'That ye may know what is the hope of His calling.'--Eph. i. 18.
A man's prayers for others are a very fair thermometer of his own
religious condition. What he asks for them will largely indicate what he
thinks best for himself; and how he asks it will show the firmness of
his own faith and the fervour of his own feeling. There is nothing
colder than the intercession of a cold Christian; and, on the other
hand, in no part of the fervid Apostle Paul's writings do his words come
more winged and fast, or his spirit glow with greater fervour of
affection and holy desire than in his petitions for his friends.
In that great prayer, of which my text forms a part, we have his
response to the good news that had reached him of the steadfastness in
faith and abundance in love of these Ephesian Christians. As the best
expression of his glad love he asks for them the knowledge of three
things, of which my text is the first, and the other two are the
'riches of the glory of the inheritance' and 'the exceeding greatness of
God's power.'
Now if we take the 'hope' in my text, as is often done, as meaning the
thing hoped for, there seems to be but a shadowy difference between the
first and the second of these subjects of the apostolic petition.
Whereas, if we take it as meaning, not the object on which the emotion
is fixed, but the emotion itself, then all the three stand in a natural
gradation and connection. We have, first, the Christian emotion; then
the object upon which it is fixed; 'the glory of the inheritance'; then
the power by which the latter is brought and the former is realised. We
shall consider the second and third of these petitions in following
sermons. For the present I confine myself to this first, the Apostle's
great desire for Christians who had already made considerable progress
in the Christian life, 'that they may know,' by experiencing it, 'what
is the hope of His calling.'
I. Now the first thought that these words suggest to me is this, that
the Christian hope is based upon the facts of Christian experience.
What does the Apostle mean by naming it 'the hope of his calling'? He
means this, that the great act of the divine mercy revealed to us in the
Gospel, by which God summons and invites men to Himself, will naturally
produce in those who have yielded to it a hope of immortal and perfect
life. Because God has called men, therefore the man who has yielded to
the call may legitimately, and must, if he is to do his duty, cherish
such a hope. It is clear enough that this is so, inasmuch as, unless
there be a heaven of completeness for us who have yielded to the summons
and obeyed the invitation of God in His Gospel, His whole procedure is
enigmatical and bewildering. The fact of the call is inexplicable; the
cost of it is no less so. It was not worth while for God to make the
world unless with respect to another which was to follow. It is still
less worth His while to redeem the world if the results of that
redemption, as they are exhibited here and now, and as they are capable
of being exhibited in this present condition of things, are all that are
to flow from it. It was not worth Christ's while to die, it was not
worth God's while to send His Son, there was no sense or consistency in
that great voice that echoes from heaven, calling us to love and serve
Him, unless, beyond the jangling contradictions, and imperfect
attainments, and foiled aspirations, and fragmentary faith, and broken
services of earth, there be a region of completeness where all that was
tendency here shall have become effect; and all that was but in germ
here, and sorely frostbitten by the ungenial climate, and shrivelled by
the foul vapours in the atmosphere, shall blossom and burgeon into
eternal life. The Christian life, as it is to-day, in its attainments
and imperfections, is at once the witness of the reality of the power
that has produced it, and clamantly calls for a sphere and environment
in which that power shall be able to produce the effects which it is
capable of producing.
God is 'not a man that He should lie, nor the son of man that He should
repent.' Men begin grand designs which never get further than the paper
that they are drawn on; or they build a porch, and then they are
bankrupt, or change their minds, or die, and the palace remains
unrealised, and all that pass by mock and say, 'This man began to build
and was not able to finish.' But God's designs are certain of
accomplishment. Unless we are to be reduced to a state of utter
intellectual bewilderment and confusion, and forgo our belief in His
veracity and resources to execute His designs, the design that lies in
the calling must needs lead on to the realm of perfectness. If we
consider the agent by which it is effected, even the risen Christ; if we
consider the cost at which it was accomplished, even the death on the
Cross, the mission of His Son, and His assumption of the limitations of
an incarnate life; if we consider the manifest potencies of the power
that He has brought into operation in the present Christian life; and if
we consider, side by side with these, the stark, staring contradictions
and as manifest inevitable limitations of the effects of that power, His
calling carries in its depths the assurance that what He means shall be
done, that Jesus Christ has not died in vain, that He has not ascended
to fill a solitary throne, but is the Firstfruits of a great harvest;
and that we shall one day be all that it is in the gospel of our
salvation to make us, unhindered by the limitations and unthwarted by
the antagonisms of this poor human life of ours. Unless there be a
heaven in which all desires shall be satisfied, all evils removed, all
good perfected, all ragged trees made symmetrical and full-grown, and
all souls that love Him radiant with His own perfect image, then the
light that seemed a light from heaven is the most delusive of all the
marsh-fires of earth, and nothing in the illusions of sense or of men's
cunning is so cruel or so tragic as the calling that seemed to be the
voice of God, and summoned us to a heaven which was only a dream.
