(Eph. 1:15-23; 3:14-2115Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, 16Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; 17That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: 18The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, 19And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, 20Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, 21Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: 22And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, 23Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. (Ephesians 1:15‑23)
14For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 16That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; 17That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, 18May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; 19And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. 20Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, 21Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen. (Ephesians 3:14‑21).)
Verse 17. “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Me.” The connection between teaching and praying is most intimate and beautiful. We naturally turn from teaching or preaching to prayer. It is God’s way of relieving the heart. But for the relief which is found in prayer, the heart would soon sink beneath the solemn responsibility of ministering in the weighty matters of the soul. Eternal things may be seen in such a Light, and realized in such power, from earnestly pressing their importance upon others, that a weight the most solemn and depressing may be left on the mind. Hence the need of a burden-bearer.
If we attach Eternity to the destinies of our hearers, we invest them with an interest, an importance, and a magnitude, which are altogether overwhelming. Compared with Eternity everything which can be reckoned by time dwindles into utter insignificancy. How, where, can relief from the pressure of such thoughts be found? Only in prayer. The testimony, the souls, the eternal results, and the conscious shortcomings too, must all be cast upon God.
To this divine refuge — this place of repose and strength, the great apostle now turns. For the moment he takes the place of intercessor. And now, mark, I pray thee, my soul — carefully mark the character of this divinely inspired prayer. Thou hast here the apostle before thee, both as a teacher and as an intercessor. Blessed example! — it is worthy of thy closest study. And first, observe the perfect harmony there is between his prayer and the truths he had just been teaching. He says nothing in his prayer about the forgiveness of sins, or that they might receive the Holy Spirit. Why is this? thou mayest inquire. The answer is, that the tone of his prayer is not below the tone of his teaching. Some seem to pull down in their prayers, what they have confessedly been building up in their teaching. Not so the apostle. He is perfectly consistent. He seeks to bind up more closely in prayer, what he has built up as a teacher.
The difference, we are ready to admit, between the tone of the teaching and the prayers, to which we have referred, may flow from a sense of unworthiness on the mind of him who is ministering in the things of God. And this, in its own place, is to be admired; but, nevertheless, we may falsify the word of God, and contradict our own statements, by praying according to our feelings, or a supposed becoming humility. Intelligence in the word is to be looked for; it is our only safe guide, and the medium of the Holy Spirit’s action. At the same time, the prayer may be a truer index of the state of the heart in the presence of God, than the doctrines which have been advanced. The Lord knows. Ο my soul, judge thyself! — solemnly, constantly, judge thyself! And may He enable all His servants so to judge themselves, that they may be true and real before Him and before the congregation. We now turn to the lesson taught us by the apostle.
Having addressed the saints at Ephesus as the children of God, and as blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ; he could not consistently pray that they might know that God loves them, and that they were forgiven. He had taught them these blessed truths in the plainest and fullest manner. He had assured the Ephesians, and through the same epistle he assures all Christians, that they are the children of God, according to the good pleasure of His will — that they are before Him as the very delight of His heart — that they are pardoned and accepted in the Beloved — that the Holy Spirit dwells in them, both as a seal of their present salvation, and as an earnest of their future glory. These blessed truths are not only revealed to faith, but they are sealed home to the Christian’s heart, through the Holy Spirit dwelling in him. “In whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with (not by), observe, but with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance unto the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of Ids glory.” In beautiful harmony with these and other great truths which he had taught the saints, he prays that God may give them the spirit of wisdom to understand these marvelous revelations of His grace, and that they might rise, in faith, to the height of His thoughts and counsels-about them. This is the burden of Ids prayer.
But are Christians, let me ask, not to confess their sins and shortcomings to God their Father? Most assuredly; that is just what they need to do constantly. And they cannot walk with God unless they do: but they should never lower, by unscriptural expressions, the ground of their standing in His presence. Our standing in the presence of God is in virtue of the work of Christ, and according to the riches of God’s grace; and as these can never fail, we can never lose the place they give. Besides, it is “to the praise of the glory of his grace” that we are there. But though we may be deeply conscious of failure as Christians, we should never take the ground of poor, unpardoned sinners before God. This would be to deny our calling, and to bring darkness, confusion, and weakness into our souls. God says we are before Him as His children, pardoned and accepted in the Beloved. We are no longer on the ground of shiners before God, but as children before the Father. In conversion the ground is changed. When born of God, we cease to be on the ground of sinners before Him, and are ever after on the ground of children in the family. True, we do not cease to be sinners, in the sense that we sin daily and hourly in thought, word, and deed. The thought of foolishness is sin; and who is not troubled with foolish thoughts? But we arc to confess our faults as children before the Father, and not as shiners before God. In faithfulness to God and His word, we ought to maintain the ground on which He has set us. Not, of course, that the sin of the child is any the less, but, on the contrary, more grievous, for it is against more light, love, and grace. And, rest assured, the better we understand our calling in Christ, the deeper will be our humiliation on account of failure, and the more unreserved our confession of it. True holiness should characterize the children of God. As it is written, “Be ye holy; for I am holy.” Or, in other words, the Christian’s state should always answer to his standing. When it is not so, there is too good reason for humiliation and confession.
