FOOTNOTES:

“Yet in Thy Son divinely great,We claim Thy providential care.Boldly we stand before Thy seat;Our Advocate hath placed us there!”

“Wherefore,” concludes the imprisoned apostle, “I beg you not to lose heart at my afflictions for you.” Assuredly Paul did not pray thatheshould not lose heart, as some interpret his meaning. But he knew how his friends were fretting and wearying over his long captivity. Hence he writes to the Philippians: “I would have you know that the things which have happened to me have turned out rather to the furtherance of the gospel.” Hence, too, he assures the Colossians earnestly of his joy in suffering for their sake (ch. i. 24).

The Church was fearful for Paul’s life and distressedby his prolonged sufferings. It missed his cheering presence and the inspiration of his voice. But if the Church is so dear to God as the pages of this letter show, and grounded in His eternal purposes, then let all friends of Christ take courage. The ark freighted with such fortunes cannot sink. St Paul is a martyr for Christ, and for Gentile Christendom! Every stroke that falls upon him, every day added to the months of his imprisonment helps to show the worth of the cause he has espoused and gives to it increased lustre: “my afflictions for you, which are your glory.”

Those that love him shouldboastrather than grieve over his afflictions. “We make our boast in you amongst the Churches of God,” he wrote to the distressed Thessalonians (2 Ep. i. 4), “for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and afflictions”; so he would have the Churches think of him. When good men suffer in a good cause, it is not matter for pity and dread, but rather for a holy pride.

FOOTNOTES:[93]See note on p. 47; also pp. 83, 189.

[93]See note on p. 47; also pp. 83, 189.

[93]See note on p. 47; also pp. 83, 189.

Τὸ ὑπερέχον τῆς γνώσεως Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ Κυρίου μου.—Phil.iii. 8.

Τὸ ὑπερέχον τῆς γνώσεως Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ Κυρίου μου.—Phil.iii. 8.

“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family in heaven and upon earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man; that the Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.”—Eph.iii. 14–18.

“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family in heaven and upon earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man; that the Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.”—Eph.iii. 14–18.

In verse 14 the prayer is resumed which the apostle was about to offer at the beginning of the chapter, when the current of his thoughts carried him away. The supplication is offered “for this cause” (vv. 1, 14),—it arises out of the teaching of the preceding pages. Thinking of all that God has wrought in the Christ, and has accomplished by means of His gospel in multitudes of Gentiles as well as Jews, reconciling them to Himself in one body and forming them together into a temple for His Spirit, the apostle bows his knees before God on their behalf. So much he had in mind, when at the end of the second chapter he was in act to pray for the Asian Christians that they might be enabled to enter into this far-reaching purpose. Other aspects of the great design of God rose upon the writer’s mind before his prayer could find expression. He has told us of his own part in disclosing it to the world, and of the interest it excitesamongst the dwellers in heavenly places,—thoughts full of comfort for the Gentile believers troubled by his imprisonment and continued sufferings. These further reflections add new meaning to the “For this cause” repeated from verse 1.

The prayer which he offers here is no less remarkable and unique in his epistles than the act of praise in chapter i. Addressing himself to God as the Father of angels and of men, the apostle asks that He will endow the readers in a manner corresponding tothe wealth of His glory—in other words, that the gifts He bestows may be worthy of the universal Father, worthy of the august character in which God has now revealed Himself to mankind. According to this measure, St Paul beseeches for the Church, in the first instance, two gifts, which after all are one,—viz.,the inward strength of the Holy Spirit(ver. 16), andthe permanent indwelling of Christ(ver. 17). These gifts he asks on his readers’ behalf with a view to their gaining two further blessings, which are also one,—viz.,the power to understand the Divine plan(ver. 18) as it has been expounded in this letter, and soto know the love of Christ(ver. 19). Still, beyond these there rises in the distance a further end for man and the Church:the reception of the entire fulness of God. Human desire and thought thus reach their limit; they grasp at the infinite.

In this Chapter we will strive to follow the apostle’s prayer to the end of the eighteenth verse, where it arrives at its chief aim and touches the main thought of the epistle, expressing the desire that all believers may have power to realize the full scope of the salvation of Christ in which they participate.

