"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father." So he begins this wonderful series of petitions which runs through four verses (16-19). A young man taking a trip through the Northwest was so overwhelmed with the beauties of the scenery on the first few days, he said he had used up all his adjectives and superlatives before the greatest sights were reached. We are in like way to do that in our study of Ephesians. Here is one great revelation after another, and even the inspired vocabulary of the apostle is beggared in the attempt to describe the things which God hath purposed for them that love Him. There are "the riches of his grace, which he made to abound toward us" (1:7, 8 and 2:7); the "riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints," and "the exceeding greatness of his power (Gr. dunamis, from which our word "dynamite") to usward who believe, according to the working (Gr. energeia, from which our word energy) of the strength (Gr. kratos) of his might (another Greek word denoting force or power--"ischus") 1:18, 19. There is "the fullness that filleth all in all"; and "the unsearchable riches of Christ." (1:23; 3:8.) The strain upon language is evident in these expressions; human words cannot express, but only suggest these things. But the greatest things have not yet been said: they come out in the course of this prayer.

      The cause and incentive of this prayer about to follow is to be sought in 2:13-22 and in 3:8-10. Because of all this vast provision, this immeasurable grace, Paul must now pray for them--for prayer is always the way of appropriating the blessings of God. Most of us might have much more than we have, if only we laid hold of it by prayer. "Ye have not because we ask not," explains much of our spiritual destitution. Many Christians are like the miser who had a million dollars in the bank, and lived on ten dollars a month. We must lay hold, appropriate, avail ourselves of that which God so freely holds out to us. "Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, to you have I given it." (Josh. 1:3.) By prayer we first set the sole of our foot upon that which God has given us. O that the church of God might possess its possessions! Paul prays for them that they might really have what is rightfully theirs.

      And he made his prayer unto the Father--the great true Father from whom all that are called fathers derive their [28] name: the Arch-Father who to perfection is all that a real father should be, as to love and care and kindness, the "Father of lights" from whose hand comes every good and perfect gift, and with whom is no shadow of turning.

      Now what does Paul ask of Him? That He would grant you--not in small measure, but "according to the riches of his glory"--two, great things:

      1. That ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man.

      2. That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. But out of the second grows another, by way of result and consequence:

      3. To the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge.

      The ultimate aim and end of all this is stated in the concluding word:

      "That ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God."

      The prospect here opened is to the average Christian staggering. That is if we at all notice the import of these words. We have a way of taking scripture for granted, and we read the most astonishing things as matters of course, hardly noticing what is said. Let us open our eyes, or, better still, pray with the psalmist, "Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law." (Ps. 119:18.) See what this really says. The first reaction may seem as if we beheld some distant vision of glory, a sublime ideal of perfection, not possible of realization in common life. When we came to this passage in a Bible study, a good, faithful Christian said, "That was for the apostles, wasn't it? That couldn't be for us." No--an apostle inspired with the Spirit of truth wrote this to the common rank and file of the Christians in Ephesus, many of whom had but lately come out of heathenism. For them and for us were those things meant. Not for cloistered "saints" who have nothing to do but to pray or spend hours in pious exercise and meditation--nay, but for people hard pressed with the burdens of life, and sore troubled with trials and temptations. These things are for us. Nor do they refer to some ultimate state of perfection which we may reach in thirty or forty years if we keep on growing, or in the "hereafter" (and so, of course, could not apply to us now)--but to us today, and just as we are; and they are even needed for the daily life. I am stressing this because we have a faculty for by-passing such passages as this on one ground and another, as though they were not seriously meant, or as if they pertained to the man in the moon, or had some sort of far-off meaning and application that does not directly concern us. It seems difficult [29] to take hold of the great truths and promises of God. We are apt to conceal our unbelief by a show of great practicalness and profess to hold by matter-of-fact, "common sense" views, disregarding anything that does not fit into our small way of thinking, as, something "fancy" and "non-essential." So long as we do this we shall be, not "good, common, plain, everyday" Christians, as we may like to style ourselves, but stunted babes who cannot grow any more because we are unwilling to leave our state of spiritual dwarf-hood.

      Let us now look more particularly at these petitions which Paul asked for those Ephesian brethren, and for us. First of all power. If there is one trait general among us all it is weakness--spiritual weakness; weakness of will and purpose; weakness of resistance in the matter of undertaking and carrying out God's work. The Holy Spirit is in His working always connected with power. As once He imparted supernatural physical strength to Samson, so can the Spirit strengthen God's children "with power in the inner man." This is not to be explained away, but believed, accepted, counted on, acted on. Power to "put to death the deeds of the body" (Rom. 8:13); power to fight the good fight of faith (Eph. 6:10); power to speak the word with boldness (Acts 4:31); power in prayer, power to wait patiently (Gal. 5:5)--these come from being strengthened with power by the Spirit in the inner man.

      The second petition--"that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." Christ was already dwelling in their hearts (see 2 Cor. 13:5)--but the word he uses here (katoikeo) denotes the taking a fixed and settled abode--that Christ may make Himself at home in our hearts; that He may make your hearts His full and permanent place of dwelling. This is really the secret of the new life, the Christlike life. When Christ lives in you, and is permitted to live His life in and through us to look through our eyes, to speak through our lips, to work with our hands--this is the power of the true Christian life. It is, as some one expressed it, "the old shack run under a new management." (Comp. Gal. 2:20.) This indwelling of Christ is "by faith"--which does not mean, as some have thought, that we only believe that He dwells in us, though it were not really so--but that His indwelling is realized by faith. He dwells in the believing heart.

      From this follows something. Such a Christian will be "rooted and grounded in love," and "strong to apprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge." Such is the realization of the love of God that he will be firmly settled and anchored in it--safe against all the [30] attacks of doubt and fear; and he will grasp with enlightened mind the whole scope of God's great redeeming work; and he will know--not by intellectual process but experimentally--the love of Christ; and, in the end he will "be filled unto all the fullness of God"--a phrase that means more than we can fathom: we can only dimly discern its infinite meaning.

      But can such things be--and be meant for us? The apostle assures us of it in the fervent doxology with which this chapter closes. (Eph. 3:20, 21.) God is able, he says, to do all that, though it transcends all our thoughts and conceptions. He is not only able to do all we ask or think but exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. And that "according to the power that worketh in us." This is the same power referred to in 1:19--"the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe," which is "according to that working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead . . . ." This is also, "the power that worketh in us," and the power with which we are strengthened by His Spirit in the inward man (v. 16). We are conscious here that there is much more to the Christian life--I speak not of the hereafter, but here--much more than we ever have thought or realized. It is, as it were, an infinite realm of which we have only touched the border; it is like a boundless ocean of which we have taken in but a cup full. These are the unsearchable riches of Christ which belong to the poverty-stricken saints.

      "Unto him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations, for ever and ever. Amen." The original (as the R. V. margin) says "unto all the generations of the age of the ages." What glory, what wondrous destiny, what splendors of high service there is in store for the church in the eternal ages to come (2:7) we cannot now conceive of. But we see that through the unbounded ages the church will reflect and show forth the glory of God. But even here and now, "in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation" God is to he glorified in the church. Does your congregation so glorify Him in your community? And--"If every member were just like me, what kind of church would our church be?" Let us draw upon the great promises and avail ourselves of the inexhaustible abundance of the grace of God!

[LOE 28-32]