The question, you will see, is not that the Christian is any better in himself than he ever was, but that this position is changed. His standing before God is no longer in the first Adam, but in the last Adam — the risen Christ. And he is expected to walk even as Christ walked. “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.” Indeed, the scriptures speak of the Christian as if it were just possible for him to sin. “If” the apostle John said “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” The possibility of sinning is barely admitted. Such is the dignified manner of scripture, when speaking of the children of God: though, when speaking of our old nature, it affirms there is no good thing in it. And it is worthy of notice that he does not say, “If any man repent and pray for pardon he will be forgiven;” but, “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father.” Nevertheless, we ought to repent, and repent deeply, when conscious of failure. But, in the meantime, Christ sees to our interests in heaven, and the Holy Ghost sees to our interests on earth, so that we are well cared for; adored be the goodness of our God! What a mercy that we are in Christ’s hands! How often we may sin and never be conscious of it; but Christ sees it at once, and meets the need in virtue of His blood, so that the sin never reaches the tin-one of God. All praise be to His blessed name! The work of Christ has set us as children in the Father’s presence, and fitted us to be there; and the advocacy of Christ maintains us holy, and without blame, before Him in love. The Lord give us to be in the intelligence of scripture, both in teaching, preaching, and praying, and may we stand firm on the great truth, that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.
GREAT ADVOCATE, Almighty Friend,
On Thee do all our hopes depend;
Our cause can never, never fail,
For Thou dost plead, and must prevail.
In every dark distressing hour,
When sin and Satan join their power,
Let this blest truth repel each dart,
That Thou dost bear us on Thy heart.
The apostle refers in his first prayer to “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.” The mighty power of God as displayed in the exaltation of Christ, and of the Christian in Him, is the prominent thought in this prayer, but not the only one. The thought suggested by the expression, “Father of glory,” is sweet to the heart of the child. While we connect the idea of power with the title, “God,” affection is inseparably associated with the title, “Father.” This is most precious to the heart — it sweetens everything. While meditating in wonder and delight on the bright scene of glory which is before us, the happy thought crosses the mind, “My Father’s love is the spring of all that glory — the fountain of all that perfect blessedness. He is “the Father of glory.”
Great indeed and wonderful is the effect of God’s power as here seen by the eye of faith. It is called, “the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.” But who can speak of the happy combination of love and glory? Yet, surely, even the brightest glory, is but the outward manifestation of love. Nevertheless, they go well together — we would not have them separated; and, thank God, they never will: but all will allow that love is the deeper, closer thing. Both will be seen in the millennium. Then the heavens will not be so high above the earth as they now are. They will be, as it were, together. Jacob in vision saw them united as by a ladder, and the many glories encircling the Messiah were seen from earth’s point of view. Then the Church will be seen in company with Christ, according to His own word in John 17 “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.”
Here all is plain as to the future. The glory which the Father gives the Son, the Son gives to us, that the world may know that the Father sent the Son, and that He loves us, as He loves the Son. When the world sees us in the same glory with Christ, it will then know that we are loved with the same love. Wondrous, blessed truth! The soul can only bow in worship, while meditating on the grace that shines in these bright scenes of love and glory. “But what will it be to be there!” True, my soul, but what of the Father’s house? Ah! that is the inner circle, the home of love. What is enjoyed there the world can never know. It will see the glory outside the house, but it can never gaze on the family scenes inside. Is this thy place, Ο my soul? It is the children’s place, I answer, and we are all the children of God, by faith in Christ Jesus. His word can never be broken. All who are the children of God note; will be in the children’s home then.
Ο LORD! my pilgrim spirit longs
To sing the everlasting songs
Of GLORY, LOVE, and power;
When heaven and earth and all things yield,
My Savior will be still my shield
For He has to my soul revealed
Himself my strength and tower.
Who — Ο who could rest without the full assurance of an eternity of love and glory? Bray, dear reader, is this thy blessed hope? It is, surely, worthy of all thy thought—all thy attention — all thy determination; and all sacrifice too, even unto life itself, rather than lose that home of love — that eternal glory. One word settles all, “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on Him.” (John 3:30, 3630He must increase, but I must decrease. (John 3:30)
36He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (John 3:36).) May the Lord grant unto thee, and unto all who read these pages, His own richest and everlasting blessing, and may we all meet at last in that eternally happy home. Now believe!