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08—ST. PAUL’S GREAT PRAYER OF THE HIGHER LIFE
In
the third chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians (verses 14–21, which see)
Paul’s closet door gets ajar, and all the Christian ages are thrilled with his
sublime whisperings in the ear of God. Come, stand by me and listen. It is an
honorable kind of eavesdropping. Like his Master, Paul’s most earnest
entreaties are not for impenitent sinners—“the world”—but for believers
in Christ, for “the perfecting of the saints.” But before following the
lowly wrestler through the successive petitions of this wonderful prayer, let us
glance at the persons for whom blessings so great are supplicated. The
Ephesian
Church
was composed of believers of far less culture, stability, and moral stamina
than are the members of our modern Churches. They were mostly of the poor, the
laboring class. These are always the first to receive Christ when he is preached
in any community. They were slaves, servants, mechanics, and day-laborers,
coming into rough contact with society, and exposed to temptations of the lowest
class—theft, fornication, brawling, and drunkenness. The Gentile converts were
struggling with their old pagan habits, making a desperate fight against the
heathenish vices which lured them on every hand. The Jewish believers in Christ
in foreign cities were probably gathered from the poor—a class whose
representatives are to be found crowded into the Jews’ quarter of our modern
cities, small peddlers and old-clothes men, aspiring to be money brokers and
usurers—for men change their sky and not their character by crossing seas.
Such
had been the antecedents of this portion of the
Ephesian
Church
. It would be natural to say that it is preposterous to expect any high degree
of spirituality to be attained by the first, or even by the second, generation
of such Christians, just gathered from the bottom of pagan and Jewish society.
But
St. Paul
is lifted above the natural, and grasps by faith a supernatural power, which
may suddenly lift these once low-lived men and women up to the summit of moral
and spiritual excellence. These remarks have been made for the especial benefit
of those who imagine that the higher life was never designed for people whose
condition compels them to take what is called “the rough and tumble of
life;” and that only contemplative clergymen, wealthy and leisurely women
unblessed with little children, and retired business men with ample fortunes and
few temptations, can walk steadily in the King’s highway of holiness. But in
the Ephesian Church we have slaves, subject to the abuse of haughty masters, and
from infancy addicted to servile vices; artisans, poverty-pinched, because for
Christ’s sake they have quit shrine-making; pickpockets and burglars,
(Ephesians 4:28,) still eyed with suspicion by the lovers of good order;
converted harlots and whoremongers, (Ephesians 5:3, 8.) wrestling with gigantic,
pampered lusts; and mothers in homes of poverty, with troops of fretful children
at their heels.
St. Paul
expects that a Church made up of such unpromising material will, through the
cleansing power of the Sanctifier, be “holy and without blemish,” a glorious
Church, not having “spot or wrinkle.”
The
degree of spiritual power with which these believers may be endowed is
“according to the riches of his glory; that pre-eminent glory which St. John
beheld, not in the magnificence of the material universe, but in God’s moral
attributes, “shining in the face of Jesus Christ,” “full of grace and
truth.” Here we find the illimitable measure of the Spirit’s power to
strengthen the believer. The power of the Comforter is equal to the glory of the
Redeemer.
