'The fulness of God' is another expression for the whole sum and
aggregate of all the energies, powers, and attributes of the divine
nature, the total Godhead in its plenitude and abundance.
'God is love,' we say. What does that mean, but that God desires to
impart His whole self to the creatures whom He loves? What is love in
its lofty and purest forms, even as we see them here on earth; what is
love except the infinite longing to bestow one's self? And when we
proclaim that which is the summit and climax of the revelation of our
Father in the person of His Son, and say with the last utterances of
Scripture that 'God is love,' we do in other words proclaim that the
very nature and deepest desire and purpose of the divine heart is to
pour itself on the emptiness and need of His lowly creatures in floods
that keep back nothing. Lofty, wonderful, incomprehensible to the mere
understanding as this thought may be, clearly it is the inmost meaning
of all that Scripture tells us about God as being the 'portion of His
people,' and about us, as being by Christ and in Christ 'heirs of God,'
and possessors of Himself.
We have, then, as the promise that gleams from these great words, this
wonderful prospect, that the divine love, truth, holiness, joy, in all
their rich plenitude of all-sufficient abundance, may be showered upon
us. The whole Godhead is our possession; for the fulness of God is no
far-off remote treasure that lies beyond human grasp and outside of
human experience. Do not we believe that, to use the words of this
Apostle in another letter, 'it pleased the Father that in Him should all
the fulness dwell'? Do we not believe that, to use the words of the same
epistle, 'In Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily'? Is
not that abundance of the resources of the whole Deity insphered and
incarnated in Jesus Christ our Lord, that it may be near us, and that we
may put out our hand and touch it? This may be a paradox for the
understanding, full of metaphysical puzzles and cobwebs, but for the
heart that knows Christ, most true and precious. God is gathered into
Jesus Christ, and all the fulness of God, whatever that may mean, is
embodied in the Man Christ Jesus, that from Him it may be communicated
to every soul that will.
For, to quote other words of another of the New Testament teachers, 'Of
His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace,' and to quote
words in another part of the same epistle, we may 'all come to a perfect
man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.' High
above us, then, and inaccessible though that awful thought, 'the fulness
of God,' may seem, as the zenith of the unscaleable heavens seems to us
poor creatures creeping here upon the flat earth, it comes near, near,
near, ever nearer, and at last tabernacles among us, when we think that
in Him all the fulness dwells, and it comes nearer yet and enters into
our hearts when we think that 'of His fulness have we all received.'
Then, still further, observe another of the words in this
petition:--'That ye may be filled.' That is to say, Paul's prayer and
God's purpose and desire concerning us is, that our whole being may be
so saturated and charged with an indwelling divinity as that there shall
be no room in our present stature and capacity for more, and no sense of
want or aching emptiness.
Ah, brethren! when we think of how eagerly we have drunk at the stinking
puddles of earth, and how after every draught there has yet been left a
thirst that was pain, it is something for us to hear Him say:--'The
water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up
into everlasting life,'--and 'he that drinketh of this water shall never
thirst.' Our empty hearts, with their experiences of the insufficiency
and the vanity of all earthly satisfaction, stand there like the
water-pots at the rustic marriage, and the Master says, 'Fill them to
the brim.' And then, by His touch, the water of our poor savourless,
earthly enjoyments is transmuted and elevated into the new wine of His
Kingdom. We may be filled, satisfied with the fulness of God.
There is another point as to the significance of this prayer, on which I
must briefly touch. As our Revised Version will tell you, the literal
rendering of my text is, 'filled _unto_' (not exactly _with_) 'all the
fulness of God'; which suggests the idea not of a completed work but of
a process, and of a growing process, as if more and more of that great
fulness might pass into a man. Suppose a number of vessels, according to
the old illustration about degrees of glory in heaven; they are each
full, but the quantity that one contains is much less than that which
the other may hold. Add to the illustration that the vessels can grow,
and that filling makes them grow; as a shrunken bladder when you pass
gas into it will expand and round itself out, and all the creases will
be smoothed away. Such is the Apostle's idea here, that a process of
filling goes on which may satisfy the then desires, because it fills us
up to the then capacities of our spirits; but in the very process of so
filling and satisfying makes those spirits capable of containing larger
measures of His fulness, which therefore flow into it. Such, as I take
it, in rude and faint outline, is the significance of this great prayer.