II. And so, secondly, notice how this hope of our text is in some sense
the very topstone of the Christian life.
Paul has heard, concerning these people in Ephesus, of their faith and
love. And because he has heard of these, therefore he brings this
prayer. These two--the faith which apprehends the manifestation of God
in Jesus Christ, and the love which that faith produces in the heart
that accepts the revelation of the infinite love--are crowned by, and
are imperfect without, and naturally lead on to the brightness of this
great hope, Faith--the reliance of the spirit upon the veracity of the
revealing God--gives hope its contents; for the Christian hope is not
spun out of your own imaginations, nor is it the mere making objective
in a future life of the unfulfilled desires of this disappointing
present, but it is the recognition by the trusting spirit of the great
and starry truths that are flashed upon it by the Word of God. Faith
draws back the curtain, and Hope gazes into the supernal abysses. My
hope, if it be anything else than the veriest will-o'-the-wisp and
delusion, is the answer of my heart to the revealed truth of God.
Similarly the love which flows from faith not only necessarily leads on
to the expectation of union being perfected with the object of its warm
affection, but also so works upon the heart and character as that the
false and seducing loves which draw away, like some sluice upon a river,
the current of life from its true channel, are all sanctified and no
more hinder hope. Loving, we hope for that which, unless we loved, would
not draw desires nor yield foretastes of sweetness which, like perfumed
oil, feed the pure flame of hope.
The triad of Christian graces is completed by Hope. Without her fair
presence something is wanting to the completeness of her elder sisters.
The great Campanile at Florence, though it be inlaid with glowing
marbles, and fair sculptures, and perfect in its beauty, wants the
gilded, skyward-pointing pinnacle of its topmost pyramid; and so it
stands incomplete. And thus faith and love need for their crowning and
completion the topmost grace that looks up to the sky, and is sure of a
mansion there.
Brethren, our Christianity is wofully imperfect unless faith and love
find their acme, their outstretching completion, in this Christian hope.
Do you seek to complete your faith and love by a living hope full of
immortality?
III. Thirdly, notice how this hope is an all-important element in the
Christian life.
The Apostle asks for it as the best thing that can befall these Ephesian
Christians, as the one thing that they need to make them strong and good
and blessed. There are many other aspects of desire for them which
appear in other parts of this letter. But here all Christian progress is
regarded as being held in solution and included in vigorous hope.
Why is the activity of hope thus important for Christian life? Because
it stimulates effort, calms sorrows, takes the fascination out of
temptations, supplies a new aim for life and a new measure for the
things of time and sense.
If we lived, as we ought to live, in the habitual apprehension of the
great future awaiting all real Christians, would it not change the whole
aspect of life? The world is very big when it is looked at from any
point upon its surface; but suppose it could be looked at from the
central sun, how large would it appear then? We can shift our station in
like fashion, and then we get the true measure at once of the
insignificance and of the greatness of life. This world means nothing
worthy, except as an introduction to another. Not that thereby there
will follow in any wise man contempt for the present, for the very same
reference to the future which dwarfs the greatnesses and dwindles the
sorrows, and almost extinguishes the dazzling lights of this present,
does also lift it to its true significance and importance. It is the
vestibule of that future, and that future is conditioned throughout by
the results of the few years that we live here. An apprenticeship may be
a very poor matter, looked at in itself; and the boy may say What is the
use of my working at all these trivial things? but, since it is
apprenticeship, it is worth while to attend to every trifle in its
course, for attention to them will affect the standing of the man all
his days.
Here and now we are getting ready for the great workshop yonder;
learning the trick of the tools, and how to use our fingers and our
powers, and, when the schooling is done, we shall be set to nobler work,
and receive ample wages for the years here. Because that great
'to-morrow will be as this day' of earthly life, 'and much more
abundant,' therefore it is no trifle to work amongst the trifles; and
nothing is small which may tell on our condition yonder. The least
deflection from the straight line, however acute may be the angle which
the divergent lines enclose at the starting, and however small may seem
to be the deviation from parallelism, will, if prolonged to infinity,
have room between the two for all the stars, and the distance between
them will be that the one is in heaven and the other is in hell. And so
it is a great thing to live amongst the little things, and life gains
its true significance when we dwarf and magnify it by linking it with
the world to come.
If we only kept that hope bright before us, how little discomforts and
sorrows and troubles would matter! Life would become 'a solemn scorn of
ills.' It does not matter much what kind of cabin accommodation we have
if we are only going a short voyage; the main thing is to make the port.
If we, as Christian people, cherish, as we ought to do, this great hope,
then we shall be able to control, and not to despise but to exalt this
fleeting and transient scene, because it is linked inseparably with the
life that is to come.