Let us pause for a moment to join in St Paul’s invocation: “I bow my knees to the Father, of whom[notthe whole family, but]every familyin heaven and upon earth is named.” The point of St Paul’s original phrase is somewhat lost in translation. The Greek word forfamily(patria) is based on that forfather(pater). A distinguished father anciently gave his name to his descendants; and this paternal name became the bond of family or tribal union, and the title which ennobled the race. So we have “the sons of Israel,” the “sons of Aaron” or “of Korah”; and in Greek history, the Atridæ, the Alcmæonidæ, who form a family of many kindred households—aclan, orgens, designated by their ancestral head. Thus Joseph (in Luke ii. 4) is described as “being of the house and family [patria] of David”; and Jesus is “the Son of David.” Now Scripture speaks also ofsons of God; and these of two chief orders. There are those “in heaven,” who form a race distinct from ourselves in origin—divided, it may be, amongst themselves into various orders and dwelling in their several homes in the heavenly places.

Of these are “the sons of God” whom the Book of Job pictures appearing in the Divine court and forming a “family in heaven.” When Christ promises (Luke xx. 36) that His disciples in their immortal state will be “equal to the angels,” because they are “sons of God,” it is implied that the angels are already and by birthright sons of God. Hence in Hebrews xii. 22, 23 the angels are described as “the festal gathering and assembly ofthe firstbornenrolled in heaven.” We, the sons of Adam, with our many tribes and kindreds, through Jesus Christ our Elder Brother constitute a new family of God. God becomes our Name-father, and permits us also to call ourselves His sons through faith. Thus the Church of believers in the Son of God constitutes the “family on earthnamed” from the same Father who gave His name to the holy angels, our wise and strong and brilliant elder brothers. They and we are alike God’s offspring. Heaven and earth are kindred spheres.

This passage gives to God’s Fatherhood the same extension that chapter i. 21 has given to Christ’s Lordship. Every order of creaturely intelligence acknowledges God for the Author of its being, and bows to Christ as its sovereign Lord. In God’s name of Father the entire wealth of love that streams forth from Him through endless ages and unmeasured worlds is hidden; and in the name of sons of God there is contained the blessedness of all creatures that can bear His image.

I. What, therefore, shall the universal Father be asked to give to His needy children upon earth? They have newly learnt His name; they are barely recovered from the malady of their sin, fearful of trial, weak to meet temptation.Strengthis their first necessity: “I bow my knees to the Father of heaven and earth, praying that He may grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened by the entering of the Spirit into your inward man.” The apostle asked them in verse 13, in view of the greatness of his own calling, to be of good courage on his account; now he entreats God so to reveal to them His glory and to pour into their hearts His Spirit, that no weakness and fear may remain in them. Thestrengtheningof which he speaks is the opposite of thefaintness of heart, the failure of courage deprecated in verse 13. Using the same word, the apostle bids the Corinthians “Quit themselves like men,be strong” (1 Ep. xvi. 13). He desires for the Asian believers a manful heart, the strength that meets battle and danger without quailing.

The source of this strength is not in ourselves. We are to be “strengthenedwith[orby]power,”—by “the power” of God “working in us” (ver. 20), the very same “power, exceeding great,” that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead (i. 19). This superhuman might of God operating in men is always referred to the Holy Spirit: “by power made strong,” he says, “through the Spirit.” Nothing is more familiar in Scripture than the conception of the indwelling Spirit of God as the source of moral strength. The special power that belongs to the gospel Christ ascribes altogether to this cause. “Ye shall receive power,” He said to His disciples, “after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you.” Hence is derived the vigour of a strong faith, the valour of the good soldier of Christ Jesus, the courage of the martyrs, the cheerful and indomitable patience of multitudes of obscure sufferers for righteousness’ sake. There is a great truth expressed when we describe a brave and enterprising man as aman of spirit. All high and commanding qualities of soul come from this invisible source. They are inspirations. In the human will, with itsvis vivida, its elasticity and buoyancy, its steadfastness and resolved purpose, is the highest type of force and the image of the almighty Will. When that will is animated and filled with “the Spirit,” the man so possessed is the embodiment of an inconceivable power. Firm principle, hope and constancy, self-mastery, superiority to pleasure and pain,—all the elements of a noble courage are proper to the man of the Spirit. Such power is not neutralized by our infirmities; it asserts itself under their limiting conditions and makes them its contributories. “My grace is sufficient for thee,” said Christ to His disabled servant; “for power is perfected inweakness.” In privation and loneliness, in old age and bodily decay, the strength of God in the human spirit shines with its purest lustre. Never did St Paul rise to such a height of moral ascendency as at the time when he was “smitten down” and all but destroyed by persecution and affliction. “That the excellency of the power,” he says, “may be of God, and not from ourselves” (2 Cor. iv. 7–11).