St. Paul
prays that these feeble, tempted souls may be strengthened with might by the
Spirit in the inner man, to a degree commensurate with the inconceivable glory
surrounding, as with a halo, the character of God. In other words, he prays for
an excellence which Christ preaches in his sermon on the mount—“Be ye
therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
The
next petition is, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith:” thus
agreeing with that most precious promise of Jesus in his farewell address to his
disciples, “I will abide in you.” The full significance of this brief
petition is, that the Son of God should representatively, by the Holy Spirit,
make his permanent abode in the believer’s consciousness, rectifying his will,
purifying his affections, illuminating his understanding, subsidizing and
directing all his energies, and pervading every atom of his body, and filling
every capacity of his spirit, making him a particle of Christ’s body, “of
his flesh and bones,” through which the currents of his life ever flow. If
Christian perfection is not sought in this petition for the abiding Christ in
the heart of each disciple in
Ephesus
, we fail to comprehend the meaning of that term. “That ye may be rooted,”
like a tree, “and grounded,” like a building, “in love.” This is but a
metaphorical expression for that perfect love that casteth out all fear that
hath torment. The education of the intellect, and the discipline of the moral
nature, tend toward stability of character. But this is an inferior excellence
in the Apostle’s estimation compared with that stability produced by love
binding the soul to God as with a golden chain; the stability of a planet freely
moving in its orbit around its all-glorious center of attraction. “That ye may
be able to comprehend with all (perfected) saints, what is the breadth, and
length, and depth, and height.” The breadth and length of what? Paul has
failed to say, except by implication in the next verse, from which we infer that
it is “the love of Christ.” In what sense
St. Paul
has applied these geometrical dimensions to love—a spiritual quality and
without extension it is difficult to determine. But we believe that their
meaning is to be sought in the logic of Aristotle, in which
St. Paul
must have been drilled in the
university
of
Tarsus
, the most celebrated seat of Grecian learning east of
Athens
. The Greek logicians employ the term breadth to denote the extension of a
notion, the number of individuals to whom it will apply, as, for instance, man
includes every being possessed of human attributes. The term depth denotes the
intension of a notion, the aggregate of qualities which lie piled up one upon
another, in one individual distinguishing him from all others. Sir William
Hamilton adds to these logical terms a philosophical term, namely, protension,
applicable only to time or extended duration. With these terms—extension,
intention, and protension, throwing a flood of light upon the breadth, depth,
and length of divine love, we are able to get an enlarged view of the
comprehensiveness of this petition. “That ye may know the breadth,” is to
know the vast number of individuals of our race embraced in the scheme of
redemption. It is a remarkable fact, that as soon as love is fully shed abroad
in the believer’s heart he immediately overleaps the limitations of his
theology, if he has been so unfortunate as to have been educated in the belief
of a limited atonement, and feels irresistibly drawn toward every lost sinner as
the object of Jesus’ mighty love. Hence it is that the missionary spirit is so
intense in fully consecrated souls. They have been brought into the most
intimate sympathy with the breadth of Christ’s love. Hence they plunge into
the moral cesspools in our great cities, to pluck lost men and fallen women from
the fires of perdition. The secret motive power which impels them to go down
into these pits, and cheerfully breathe the fetid miasmas which settle there,
is, that they know by experience the amazing breadth of Jesus’ love.
He
left his Father’s throne above;
Emptied
himself of all but love,
And
bled for Adam’s helpless race;
‘Tis
mercy all, immense and free,
For,
O my God, it found out me!
When
Paul prays that the Ephesians may know the length of Christ’s love, he prays
for their eternal blessedness, for his love knows no limit in duration. In
ordinary experience the sense of Christ’s love is faint—he visits but does
not abide. Hence there is a lurking fear that Jesus may cease to cherish him on
whom he has once smiled, even though there should be no apostasy on the part of
the believer. Such a state of experience cannot be called rest in Jesus.
There
is unrest and fear where there should be repose and confidence. There is no cure
for this but the fullness of the Spirit, revealing the fullness and perpetuity
of Christ’s love to the believer. In that glad hour the believer knows that
Christ can be fully trusted for the future, as well as for the present. He hears
the Savior say,
Mine
is an unchanging love,
Higher
than the heights above,
Deeper
than the depths beneath,
Free
and faithful, strong as death.
In
the first stages of Christian life the spiritual perception is not usually
strong enough to hear this voice, but more frequently the ear is not intently
turned in the right direction. But in that maturity of grace in which love is
made perfect, the feeling of the permanency of the Divine regard takes full
possession of the soul, and it becomes a certainty that he will not desert us
unless we desert him. This possibility only induces us to grasp with a firmer
grip the promise that we shall be “kept by the power of God, through faith,
unto salvation.” Then we exultingly ask, with the Apostle, “Who shall
separate us from the love of Christ?” that is, who will turn away Christ from
loving us? “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Mr. Wesley had been preaching
thirty-four years before he was “thoroughly convinced” that perfect love
“is amissible,”—“capable of being lost.” It is evident that he was not
a believer in that kind of perfect love which may be experienced today and lost
tomorrow; a species which many mistaken professors avow, to the great detriment
of the genuine experience, and to the representation of the unchanging Jesus as
an exceedingly capricious being.