II. Now turn, in the next place, to consider briefly the possibility of
the accomplishments of this petition.
As I said, it sounds as if it were too much to desire. Certainly no wish
can go beyond this wish. The question is, can a sane and humble wish go
as far as this; and can a man pray such a prayer with any real belief
that he will get it answered here and now? I say yes!
There are two difficulties that at once start up.
People will say, does such a prayer as this upon man's lips not forget
the limits that bound the creature's capacity? Can the finite contain
the Infinite?
Well, that is a verbal puzzle, and I answer, yes! The finite can contain
the Infinite, if you are talking about two hearts that love, one of them
God's and one of them mine. We have got to keep very clear and distinct
before our minds the broad, firm line of demarcation between the
creature and the Creator, or else we get into a pantheistic region where
both creature and Creator expire. But there is a Christian as well as an
atheistic pantheism, and as long as we retain clearly in our minds the
consciousness of the personal distinction between God and His child, so
as that the child can turn round and say, 'I love Thee' and God can look
down and say, 'I bless thee'; then all identification and mutual
indwelling and impartation from Him of Himself are possible, and are
held forth as the aim and end of Christian life.
Of course in a mere abstract and philosophical sense the Infinite cannot
be contained by the finite; and attributes which express infinity, like
omnipresence and omniscience and omnipotence and so on, indicate things
in God that we can know but little about, and that cannot be
communicated. But those are not the divinest things in God. 'God is
love.' Do you believe that that saying unveils the deepest things in
Him? God is light, 'and in Him is no darkness at all.' Do you believe
that His light and His love are nearer the centre than these attributes
of power and infinitude? If we believe that, then we can come back to my
text and say, 'The love, which is Thee, can come into me; the light,
which is Thee, can pour itself into my darkness; the holiness, which is
Thee, can enter into my impurity. The heaven of heavens cannot contain
Thee. Thou dwellest in the humble and in the contrite heart.'
So, dear brethren, the old legends about mighty forms that contracted
their stature and bowed their divine heads to enter into some poor man's
hut, and sit there, are simple Christian realities. And instead of
puzzling ourselves with metaphysical difficulties which are mere
shadows, and the work of the understanding or the spawn of words, let us
listen to the Christ when He says, 'We will come unto him and make our
abode with him' and believe that it was no impossibility which fired the
Apostle's hope when he prayed, and in praying prophesied, that we might
be filled with all the fulness of God.
Then there is another difficulty that rises before our minds; and
Christian men say, 'How is it possible, in this region of imperfection,
compassed with infirmity and sin as we are, that such hopes should be
realised for us here?' Well, I would rather answer that question by
retorting and saying: 'How is it possible that such a prayer should have
come from inspired lips unless the thing that Paul was asking might be?'
Did he waste his breath when he thus prayed? Are we not as Christian men
bound, instead of measuring our expectations by our attainments, to try
to stretch our attainments to what are our legitimate expectations, and
to hear in these words the answer to the faithless and unbelieving doubt
whether such a thing is possible, and the assurance that it is possible.
An impossibility can never be a duty, and yet we are commanded: 'Be ye
perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.' An impossibility can
never be a duty, and yet we are commanded to let Christ abide in our
hearts.