The apostle points to “the inner man” as the seat of this invigoration, thinking perhaps of its secrecy. While the world buffets and dismays the Christian, new vigour and joy are infused into his soul. The surface waters and summer brooks of comfort fail; but there opens in the heart a spring fed by the river of life proceeding from the throne of God. Beneath the toil-worn frame, the mean attire and friendless condition of the prisoner Paul—a mark for the world’s scorn—there lives a strength of thought and will mightier than the empire of the Cæsars, a power of the Spirit that is to dominate the centuries to come. Of this omnipotent power dwelling in the Church of God, the apostle prays that every one of his readers may partake.

II. Parallel to the first petition, and in substance identical with it, is the second: “that the Christ may make His dwelling through faith in your hearts.” Such, it seems to us, is the relation of verses 16 and 17. Christ’s residence in the heart is to be viewed neither as the result, nor the antecedent of the strength given by the Spirit to the inward man: the two are simultaneous; they are the same things seen in a varying light.

We observe in this prayer the same vein of Trinitarian thought which marks the doxology of chapter i.,and other leading passages in this epistle.[94]The Father, the Spirit, and the Christ are unitedly the object of the apostle’s devout supplication.

As in the previous clause, the verb of verse 17 bears emphasis and conveys the point of St Paul’s entreaty; he asks that “the Christ maytake up His abode,—maysettlein your hearts.” The word signifies toset up one’s houseormake one’s homein a place, by way of contrast with a temporary and uncertain sojourn (comp. ii. 19). The same verb in Colossians ii. 9 asserts that in Christ “dwellsall the fulness of the Godhead”; and in Colossians i. 19 it declares, used in the same tense as here, how it was God’s “pleasure that all the fulness shouldmake its dwellingin Him” now raised from the dead, who had emptied and humbled Himself to fulfil the purpose of the Father’s love. So it is desired that Christ should take His seat within us. He is never again to stand at the door and knock, nor to have a doubtful and disputed footing in the house. Let the Master come in, and claim His own. Let Him become the heart’s fixed tenant and full occupier. Let Him, if He will thus condescend, make Himself at home within us and there rest in His love. For He promised: “If any man love me, my Father will love him; and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”

And “theChrist,” not Christ alone. Why does the apostle say this? There is a reason for the definite article, as we have found elsewhere.[95]The apostle is asking for his Asian brethren something beyond that possession of Christ which belongs to every true Christian,—more even than the permanence and certainty of this indwelling indicated by the verb. “The Christ”is Christ in the significance of Hisname. It is Christ not only possessed, but understood,—Christ realized in the import of His work, in the light of His relationship to the Father and the Spirit, and to men. It is the Christ of the Church and the ages—known and accepted for all this—that St Paul would fain have dwelling in the heart of each of his Gentile disciples. He is endeavouring to raise them to an adequate comprehension of the greatness of the Redeemer’s person and offices; he longs to have their minds possessed by his own views of Christ Jesus the Lord.

The heart, in the language of the Bible, never denotes the emotional nature by itself. The antithesis of “heart and head,” the divorce of feeling and understanding in our modern speech is foreign to Scripture. The heart is our interior, conscious self—thought, feeling, will in their personal unity. It needs the whole Christ to fill and rule the whole heart,—a Christ who is the Lord of the intellect, the Light of the reason, no less than the Master of the feelings and desires.

The difference in significance between “Christ” or “Christ Jesus” and “the Christ” in such a sentence as this, is not unlike the difference between “Queen Victoria” and “the Queen.” The latter phrase brings Her Majesty before us in the grandeur and splendour of her Queenship. We think of her vast dominion, of her line of royal and famous ancestry, of her beneficent and memorable reign. So, to know the Christ is to apprehend Him in the height of His Godhead, in the breadth of His humanity, in the plenitude of His nature and His powers. And this is the object to which the teaching and the prayers of St Paul for the Churches at the present time are directed. Understanding in this larger sense the indwelling of the Christ for whichhe prays, we see how naturally his supplication expands into the “height and depth” of the ensuing verse.

But however large the mental conception of Christ that St Paul desires to impart to us, it is to be grasped “through faith.” All real understanding and appropriation of Christ, the simplest and the most advanced, come by this channel,—through the faith of the heart in which knowledge, will and feeling blend in that one act of trustful apprehension of the truth concerning Jesus Christ by which the soul commits itself to Him.