In
the petition, “that ye may know the depth and height,” we have really but
one dimension, depth, which denotes the multiplied qualities of Christ’s love,
or, more exactly, the various spiritual perfections which it bestows on the
believer. As God out of sunshine and dust makes all the varieties of color which
clothe the landscape—as out of water and sunbeams he creates the seven colors
of the solar spectrum—so out of human faith and the Sun of righteousness he
produces the whole rainbow of Christian graces. To know the depth of Christ’s
love is to possess all “the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace,
long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, fidelity, patience, and temperance,” a
spiritual constellation made up of “these gracious stars, perfect repentance,
perfect faith, perfect humility, perfect meekness, perfect self-denial, perfect
resignation, perfect hope, perfect charity.”
The
next petition is, that ye may “know the love of Christ which passeth
knowledge.” Divine solecism! Blessed paradox! To know the unknowable fullness
of Christ’s love; to drop the short sounding-line of human experience into the
unfathomable ocean of the Divine mercy. We understand
St. Paul
to assert that the love of Christ surpasses all merely intellectual
comprehension and logical statement, while it is apprehended by the spiritual
intuitions. All who pass into this deep experience are impressed with the
vastness, the boundlessness, of Christ’s love, a sea without bottom or shore.
“How little of the sea,” says Rutherford, “can a child carry in his hand;
as little am I able to take away of my great Sea, my boundless and running-over
Christ Jesus!” This is not a peculiarity of the experience of justification.
The Ephesians had not yet been
Plunged
in the Godhead’s deepest sea
And
lost in its immensity.
They
were still only ankle deep, standing in some little land-locked bay, without any
conception of the immense, the limitless, expanse of waters beyond their view,
hidden by the intervening promontories of ignorance and doubt. This petition is
distinctively for the “higher life,” as is the next, “that ye may be
filled with all the fullness of God,” or more exactly, “even to all the
fullness of God,” even as he is full—each in your degree, but all to your
utmost capacity, with wisdom, might, and love. The rhetorical redundance of this
petition strikingly exhibits the richness and fullness of the Apostle’s
experience struggling to find utterance in words. The thought, nakedly
expressed, is, “that ye may be filled with God.” In logical exactness there
can be no increase to “filled.” But
St. Paul
’s soul, all aglow with the ardors of Christian love, must intensify the
expression by adding fullness to filled, and then crowning the thought with the
tautological all as a finishing of the climax. We do not understand that this is
a petition for the omnipresent and almighty God to compress his infinitude to
the limitations of the human body and soul, as in the mystery of the
incarnation, in which there “dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily:”
it is rather a prayer for that complement of blessing, each perfect in kind,
which fills the cornucopia of God’s grace under the remedial dispensation, and
which is ready to be poured upon all who have the spiritual capacity, the faith,
to receive them. To deny that this petition is for Christian perfection would be
as absurd as to deny that the sun rolls daily through the skies. St. Paul, aided
by the Holy Spirit—we would speak reverently—could not have penned words
more clearly and unequivocally describing the blessing of perfect love as taught
in the Wesleyan standards.
In
our analysis of this prayer we have shown that every petition is an outbreaking
of Paul’s soul that the Ephesians might be made perfect in love. There is
nothing negative in it; there is no allusion to indwelling sin; the aim of the
whole is for the fullness of the divine life. It is certain that he himself
enjoyed the high state of experience into which he would lead others. The
struggling expression, the strain and cumulation of words, all indicate a soul
running, with abounding joy, up this higher path, and not a mere guide-board
with its foot planted in the ground, and outstretched, painted hand pointing out
the way which “the vulture’s eye hath not seen.” This heaping up terms,
amplifying, heightening, and intensifying his expression, as if his soul was
agonizing for utterance, is seen in the doxology at the end of the prayer.
“Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or
think, according to the power that worketh in us.” What a conception of the
“exceeding greatness of Christ’s power to usward who believe” does
St. Paul
here take! Can anyone believe that this was revealed to his intellect by the
Spirit of inspiration, and not to his consciousness in personal experience? Who
can say that the great Head of the Church stationed
St. Paul
as a porter to open the gate for others to enter this paradise regained—this
Eden
of love made perfect—while himself was tantalizingly forbidden to enter so
long as he dwelt in a fleshly tabernacle? No, the Master is not so severe with
his chosen servant.
This
doxology is a molten stream from the glowing heart of a Vesuvius. The inward
fires cannot be restrained. “A power” is working in him. This power is the
measure of the marvelous work which will be wrought in every one that grasps the
promises. One would think that it was enough to know that Christ Jesus “is
able to do all we ask;” but
St. Paul
adds, “or think.” Thought always outstrips language. In religious
experience words are but a pitiful mockery of the reality, and “language is
lame” indeed. But not satisfied with this expansion of the thought, Paul adds
the word above, which lifts the expression to an indefinite height. He then
multiplies the force of the above by the word abundantly, a term which of itself
is full and overflowing. The effect of abundantly, put before above, is, in
mathematical phrase, to raise it to the second power. But this does not
adequately set forth the amazing wealth of blessing stored up in the power of
Christ as in an infinite treasury to be unlocked by the key of faith. He
immediately broadens and deepens the abundantly by the illimitable term
exceeding, which so enlarges the entire conception that our minds, struggling to
keep up with the widening idea, fall back upon themselves in despair, when they
attempt to compass in thought abundantly multiplied by exceeding, a thing as
unthinkable as infinity multiplied by infinity. Bear in mind that there is no
limitation of the exercise of this power of Christ to the hour of death. On the
face of every petition, in the use of verbs in the present tense, there lies prima-facie
proof that
St. Paul
is praying for blessings to be enjoyed by the Ephesians immediately in this
life. Recur now to the circumstances and antecedents of these Christians as
portrayed in the beginning of this chapter, and add to this the declaration that
Jesus is yesterday, today, and for ever the same, and you, my dear reader, have
ample ground for your faith in Jesus Christ for this great salvation.
Reader,
this very prayer has been preserved for nineteen centuries for your instruction
in righteousness. The prayer is for you as much as for the dwellers in
Ephesus
. It was put on record as a permanent publication of the complete salvation to
every generation—an inventory of the unsearchable riches of Christ—the rich
gifts and blessings of which he is the almoner through the Holy Spirit. It has
been answered in the spiritual enlargement of thousands of souls all along the
Christian centuries.
We
quote but one instance, the Spirit-baptism of a young Swiss preacher, who
afterward became the bright evangelical light of
Switzerland
, and whose “History of the Reformation” is read throughout the Protestant
world. Says Merle D’Aubigne:
We
were studying the Epistle to the Ephesians, and had got to the end of the third
chapter. When we read the last two verses, “Now unto Him who is able to do
exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that
worketh in us, unto Him be glory throughout all ages;” this expression fell
upon my soul like a revelation from God. He can do by his power, I said to
myself, above all we ask, above all even that we can think—nay, exceeding
abundantly above all! A full trust in Christ for the work to be done within my
poor heart now filled my soul. We all three knelt down: and although I had never
fully confided my inward struggle to my friends, the prayer of Rieu was filled
with such admirable faith as he would have uttered had he known all my wants.
When I arose in that inn room at
Kiel
, I felt as if my wings were renewed as the wings of eagles. From that time
forward I comprehended that my own efforts were of no avail; that Christ is able
to do all by his power that worketh in us; and the habitual attitude of my soul
was to lie at the foot of the cross, crying to Him, “Here I am, bound hand and
foot, unable to move, unable to do the least thing to get away from the enemy,
who oppresses me. Do all thyself. I know thou wilt do it. Thou wilt even do
exceeding abundantly above all I ask.” I was not disappointed; all my doubts
were removed, my anguish quelled, and the Lord extended to me peace as a river.
Then I could comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and
depth, and height, and know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. Then was
I able to say, “Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt
bountifully with thee.”
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