he is strengthened with might it makes little difference about the outer man; but if he is weak, all external appearances, all outward graces, are a sham if not a shame. How many a man still wears the best of clothing, sits at the richest of festal boards, mingles in exclusive circles, exerts an influence that is felt far beyond the confines of his city or state, is honored at home and abroad, and yet is poor in spirit.

Nobody else knows it. The very moment when other people are praising him he feels his poverty most; and sometimes that which is true of the individual characterizes a whole church; and if they come to describe themselves, or to be depicted by another, they might be spoken of as “rich and increased with goods, and having need of nothing” and yet, as a matter of fact, be “poor and blind and naked”, as was true of the Laodicean body.The second feature of his prayer was that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith. Paul knew the Christ appropriating faculty—faith. He would have been ready to sing:“O gift of gifts! O grace of faith! My God! how can it be That Thou, who hast discerning love, Shouldst give that Gift to me? “The crowd of cares, the weightiest cross Seem trifles less than light: Earth looks so little and so low When faith shines full and bright. “O happy, happy that I am! If thou canst be, O faith, The treasure that Thou art in life, What wilt Thou be in death?” It is a great Christian faculty and in proportion as a man exercises his Christian faith he increases his strength. The trouble with most of us is that our Christ is only a Saviour from sin. He is not to us an exceeding great and inspiring presence, an ever ready and needful power. The reason is not far to seek. We do not fully know Him. Our material interests have made such great inroads on the mind and heart; external subjects have so far pushed Him aside, that the Christ we know is a little Christ instead of the great and glorious Son of God.

This is not only the weakness of the individual but of the Church. Its life is languid in proportion to its low estimate of Christ, and its enterprises contemptible in proportion to its neglect of Him; and its spiritual decline is in proportion to its declining interest in the Christ.

Christ is not merely a subject for theological speculation and discussion! Christ is the power of God in the personal life; and if we do not make Him so we miss the mark of our high calling. Joseph Parker once said, “Your God is small or great in proportion to the use you make of Him.” It was a sage remark. What sort of Christ have you today? Is he merely a Christ that could pardon your past sins? Or, is He a Christ that can indwell you by His own Spirit, inspire you for every undertaking, insure you success by His own presence, reveal to you the truth; and as you make His acquaintance, be to you life, light, power and all else that is essential to the greatest and most glorious spiritual existence?

Is He the Christ that dwells in you daily, hourly, momentarily, making you more than conqueror? Such was the Apostle’s prayer for the Gentile Church, and such his desire for all believers.The third feature of his prayer was that they might be established and instructed. “That they might be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth understanding, that they might be filled with all the fulness of God”.This is knowledge worth while; this is instruction to be coveted, “to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge”.

The reference to these four special magnitudes of the Divine affection are interpreted by Hoffman after this manner, “It stretches wide over all the nations of the East and the West. In its length it reaches through all time unto the end of things; in depths it penetrates to the region where the faithful sleep in death, and it rises to Heaven’s height, where Christ lives.” Piconio, the great spiritual papist, said: “Wide as the furtherest limits of the inhabited world, long as the ages of eternity through which God’s love to His people will endure, deep as the abyss of misery and ruin from which He has raised us, high as the throne of Christ in the heavens where He has placed us—such is the breadth and length and depth and the height.” To know that is to be established indeed. To know that is to have incomparable instruction!But I am persuaded that one will never know the meaning of the breadth, length, depth and height apart from an earnest, Spirit-guided study of the Book. One must see the Christ revealed in Scripture in order to experience His fullest revelation in life. A man once said to Dr. Southworth: “The Lord can get on without your eloquence and learning.” “Yes,” was the reply, “and He can do without your ignorance.” To be taught of God first of all is the essential secret of teaching others; to speak of the Christ at the right time is to understand something of the length, and breadth, and depth, and height of His love.

We have in the revised version the statement, “The Lord hath given me the tongue of the taught that I should know how to speak to him that is weary”. The instructed man is the man who is able to instruct in the “faith once for all delivered”.

There is then an occasion for the Apostle’s prayer, “To know what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height” of knowledge.It must have been easy for Paul to pass from such prayer toTHE APOSTLE’S PRAISE In that praise he pays tribute to the exceeding power of God. “Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think”. Paul could never dispute the power of God. He had known its meaning! It had changed the whole course of the Apostle’s life. It turned him from enmity to love; from persecution to praise. It had been sufficient to turn the stream of the centuries out of its channel, as Jean Paul Richter has said; and the Apostle had seen it accomplished.

The power that raised up Jesus from the dead was, in the judgment of Paul, the same that had quickened him—dead in trespasses and sin—unto life, and was therefore, worthy of all praise.It is reported that Queen Mary of Scotland feared the prayers of John Knox more than she did an army of ten thousand men. That is only another way of saying that Queen Mary, of Scotland, realized the power of God and believed that John Knox had access to the same, and feared accordingly.