How much is contained in this petition of the apostle that we need to ask for ourselves, Christ Jesus dwells now as then in the hearts of all who love Him. But how little do we know our heavenly Guest! how poor a Christ is ours, compared to the Christ of Paul’s experience! how slight and empty a word is His name to multitudes of those who bear it! If men have once attained a sense of His salvation, and are satisfied of their interest in His atonement and their right to hope for eternal life through Him, their minds are at rest. They have accepted Christ and received what He has to give them; they turn their attention to other things. They do not love Christ enough to study Him. They have other mental interests,—scientific, literary, political or industrial; but the knowledge of Christ has no intellectual attraction for them. With St Paul’s passionate ardour, the ceaseless craving of his mind to “know Him,” these complacent believers have no sympathy whatever. This, they think, belongs only to a few, to men of metaphysical bias or of religious genius like the great apostle. Theology is regarded as a subject for specialists. The laity, with a lamentableand disastrous neglect, leave the study of Christian doctrine to the ministry. The Christ cannot take His due place in His people’s heart, He will not reveal to them the wealth of His glory, while they know so little and care to know so little of Him. How many can be found, outside the ranks of the ordained, that make a sacrifice of other favourite pursuits to meditate on Christ? what prosperous merchant, what active man of affairs is there who will spare an hour each day from his other gains “for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord”?—“If at the present time the religious life of the Church is languid, and if in its enterprises there is little of audacity and vehemence, a partial explanation is to be found in that decline of intellectual interest in the contents of the Christian Faith which has characterized the last hundred or hundred and fifty years of our history.”[96]

It is a knowledge that when pursued grows upon the mind without limit. St Paul, who knew so much, for that reason felt that all he had attained was but in the bud and beginning. “The Christ” is a subject infinite as nature, large and wide as history. With our enlarged apprehension of Him, the heart enlarges in capacity and moral power. Not unfrequently, the study of Christ in Scripture and experience gives to unlettered men, to men whose mind before their conversion was dull and uninformed, an intellectual quality, a power of discernment and apprehension that trained scholars might envy. By such thoughtful, constant fellowship with Him the vigour of spirit and courage in afflictionare sustained, that the apostle first asked from God on behalf of his anxious Gentile friends.

III. The prayers now offered might suffice, if St Paul were concerned only for the individual needs of those to whom he writes and their personal advancement in the new life. But it is otherwise.The Churchfills his mind. Its lofty claims at every turn he has pressed on our attention. This is God’s holy temple and the habitation of His Spirit; it is the body in which Christ dwells, the bride that He has chosen. The Church is the object that draws the eyes of heaven; through it the angelic powers are learning undreamed-of lessons of God’s wisdom. Round this centre the apostle’s intercession must needs revolve. When he asks for his readers added strength of heart and a richer fellowship with Christ, it is in order that they may be the better able to enter into the Church’s life and to apprehend God’s great designs for mankind.

This object so much absorbs the writer’s thoughts and has been so constantly in view from the outset, that it does not occur to him, in verse 18, to say preciselywhatthat is whose “breadth and length and height and depth” the readers are to measure. The vast building stands before us and needs not to be named; we have only not to look away from it, not to forget what we have been reading all this time. It isGod’s plan for the world in Christ; it is the purpose of the ages realized in the building of His Church. This conception was so impressive to the original readers and has held their attention so closely since the apostle unfolded it in the course of the second chapter, that they would have no difficulty in supplying the ellipsis which has given so much trouble to the commentators since.

If we are asked to interpret the four several magnitudes that are assigned to this building of God, we may say with Hofmann[97]: “It stretcheswideover all the world of the nations, east and west. In itslength, it reaches through all time unto the end of things. Indepth, it penetrates to the region where the faithful sleep in death [comp. iv. 9]. And it rises to heaven’sheight, where Christ lives.” In the like strain Bernardine à Piconio, most genial and spiritual of Romanist interpreters: “Wideas the furthest limits of the inhabited world,longas the ages of eternity through which God’s love to His people will endure,deepas the abyss of misery and ruin from which He has raised us,highas the throne of Christ in the heavens where He has placed us.” Such is the commonwealth to which we belong, such the dimensions of this city of God built on the foundation of the apostles,—“that lieth four-square.”

Do we not need to bestrong—to “gain full strength,” as the apostle prays, in order to grasp in its substance and import this immense revelation and to handle it with practical effect? Narrowness is feebleness. The greatness of the Church, as God designed it, matches the greatness of the Christ Himself. It needs a firm spiritual faith, a far-seeing intelligence, and a charity broad as the love of Christ to comprehend this mystery. From many believing eyes it is still hidden. Alas for our cold hearts, our weak and partial judgements! alas for the materialism that infects our Church theories, and that limits God’s free grace and the sovereign action of His Spirit to visible channels and ministrations“wrought by hand.” Those who call themselves Churchmen and Catholics contradict the titles they boast when they bar out their loyal Christian brethren from the covenant rights of faith, when they deny churchly standing to communities with a love to Christ as warm and fruitful in good works, a gospel as pure and saving, a discipline at least as faithful as their own. Who are we that we dare to forbid those who are doing mighty works in the name of Christ, because they follow not with us? When we are fain to pull down every building of God that does not square with our own ecclesiastical plans, we do not apprehend “what is the breadth!”

