Ephesians 3:16-19

Ephesians 3:16

Spiritual Strength.

We may fasten upon five significant terms as keys by which we may unlock this Divine casket, so that its precious contents, the riches of the Father's glory, may be set free and shed abroad.

I. The first is faith. The seat of the strength imparted is the inner man; it is the strength not of outward propping, but of inward peace and power. The essence of it is Christ dwelling in your hearts, Christ living in you, Christ in you the hope of glory. And the means or instrument of receiving it is your simple heart's faith. Well may this strength be characterised as mighty, your being strengthened with might. It is, indeed, your being strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.

II. To faith succeeds love. You are to be rooted and grounded in love. These images suggest the ideas of a grove and a building. You are to be rooted as the trees that constitute a grove and grounded as the stones and pillars of a building, "rooted and built up." Love is the soil, rich, deep, and generous, and withal homogeneous all through, in which all the trees are rooted. It is also the soft and tender lime or mortar, the close-drawing and close-fixing cement, in which through successive layers the stones are deposited or embedded.

III. Faith and love lead on to comprehension, or taking in, a comprehensive survey of something very vast and vast in all directions. I am one of the family that fills the house to overflowing, one of the society for whose accommodation the house is almost too small. I comprehend its breadth, and length, and depth, and height, only to realise, in common with all the saints with whom I comprehend it, that in all directions it defies any bounds I might assign to it.

IV. Through this process we reach a marvellous knowledge, and at last

V. "We are filled with all the fulness of God."

R. S. Candlish, Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians,p. 53.

References: Ephesians 3:16. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xii., p. 707; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. vii., p. 144.