Truly, the “fear of God is the beginning of wisdom”, and the knowledge of His power is the increase of the same. “He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us”, and He is worthy of our praises.He makes this power manifest in the Church and in Christ. “Unto Him be glory, in the Church, by Christ Jesus”. We may say what we please against the local church, or against that larger body that we sometimes call “the Church of God”; we may remind ourselves and our fellows that it is an imperfect institution; but the fact will forever remain that it is the medium of Christ’s manifestation. God has received His glory in the Church by Jesus Christ; and it will forever remain a fact that God must receive His glory in the same institution, by the same glorious representative. The great secret hidden from the ages was finally made known through the Church. It was to it that God voiced His power; through it that God declared His love; by it that God revealed His greatness.The man who sings“I love Thy Church, O God, Her walls before Thee stand, Dear as the apple of Thine eye, And graven on Thy hand. ‘For her my tears that fall; For her my prayers ascend: To her my cares and toils be given, Till toils and cares shall end. “Beyond my highest joy I prize her heavenly ways, Her sweet communion, solemn vows, Her hymns of love and praise. “Sure as Thy truth shall last, To Zion shall be given The brightest glories earth can yield And brighter bliss of heaven,” is not praising the institution so much as he is praising the God revealed by it.Finally, the Apostle imagines this power age-long, or everlasting. “For unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end”. It is the phrase for eternity. We know full well that the time can never come when God’s praises will end. The office of the Spirit seems to be limited to the dispensation of the Church; and the Kingship of the Son, to the millennium period. But when He shall have finished His reign, He will deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father, and of that Kingdom there shall be no end.“O where are kings and empires now Of old that went and came? But, Lord, Thy Church is praying yet, A thousand years the same. “We mark her goodly battlements, And her foundations strong; We hear within the solemn voice Of her unending song. “For not like kingdoms of the world Thy holy Church, O God! Though earthquake shocks are threatening her And tempests are abroad. “Unshaken as eternal hills, Immovable she stands, A mountain that shall fill the earth, A house not made by hands.”

Ephesians 3:17-19

THE ESSENCE OF Ephesians 3:17-19YOU will not be surprised to have me say that the subject which seems to be compassed by this text is “The Essence of Christianity”! According to our common speech, I think I might say it is “the quintessence of Christianity”. As a rule, when men speak to the subject of the Christian religion, they select the text, “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world”.But I believe that Paul has put before these Ephesian Christians a more perfect definition of Christianity; for we must remember that religion is one thing and Christianity is another thing. All people are religious. Only a small proportion of the people in this world are Christian. Paul said to the Athenians, “I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious”. But Paul knew that the Athenians were far from being Christian. One of the difficulties with the world is its excess of religion; for under that name and actuated by that spirit, nameless crimes—out of number—have been committed.

So that to define religion is one thing, to define Christianity is another, and Paul is an Apostle of Christianity. And the Ephesians to whom he addresses himself are Christians, and our text tells them what is the essence of Christianity. It is that “Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God”.Several distinct truths are set forth in this Scripture.FAITH IS THE CHRIST- FACULTY Christianity is differentiated from many of the religions of the world because its founder must be received by faith. There are those who object to this and who have their preferred ways of receiving Christ.Some would see Jesus. Such would lay hold of Him with the physical eye, grounding their confidence in the impression of this natural sense-sight. All such had predecessors of New Testament times, and in a measure are in the line of apostolic succession. You remember that Zacchaeus sought to see Jesus who He was, and when he could not for the press because he was little of stature, he ran before and “climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Him”. Natural desire!

In John’s Gospel there is a report of certain Greeks who came up to worship at the Jewish feast and sought out Philip of Galilee, saying to him, “Sir, we would see Jesus”.Thomas, one of the Twelve, was not able to believe in the Risen Lord without having first looked upon him, and answered the affirmation of the disciples that he was alive, “Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe”. Paul, the man who tells us in this text that we must receive Jesus by faith, proudly affirms the fact that he had seen Him with the natural eye, saying, “Last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time”, and he made that sight the very basis of his right to be an Apostle.Many of us have read the little book entitled, “How Christ Came to Church”, a story of a dream the author, A.