We draw close about us the walls of Christ’s wide house, as if to confine Him in our single chamber. We call our particular communion “the Church,” and the rest “the sects”; and disfranchise, so far as our word and judgement go, a multitude of Christ’s freemen and God’s elect, our fellow-citizens in the New Jerusalem—saints, some of them, whose feet we well might deem ourselves unworthy to wash. A Church theory that leads to such results as these, that condemns Nonconformists to be strangers in the House of God, is self-condemned. It will perish of its own chillness and formalism. Happily, many of those who hold the doctrine of exclusive Roman or Anglican, or Baptist or Presbyterian legitimacy, are in feeling and practice more catholic than in their creed.

“Withallthe saints” the Asian Christians are called to enter into St Paul’s wider view of God’s work in the world. For this is a collective idea, to be shared by many minds and that should sway all Christian hearts at once. It is the collective aim of Christianity that St Paul wants his readers to understand, its missionto save humanity and to reconstruct the world for a temple of God. This is a calling forall the saints; but only forsaints,—for men devoted to God and renewed by His Spirit. It was “revealed to Hisholyapostles and prophets” (ver. 5); and it needs men of the same quality for its bearers and interpreters.

But the first condition for this largeness of sympathy and aim is that stated at the beginning of the verse, thrown forward there with an emphasis that almost does violence to grammar: “in love being fast rooted and grounded.” Where Christ dwells abidingly in the heart, love enters with Him and becomes the ground of our nature, the basis on which our thought and action rest, the soil in which our purposes grow.Loveis the mark of the true Broad Churchman in all Churches, the man to whom Christ is all things and in all, and who, wherever he sees a Christlike man, loves him and counts him a brother.

When such love to Christ fills all our hearts and penetrates to their depths, we shall have strength to shake off our prejudices, strength to master our intellectual difficulties and limitations. We shall have the courage to adopt Christ’s simple rule of fellowship: “Whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

FOOTNOTES:[94]See ch. i. 17, ii. 18, 22, and especially ch. iv. 4–6.[95]See pp. 47, 83, 169.[96]Lectures on Ephesians, pp. 235–8. No one who has read Dr. R. W. Dale’s noble Lectures on this epistle, can write upon the same subject without being deeply in his debt.[97]Der Brief Pauli an die Epheser, p. 138. Hofmann is one of those writers from whom one constantly learns, although one must as often differ from him as agree with him.

[94]See ch. i. 17, ii. 18, 22, and especially ch. iv. 4–6.

[94]See ch. i. 17, ii. 18, 22, and especially ch. iv. 4–6.

[95]See pp. 47, 83, 169.

[95]See pp. 47, 83, 169.

[96]Lectures on Ephesians, pp. 235–8. No one who has read Dr. R. W. Dale’s noble Lectures on this epistle, can write upon the same subject without being deeply in his debt.

[96]Lectures on Ephesians, pp. 235–8. No one who has read Dr. R. W. Dale’s noble Lectures on this epistle, can write upon the same subject without being deeply in his debt.

[97]Der Brief Pauli an die Epheser, p. 138. Hofmann is one of those writers from whom one constantly learns, although one must as often differ from him as agree with him.

[97]Der Brief Pauli an die Epheser, p. 138. Hofmann is one of those writers from whom one constantly learns, although one must as often differ from him as agree with him.

“[I pray] that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.”—Eph.iii. 17–19.

“[I pray] that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.”—Eph.iii. 17–19.

We were compelled to pause before reaching the end of the apostle’s comprehensive prayer. But we must not let slip the thread of its connexion. Verse 19 is the necessary sequel and counterpart of verse 18. The catholic love which embraces “all the saints” and “comprehends” in its wide dimensions the extent of the Redeemer’s kingdom, admits us to a deeper knowledge of Christ’s own love. The breadth and length, the height and depth of the work of Christ in men and the ages give us a worthier conception of the love that inspired and sustains it. “In the Church” at once “and in Christ Jesus” God’s glory is revealed. Our Church views react upon our views of Christ and our sense of His love. Bigotry and exclusiveness towards His brethren chill the heart towards Himself. Our sectarianism stints and narrows our apprehensions of the Divine grace.

