The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians Part 13

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 G.o.d as the Father of angels and of men, the apostle asks that He will endow the readers in a manner corresponding to _the 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 G.o.d 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), and _the 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 so _to 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 G.o.d_. 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 partic.i.p.ate.

Let us pause for a moment to join in St Paul's invocation: "I bow my knees to the Father, of whom [not _the whole family_, but] _every family_ in heaven and upon earth is named." The point of St Paul's original phrase is somewhat lost in translation. The Greek word for _family_ (_patria_) is based on that for _father_ (_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 t.i.tle which enn.o.bled the race. So we have "the sons of Israel," the "sons of Aaron" or "of Korah"; and in Greek history, the Atridae, the Alcmaeonidae, who form a family of many kindred households--a _clan_, or _gens_, 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 of _sons of G.o.d_; 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 G.o.d" 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 G.o.d," it is implied that the angels are already and by birthright sons of G.o.d. Hence in Hebrews xii. 22, 23 the angels are described as "the festal gathering and a.s.sembly of _the firstborn_ enrolled in heaven." We, the sons of Adam, with our many tribes and kindreds, through Jesus Christ our Elder Brother const.i.tute a new family of G.o.d. G.o.d becomes our Name-father, and permits us also to call ourselves His sons through faith. Thus the Church of believers in the Son of G.o.d const.i.tutes the "family on earth named" 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 G.o.d's offspring. Heaven and earth are kindred spheres.

This pa.s.sage gives to G.o.d's Fatherhood the same extension that chapter i. 21 has given to Christ's Lords.h.i.+p. Every order of creaturely intelligence acknowledges G.o.d for the Author of its being, and bows to Christ as its sovereign Lord. In G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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. _Strength_ is 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 G.o.d so to reveal to them His glory and to pour into their hearts His Spirit, that no weakness and fear may remain in them. The _strengthening_ of which he speaks is the opposite of the _faintness 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 "strengthened _with_ [or _by_] _power_,"--by "the power" of G.o.d "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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 mult.i.tudes of obscure sufferers for righteousness' sake. There is a great truth expressed when we describe a brave and enterprising man as a _man of spirit_. All high and commanding qualities of soul come from this invisible source. They are inspirations. In the human will, with its _vis 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 n.o.ble courage are proper to the man of the Spirit. Such power is not neutralized by our infirmities; it a.s.serts 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 in weakness." In privation and loneliness, in old age and bodily decay, the strength of G.o.d in the human spirit s.h.i.+nes with its purest l.u.s.tre. 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d.

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 Caesars, a power of the Spirit that is to dominate the centuries to come. Of this omnipotent power dwelling in the Church of G.o.d, the apostle prays that every one of his readers may partake.

II. Parallel to the first pet.i.tion, 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 pa.s.sages 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 may _take up His abode_,--may _settle_ in your hearts." The word signifies to _set up one's house_ or _make one's home_ in a place, by way of contrast with a temporary and uncertain sojourn (comp. ii. 19). The same verb in Colossians ii. 9 a.s.serts that in Christ "_dwells_ all the fulness of the G.o.dhead"; and in Colossians i. 19 it declares, used in the same tense as here, how it was G.o.d's "pleasure that all the fulness should _make its dwelling_ in 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 "_the_ Christ," 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 His _name_. It is Christ not only possessed, but understood,--Christ realized in the import of His work, in the light of His relations.h.i.+p 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 ant.i.thesis 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 Queens.h.i.+p. 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 G.o.dhead, 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 which he 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 pet.i.tion 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 mult.i.tudes 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 pa.s.sionate 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 lamentable and 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 fellows.h.i.+p with Him the vigour of spirit and courage in affliction are sustained, that the apostle first asked from G.o.d 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 Church_ fills his mind. Its lofty claims at every turn he has pressed on our attention. This is G.o.d'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 G.o.d'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 fellows.h.i.+p with Christ, it is in order that they may be the better able to enter into the Church's life and to apprehend G.o.d'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 precisely _what_ that 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 is _G.o.d'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 a.s.signed to this building of G.o.d, we may say with Hofmann[97]: "It stretches _wide_ over all the world of the nations, east and west. In its _length_, it reaches through all time unto the end of things. In _depth_, it penetrates to the region where the faithful sleep in death [comp. iv. 9]. And it rises to heaven's _height_, where Christ lives."

In the like strain Bernardine a Piconio, most genial and spiritual of Romanist interpreters: "_Wide_ as the furthest limits of the inhabited world, _long_ as the ages of eternity through which G.o.d'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 commonwealth to which we belong, such the dimensions of this city of G.o.d built on the foundation of the apostles,--"that lieth four-square."

Do we not need to be _strong_--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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 t.i.tles 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 G.o.d 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 mult.i.tude of Christ's freemen and G.o.d'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 G.o.d, 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.

"With _all_ the saints" the Asian Christians are called to enter into St Paul's wider view of G.o.d'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 mission to save humanity and to reconstruct the world for a temple of G.o.d. This is a calling for _all the saints_; but only for _saints_,--for men devoted to G.o.d and renewed by His Spirit. It was "revealed to His _holy_ apostles 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. _Love_ is 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 fellows.h.i.+p: "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 n.o.ble 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.

CHAPTER XV.

_KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE._

"[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 pa.s.seth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of G.o.d."--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" G.o.d'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_ [not _comprehend_] the love of Christ"; for it "pa.s.ses 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 G.o.d" (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 may _win 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 fellows.h.i.+p 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 a.s.signed 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.

Our principles 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 n.o.blest 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 surpa.s.ses 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 pa.s.seth knowledge.