Oh! if we believed less in the power of our sin it would have less power
upon us. If we believed more in the power of an indwelling Christ He
would have more power within us. If we said to ourselves, 'It is
possible,' we should make it possible. The impossibility arises only
from our own weakness, from our own sinful weakness; and though it may
be true, and is true, that none of us will live without sin as long as
we abide here, it is also true that each moment of interruption of our
communion with Christ and therefore each moment of interruption of that
being 'filled with the fulness of God,' might have been avoided. We know
about every such time that we could have helped it if we had liked, and
it is no use bringing any general principles about sin cleaving to men
in order to break the force of that conviction. But if that conviction
be a real one, and if whenever a Christian man loses the consciousness
of God in his heart, making him blessed, he is obliged to say: 'It was
my own fault and Thou wouldst have stayed if I had chosen,' then there
follows from this, that it is possible, notwithstanding all the
imperfection and sin of earth, that we may be 'filled with all the
fulness of God.'
So, dear brethren, take you this prayer as the standard of your
expectations; and oh! take it as we must all take it, as the sharpest of
rebukes to our actual attainments in holiness and in likeness to our
Master. Set by the side of these wondrous and solemn words--'filled with
the fulness of God,' the facts of the lives of the average professing
Christians of this generation, and of this congregation; their
emptiness, their ignorance of the divine indwelling, their want of
anything in their experience that corresponds in the least degree to
such words as these. Judge whether a man is not more likely to be bowed
down in wholesome sense of his own sinfulness and unworthiness, if he
has before him such an ideal as this of my text, than if it, too, has
faded out of his life. I believe, for my part, that one great cause of
the worldliness and the sinfulness and mechanical formalities that are
eating the life out of the Christianity of this generation is the fact
of the Church having largely lost any real belief in the possibility
that Christian men may possess the fulness of God as their present
experience. And so, when they do not find it in themselves they say:
'Oh! it is all right; it is the necessary result of our imperfect
fleshly condition.' No! It is all wrong; and His purpose is that we
should possess Him in the fulness of His gladdening and hallowing power,
at every moment in our happy lives.
III. One word to close with, as to the means by which this prayer may be
fulfilled.
Remember, it comes as the last link in a chain. I shall have wasted my
breath for a month, as far as you are concerned, if you do not feel that
the preceding links are needful before this can be attained.
But I only touch upon the nearest of them and remind you that it must be
Christ dwelling in our hearts, that fills them with the fulness of God.
Where He comes God comes. And where does He come? He comes where faith
opens the door for Him. If you will trust Jesus Christ, if you will
distrust yourselves, if you will turn your thoughts and your hearts to
Him, if you will let Him come into your souls, and not shut Him out
because your souls are so full that there is no room for Him there, then
when He comes He will not come empty-handed, but will bring the full
Godhead with Him.
There must be the emptying of self, if there is to be the filling with
God. And the emptying of self is realised in that faith which forsakes
self-confidence, self-righteousness, self-dependence, self-control,
self-pleasing, and yields itself wholly to the dear Lord.
There is another condition that is required, and that is the previous
link in this braided chain. The conscious experience of the love which
is in Christ will bring to us 'the fulness of God.' Love is power; love
is God; and when we live in the sense and experience of God's love to us
then we have the power and we have the God. It is as in some of these
petrifying streams, the water is charged with particles which it
deposits upon everything that is laid in its course. So, if we plunge
our hearts into that fountain of the love of Christ, as it flows it will
clothe us with all the divine energies which are held in solution in the
divinest thing in God--His own love. Plunged into the love we are filled
with the fulness.
Then keep near your Master. It all comes to that. Meditate upon Him; do
not let days pass, as they do pass, without a thought being turned to
Him. Do not go about your daily work without a remembrance of Him. Keep
yourselves in Christ. Seek to experience His love, that love which
passeth knowledge, and is only known by them who possess it. And then,
as the old painters with deep truth used to paint the Apostle of Love
with a face like his Master, living near Christ and looking upon Him you
will receive of His fulness, and 'we all, with open face, beholding the
glory, shall be changed into the glory.'