I. St Paul prays that we may “know[notcomprehend] the love of Christ”; for it “passes knowledge.”Amongst the Greek words denoting mental activity, that here employed signifies knowledge in the acquisition rather than possession—getting to know. Hence it is rightly, and often used of things Divine that “we know in part,” our knowledge of which falls short of the reality while it is growing up to it. Thus understood, the contradiction of the apostle’s wish disappears. We know the unknowable, just as we “clearly see the invisible things of God” (Rom. i. 20). The idea is conveyed of an object that invites our observation and pursuit, but which at every step outreaches apprehension, each discovery revealing depths within it unperceived before. Such was the knowledge of Christ to the soul of St Paul. To the Philippians the aged apostle writes: “I do not reckon myself to have apprehended Him. I am in pursuit! I forget the past; I press on eagerly to the goal. I have but one object in view and sacrifice everything for it,—that I maywin Christ!”

In all the mystery of Christ, there is nothing more wonderful and past finding out than His love. For nigh thirty years Paul has been living in daily fellowship with the love of Christ, his heart full of it and all the powers of his mind bent upon its comprehension: he cannot understand it yet! At this moment it amazes him more than ever.

Great as the Christian community is, and large as the place and part assigned to it by this epistle, that is still finite and a creation of time. The apostle’s doctrine of the Church is not beyond the comprehension of a mind sufficiently loving and enlightened. But though we had followed him so far and had well and truly apprehended the mystery he has revealed to us, the love of Christ is still beyond us. Ourprinciples of judgement and standards of comparison fail us when applied to this subject. Human love has in many instances displayed heroic qualities; it can rise to a divine height of purity and tenderness; but its noblest sacrifices will not bear to be put by the side of the cross of Christ. No picture of that love but shows poor and dull compared with the reality; no eloquence lavished upon it but lowers the theme. Our logical framework of doctrine fails to enclose and hold it; the love of Christ defies analysis and escapes from all our definitions. Those who know the world best, who have ranged through history and philosophy and the life of living men and have measured most generously the possibilities of human nature, are filled with a wondering reverence when they come to know the love of Christ. “Never man spake like this man,” said one; but verily never man loved like Jesus Christ. He expects to be loved more than father or mother; for His love surpasses theirs. We cannot describe His love, nor delineate its features as Paul saw them when he wrote these lines. Go to the Gospels, and behold it as it lived and wrought for men. Stand and watch at the cross. Then if the eyes of your heart are open, you will see the great sight—the love that passeth knowledge.

When, turning from Christ Himself in His own person and presence, before whom praise is speechless, we contemplate the manifestations of His love to mankind; when we consider that its fountain lies in the bosom of the Eternal; when we trace its footsteps prepared from the world’s foundation, and perceive it choosing a people for its own and making its promises and raising up its heralds and forerunners; when at last it can hide and refrain itself no longer, but comesforth incarnate with lowly heart to take our infirmities and carry our diseases—yea, to put away our sin by the sacrifice of itself; when we behold that same Love which the hands of men had slain, setting up its cross for the sign of its covenant of peace with mankind, and enthroned in the majesty of heaven waiting even as a bridegroom joyously for the time when its ransomed shall be brought home, redeemed from iniquity and gathered unto itself from all the kindreds of the earth; and when we see how this mystery of love, in its sufferings and glories and its deep-laid plans for all the creatures, engages the ardent study and sympathy of the heavenly principalities,—in view of these things, who can but feel himself unworthy to know the love of Christ or to speak one word on its behalf? Are we not ready to say like Peter, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord”?

This is a revelation that searches every man’s soul who looks into it. What is there so confounding to our reason and our human self-complacency as the discovery: “He loved me; He gave Himself up for me”—that He should do it, and shouldneedto do it! It was this that went to Saul’s heart, that gave the mortal blow to the Jewish pride in him, strong as it was with the growth of centuries. The bearer of this grace and the ambassador of Christ’s love to the Gentiles, he feels himself to be “less than the least of all the saints.” We carry in our hands to show to men a heavenly light, which throws our own unloveliness into dark relief.

II. Thelove of Christconnects together, in the apostle’s thoughts,the greatness of the Churchandthe fulness of God. The two former conceptions—Christ’s love and the Church’s greatness—go together in ourminds; knowing them, we are led onwards to the realization of the last.