J. Gordon, had, in which Christ came to his church, sat in one of the pews, and listened to the sermon. And, as we have read the sequel of how his whole after-ministry was effected by that vision of the night, we have said, “If we only could see Jesus, even in a powerful and permanently impressive dream, we could the more easily believe upon Him.”But, after all, God, who knows what is best, has not so appointed it. And if He were to accommodate Himself to this thought and show us the Lord, the results would be disappointing, for many of those who looked upon Him, in the flesh, and some of those who saw Him in His risen and glorified body, went on in godless living, retaining their infidelity; while many who have not seen Him, yet love Him, and live the life of faith in the Son of God, thereby effecting a perfect illustration of Jesus’ words, “Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed”.Some would come to Christ through creed. They want to formulate a philosophy about Him and live in that. Unitarianism is always philosophizing about the Christ, yet never coming to Him; and among evangelicals there are not a few who seem to think that a Biblical conception of Christ is all that God demands.

They admit His Divinity. They subscribe to the atonement.

They preach the Risen Lord. They believe in His Mediatorial office. They say salvation is through Him alone, and suppose that a correct creed about Christ is identical with receiving Him. But, beloved, a creed that is born of study, born of cataloguing texts, and making out what men call a systematic theology, does not always give promise of salvation in proportion as it is scriptural! I have known people to be as orthodox as the Bible, to hold most scriptural views of Christ, and yet have no experience whatever of His grace, His mercy, His pardon, His precious love. Such a creed is only a casket for dead men to repose in, and many a man who accepts what the Scripture says about Jesus, but fails to receive Jesus Himself, is as dead as Pharaoh’s mummy.If a Biblical conception of Christ were sufficient to save, there would have been no reason for doubting the Christianity of Theodore Parker, who, while in one breath, denying the Divinity of Christ, in the next, claimed for Him as much as the Scriptures themselves affirm, declaring, “There is God in the heart of this youth, that mightiest heart that ever beat, stirred by the spirit of God, thou hast wrought in His bosom.” And yet, that was not to receive Jesus.For, as Henry Ward Beecher affirmed, “To get up a Christianity, and leave out Christ, the Divine One; Christ—God’s Son, Christ—man’s Saviour, is one with the action of a physician, if it were possible for him to open a head of a man and deftly take out his whole brain and every particle of his nervous system, if then he could close up that head and have life go on, the man eating and sleeping, and walking, and working; what that body would be compared with a full man, that is Christianity, when the Divine Christ is taken out, compared with Christianity when Christ is left in!Many of the attractive systems of religion that would fain wear the Name of Christ are only painted pageantry to go to hell in, for those who hold them are utterly indisposed to receive Christ into their hearts by faith.Faith alone links the follower to his Lord.

Look into the Scriptures and see if it be not so. “As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His Name”. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life”.“O gift of gifts! O grace of faith! My God! how can it be That Thou, who hast discerning love, Shouldst give that Gift to me? “The crowd of cares, the weightiest cross Seem trifles less than light; Earth looks so little and so low When faith shines full and bright. “O happy, happy that I am! If Thou canst be, O faith, The treasure that thou art in life, What wilt thou be in death?” THE FIRST RESULT OF FAITH IS “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, “May be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height”. Faith is the root of love. You all remember what a stir Henry Drummond’s little booklet, “The Greatest Thing in the World” made, and he affirmed that love was the greatest of all the graces. And he was right, if Paul was inspired, or Jesus was Divine. For they both taught the same. But they both taught that faith was the first thing, the primary and fundamental thing. And if Love should boast itself against Faith, it might be sufficient for the latter to reply, “Boast not against the branches.

But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee”.In the order of the graces, Faith comes first, Love last. “Add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity”, or LOVE.That is the order everywhere. Faith first, love afterward.

That is the domestic base. That is the social foundation. When infidelity comes to a house, affection departs. It is not unusual for women who, at the marriage altar, have sworn to love, to leave beautiful homes, turn their backs upon wealth, give up liveried servants, resign lofty station, and go out with their disgraced children to the father’s house, or into an unfriendly world, for a living, simply because faith has been destroyed by the husband, and love could not live when it was gone. And the law is weak, too weak to hold the house together when love is gone.I read once in the Chicago “Record” a report to the effect that one of the interesting people at Newport one season was a widow who, at some time that summer, had married her sixth husband. Four of the divorced attended the wedding and the fifth sent his sincere regrets that, owing to an accident he could not come.

She had sworn to live with each “until death do us part” and the law demanded that she do so. But, when infelicities arose, the law weakened and granted divorce.

