Ephesians 3:19

Ephesians 3:19

The deepest thoughts of the heart of a spiritual man are sure to come out in his prayer. Hear a man of God pray, and you hear the real man speaking. And when such an Apostle as Paul prays, we may well be all attention to catch every syllable. His prayer is an ascending one. Each petition rises higher than the preceding, and meditating on this prayer is something like ascending an Alpine peak. (1) You will see that, in order that a man may be filled with all the fulness of God, there must be an inward strengthening. There are spiritual faculties as well as mental, and it is absolutely necessary that these should be strengthened by the Holy Ghost if we are to apprehend anything of Christ in all His fulness. The Spirit of God takes us down, if I may so express it, to the shore of the ocean of redeeming love, and as the soul drinks it in new life and new power flow into every part of the spiritual system. (2) Then following that first petition comes "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith," that is, that, by an ever-acting faith on our part, a whole Christ may be received and a whole Christ may be retained within the soul. How many there are who only know what it is to have a Christ in the Bible. They know what it is to have a portrait of Christ; and they gaze with rapture upon it, and yet know very little of what the Apostle meant when he said, "That Christ may dwell in your hearts," that is, that He may be no mere portrait, no mere bright idea, but that enshrined within your soul there may be a living Lord. Then you see how naturally comes the following petition: "That ye may be filled with all the fulness of God."

I. Consider what it is to be filled with all the fulness of God. I take it that it is to have as much of God within us as our nature will contain, to be as full of God as the Temple of old was full of Jehovah's presence. The Apostle prays that the Ephesians may have God in the chambers of imagery, God in their motives, God in their meditations, God in their contemplations, God filling up their entire manhood.

II. There is a vast difference between the incommunicable fulness of Christ and that fulness which He has on purpose to bestow it upon His people. There is a fulness of God which it were blasphemy for us to think of as our own or to ask for; whilst, on the other hand, there is a fulness in Christ that it is sinful on our part not to expect to receive. The measure of a man's power over others is in proportion to the measure with which he is filled with God.

A. G. Brown, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 1096.

These words represent

I. A large receptive capacity on the part of Christians.

II. God the standard, while the source and cause, of completeness.

III. A degree of approximation to that standard now attainable.

S. Martin, Rain upon the Mown Grass, p. 304.

References: Ephesians 3:19 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii., No. 455; vol. xxix., No. 1755; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 88; H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Life of Duty, vol. ii., p. 137; E. Johnson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 305; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 356; Preacher's Monthly, vol. vii., p. 346; vol. ix., p. 316; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, pp. 127-129; S. Leathes, Church Sermons, vol. ii., p. 337; A. Maclaren, Christ in the Heart, p. 53; A. Fletcher, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. x., p. 53.Ephesians 3:20 . Parker, City Temple, 1871, p. 105.