The “fulness [pleroma] of God,” and the “filling” (or “completing”) of believers in Christ are ideas characteristic of this group of epistles. The first of these expressions we have discussed already in its connexion with Christ, in chapter i. 23; we shall meet with it again as “the fulness of Christ” in chapter iv. 13. The phrase before us is, in substance, identical with that of the latter text. Christ contains the Divine plenitude; He embodies it in His person, and conveys it to the world by His redemption. St Paul desires for the Asian Christians that they may receive it; it is the ultimate mark of his prayer. He wishes them to gain the total sum of all that God communicates to men. He would have them “filled”—their nature made complete both in its individual and social relations, their powers of mind and heart brought into full exercise, their spiritual capacities developed and replenished—“filled unto all the plenitude of God.”

This is no humanistic or humanitarian ideal. The mark of Christian completeness is on a different and higher plane than any that is set up by culture. The ideal Christian is a greater man than the ideal citizen or artist or philosopher: he may include within himself any or all of these characters, but he transcends them. He may conform to none of these types, and yet be a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Our race cannot rest in any perfection that stops short of “the fulness of God.” When we have received all that God has to give in Christ, when the community of men is once more a family of God and the Father’s will is done on earth as in heaven, then and not before will our life be complete. That is the goal of humanity; and thecivilization that does not lead to it is a wandering from the way. “You are complete in Christ,” says the apostle. The progress of the ages since confirms the saying.

The apostle prays that his readers may know the love of Christ. This is a part of the Divine plenitude; nor is there anything in it deeper. But there is more to know. When he asks for “allthe fulness,” he thinks of other elements of revelation in which we are to participate. God’swisdom, Histruth, Hisrighteousness, along with Hislovein its manifold forms,—all the qualities that, in one word, go to make up Hisholiness, are communicable and belong to the image stamped by the Holy Spirit on the nature of God’s children. “Ye shall be holy, for I am holy” is God’s standing command to His sons. So Jesus bids His disciples, “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” St Paul’s prayer “is but another way of expressing the continuous aspiration and effort after holiness which is enjoined in our Lord’s precept” (Lightfoot).

While the holiness of God gathers up into one stream of white radiance the revelation of His character, “the fulness of God” spreads it abroad in its many-coloured richness and variety. The term accords with the affluence of thought that marks this supplication. The might of the Spirit that strengthens weak human hearts, the greatness of the Christ who is the guest of our faith, His wide-spreading kingdom and the vast interests it embraces and His own love surpassing all,—these objects of the soul’s desire issue from the fulness of God; and they lead us in pursuing them, like streams pouring into the ocean, back to the eternal Godhead. The mediatorial kingdom has its end;Christ, when He has “put down all rule and authority,” will at last “yield it up to His God and Father”; and “the Son Himself will be subjected to Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. xv. 24–28). This is the crown of the Redeemer’s mission, the end which His love to the Father seeks. But when that end is reached, and the soul with immediate vision beholds the Father’s glory, the Plenitude will be still new and unexhausted; the soul will then begin its deepest lessons in the knowledge of God which is life eternal.

St Paul is conscious of the extreme boldness of the prayer he has just uttered. But he protests that, instead of going beyond God’s purposes, it falls short of them. This assurance rises, in verses 20 and 21, into a rapture of praise. It is a cry of exultation, a true song of triumph, that breaks from the apostle’s lips:—

“Now unto Him that is able to do above all things,—Yea, far exceedingly beyond what we ask or think,—According to the power that worketh in us:To Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus,Unto all generations of the age of the ages.—Amen!”(vv. 20, 21).

Praise soars higher than prayer. When St Paul has reached in supplication the summit of his desires, he sees the plenitude of God’s gifts still by a whole heaven outreaching him. But it is only from these mountain-tops hardly won in the exercise of prayer, in their still air and tranquil light, that the boundless realms of promise are visible. God’s giving surpasses immeasurably our thought and asking; but there must be the asking and the thinking for it to surpass. He puts always more into our hand and better things thanwe expected—when the expectant hand is reached out to Him.

Man’s desires will never overtake God’s bounty. Hearing the prayer just offered, unbelief will say: “You have asked too much. It is preposterous to expect that raw Gentile converts, scarcely raised above their heathen debasement, should enter into these exalted notions of yours about Christ and the Church and should be filled with the fulness of God! Prayer must be rational and within the bounds of possibility, offered ‘with the understanding’ as well as ‘with the spirit,’ or it becomes mere extravagance.”—The apostle gives a twofold answer to this kind of scepticism. He appeals to the Divine omnipotence. “With men,” you say, “this is impossible.” Humanly speaking, St Paul’s Gentile disciples were incapable of any high spiritual culture; they were unpromising material, with “not many wise or many noble” amongst them, some of them before their conversion stained with infamous vices. Who is to make saints and godlike men out of such human refuse as this! But “with God,” as Jesus said, “all things are possible.”Fæx urbis, lux orbis: “the scum of the city is made the light of the world!” The force at work upon the minds of these degraded pagans—slaves, thieves, prostitutes, as some of them had been—is the love of Christ; it is the power of the Holy Ghost, the might of the strength which raises the dead to life eternal.