But all over this country this season there were old men and women celebrating their golden weddings, because faith had lived and love had fed upon it, and at the end of a half century, the affection is riper than ever before, and the confidence of the early days is converted into assurance. And these saints shall sweep the pearly gates together.Faith fruits in love. Paul teaches this in his Letter to the Romans as well, saying,“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with Gad through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; “And patience, experience; and experience, hope: “And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us”. This, then, is the test of discipleship. Mr. Moody has somewhere affirmed, “Love is the badge that Christ gave His disciples. Some put on one sort of badge, and some another. Some put on a peculiar dress that they may be known as Christians, and some put on a crucifix. But love is the only badge by which the disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ are known. ‘By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples’.”Without it all professions of Christianity are a delusion, or a deception. If this seems too strong a statement, think on what Paul has affirmed,“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal, “And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing”. The faith that does not fruit in love, is like the faith that does not effect works; it is dead, being alone.And the Apostle adds, “And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor; and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing”.“More love to Thee, oh Christ, More love to Thee. Hear Thou the prayer I make On bended knee. This is my earnest plea, More love oh Christ to Thee More love to Thee.” I believe Henry Ward Beecher was right in saying, “Here is the test of all theologies, and all churches, and all ordinances, for the Apostle says, ‘Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity’.”THE OF LOVE EXPANDS THE MIND AND FILLS THE HEART Only eyes of love see good. Society is full of illustrations to this effect. It is hard to see good in the people that once offend us, not because they are utterly wanting in that quality, but because we look at them through other eyes than those of love. We find it hard to see good in people against whom we are prejudiced, hence the power for evil lodged with some. If a man is mean enough, or a woman so unchristian as to set about it, it is easy to trample the beautiful things out of life, as the unmuzzled ox treads out the corn. All one needs to do is to go to people that do not know you and pour into their ears that which will prejudice, destroying their confidence, setting them on a watch for evil things, distending their eyes for malignant vision.

The longer I live the less I hold in esteem the man or woman who seeks to prejudice me against my fellow, and unfit me to see the good that must be in him.Solomon was indeed a wise man and perhaps understood people as well as the most; he knew whereof he spake, when he said, “A froward man soweth strife and a whisperer separateth chief friends”. That is an easy work, but none the less a dreadful one.

To have our eyes unfitted to see the good in our fellows, who should desire that? To have a tongue go tramping about, tearing up God’s own flowers, makes one rejoice in the fact that Paul has said, “Whether there be tongues, they shall cease”.The old physicians, when called into a home to see the sick, had no sooner smiled into the face of the patient, when they said, “Poke out your tongue”, and beyond all dispute, this one member is the touch-stone of spiritual health or sickness. And every time we put it forth, its cleanness argues spiritual strength, or its venomous coating tells of dread disease, spiritual decay and death.What the world needs is an increased company of people who shall put into practice the spirit of this text. On a Sunday evening I heard a man say that he made it his business to see the good in people, and I was glad to have that man make the statement, for among us there is not one who has such affection for all.The secret of it is, the eyes of love see good.As love increases, comprehension results. “That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height”.Remind yourself of George Eliot’s story of Silas Marner, who, you will remember, was disappointed and soured by the experiences of his early life, and became a miser. He was bitter against the world and lived only to hoard up gold. Every night he counted his coins and cared for nothing else, until at length the money was taken.

But a waif of a girl came in its stead. Soon he learned to love her, and it transfigured him, and made him a man, and actually enlarged his heart, quickened his capacities, exalted his ideas and fitted him for life.

I think, beyond dispute, that the one man best prepared for this world is the man into whose heart the love of God has come and who has known the wonderful experience of God’s enlargement.It must have seemed preposterous for the early Apostles to teach that the heart of man could contain God, the Great One, the Author of the Universe, the Maker of Man Himself. But we have come so to believe. But that is impossible, save when Christ’s love has come in to enlarge that heart. Then, the Apostle says, “To know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God”. We have prayed for the baptism of the Spirit. Here is the secret of it— “The love of Christ” so enlarges the heart that the Holy Ghost can come in and inhabit it.And, beloved, it is beautiful to let Him in; to let Him into a heart where the love of Christ has touched every string, and controls every stop.

For, as a friend said, “When God wishes to play upon an instrument and give noble music to men, He does not want to find that the best stops are out of use, nor any string neglected or broken.”Before all this we feel afraid and ask, “Who then has the essence of Christianity?”Beloved, let us remember that it is with Christ. But it is ours to let Him in, to give Him first place in the affection, having received Him by faith, and He will teach us what is “the length, the breadth, the depth, the height”, and shall we not cry for His immediate possession, as John did for His Second Advent, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly”?“Love Divine, all love excelling, Joy of Heaven, to earth come down! Fix in us Thy humble dwelling; All Thy faithful mercies crown. Jesus, Thou art all compassion, Pure, unbounded love Thou art; Visit us with Thy salvation, Enter every trembling heart. “Breathe, O breathe Thy Holy Spirit Into every troubled breast; Let us all Thy grace inherit; Let us find Thy promised rest; Take away the love of sinning; Take our load of guilt away; End the work of Thy beginning; Bring us to eternal day. “Carry on Thy new creation; Pyre and holy may we be; Let us see our whole salvation Perfectly secured by Thee; Change from glory into glory, Till in Heaven we take our place, Till we cast our crowns before Thee. Lost in wonder, love, and praise.”