Let us therefore praise Him “who is able to do beyond all things”—beyond the best that His best servants have wished and striven for. Had men ever asked or thought of such a gift to the world as Jesus Christ? Had the prophets foreseen one tenth part of His greatness? In their boldest dreams did thedisciples anticipate the wonders of the day of Pentecost and of the later miracles of grace accomplished by their preaching? How far exceedingly had these things already surpassed the utmost that the Church asked or thought.

St Paul’s reliance is not upon the “ability” alone, upon the abstract omnipotence of God. The force upon which he counts is lodged in the Church, and is in visible and constant operation. “According to the powerthat worketh in us” he expects these vast results to be achieved. This power is the same as that he invoked in verse 16,—the might of the Spirit of God in the inward man. It is the spring of courage and joy, the source of religious intelligence (i. 17, 18) and personal holiness, the very power that raised the dead body of Jesus to life, as it will raise hereafter all the holy dead to share His immortality (Rom. viii. 11). St Paul was conscious at this time in a remarkable degree of the supernatural energy working within his own mind. It is of this that he speaks to the Colossians, in language very similar to that of our text, when he says: “I toil hard, striving according to His energy that works in me in power.” As he labours for the Church in writing that epistle, he is sensible of another Power acting within his spirit and distinguished from it by his consciousness, which tasks his faculties to the utmost to follow its dictates and express its meaning.

The presence of this mysterious power of the Spirit St Paul constantly felt when engaged in prayer,—“The Spirit helpeth our infirmities”; He “makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered” (Rom. viii. 26, 27). On this point the experience of earnest Christian believers in all ages confirms that of St Paul. The sublime prayer to which he has justgiven utterance, is not his own. There is more in it than the mere Paul, a weak man, would have dared to ask or think. He who inspires the prayer will fulfil it. The Searcher of hearts knows better than the man who conceived it, infinitely better than we who are trying for our own help to interpret it, all that this intercession means. God will hear the pleading of His Spirit. The Power that prompts our prayers, and the Power that grants their answer are the same. The former is limited in its action by human infirmity; the latter knows no limit. Its only measure is the fulness of God. To Him who works in us all good desires, and works far beyond us to bring our good desires to good effect, be the glory of all for ever!

In such measure, then, shall glory be to God “in the Church and in Christ Jesus.” We see how the Church takes up the foreground of Paul’s horizon. This epistle has taught us that God desires far more than our individual salvation, however complete that might be. Christ came not to save men only, but mankind. It is “in the Church” that God’s consummate glory will be seen. No man in his fragmentary self-hood, no number of men in their separate capacity can conceivably attain “unto the fulness of God.” It will need all humanity for that,—to reflect the full-orbed splendour of Divine revelation. Isolated and divided from each other, we render to God a dimmed and partial glory. “With one accord, with one mouth” we are called to “glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Wherefore the apostle bids us “receive one another, as Christ also received us, to the glory of God” (Rom. xv. 6, 7).

The Church, being the creation of God’s love in Christ and the receptacle of His communicative fulness,is the vessel formed for His praise. Her worship is a daily tribute to the Divine majesty and bounty. The life of her people in the world, her witness for Christ and warfare against sin, her ceaseless ministries to human sorrow and need proclaim the Divine goodness, righteousness and truth. From the heavenly places where she dwells with Christ, she reflects the light of God’s glory and makes it shine into the depths of evil at her feet. It was the Church’s voice that St John heard in heaven as “the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders, saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigneth!” Each soul new-born into the fellowship of faith adds another note to make up the multitudinous harmony of the Church’s praise to God.

Nor does the Church by herself alone render this praise and honour unto God. The display of God’s manifold wisdom in His dealings with mankind is drawing admiration, as St Paul believed, from the celestial spheres (ver. 10). The story of earth’s redemption is the theme of endless songs in heaven. All creation joins in concert with the redeemed from the earth, and swells the chorus of their triumph. “I heard,” says John in another place, “a voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures, and the elders, saying with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain! And every created thing which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all things that are in them, heard I saying:

Back to IndexNext