This epistle is remarkable for its frequent references to the divine
rule, or standard, or measure, in accordance with which the great facts
of redemption take place. The 'things on the earth'--the historical
processes by which salvation is brought to men and works in men--are
ever traced up to the 'things in heaven'; the divine counsels from which
they have come forth. That phrase, 'according to,' is perpetually
occurring in this connection in the epistle. It is applied mainly in two
directions. It serves sometimes to bring into view the ground, or
reason, of the redemptive facts, as, for instance, in the expression
that these take place 'according to His good pleasure which He hath
purposed in Himself' It serves sometimes to bring into view the measure
by which the working of these redemptive facts is determined; as in our
text, and in many other places.
Now there are three main forms under which this standard, or measure, of
the Redeeming Power is set forth in this epistle, and it will help us to
grasp the greatness of the Apostle's thought if we consider these.
Take, then, first, that clause in the earlier portion of the preceding
prayer, 'that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory.'
The measure, then, of the gift that we may hope to receive is the
measure of God's own fulness. The 'riches of His glory' can be nothing
less than the whole uncounted abundance of that majestic and far-shining
Nature, as it pours itself forth in the dazzling perfectness of its own
Self-manifestation. And nothing less than this great treasure is to be
the limit and standard of His gift to us. We are the sons of the King,
and the allowance which He makes us even before we come to our
inheritance is proportionate to our Father's wealth. The same stupendous
thought is given us in that prayer, heavy with the blessed weight of
unspeakable gifts, 'that ye might be filled with all the fulness of
God.' This, then, is the measure of the grace that we may possess. This
limitless limit alone bounds the possibilities for every man, the
certainties for every Christian.
The effect must be proportioned to the cause. And what effect will be
adequate as the outcome of such a cause as 'the riches of His glory'?
Nothing short of absolute perfectness, the full transmutation of our
dark, cold being into the reflected image of His own burning brightness,
the ceaseless replenishing of our own spirits with all graces and
gladnesses akin to His, the eternal growth of the soul upward and
Godward. Perfection is the sign manual of God in all His works, just as
imperfection and the falling below our thought and wish is our 'token in
every epistle' and deed of ours. Take the finest needle, and put it
below a microscope, and it will be all ragged and irregular, the fine,
tapering lines will be broken by many a bulge and bend, and the point
blunt and clumsy. Put the blade of grass to the same test, and see how
regular its outline, how delicate and true the spear-head of its point.
God's work is perfect, man's is clumsy and incomplete. God does not
leave off till He has finished. When He rests, it is because, looking on
His work, He sees it all 'very good.' His Sabbath is the Sabbath of an
achieved purpose, of a fulfilled counsel. The palaces which we build
are ever like that one in the story, where one window remains dark and
unjewelled, while the rest blaze in beauty. But when God builds, none
can say, 'He was not able to finish.' In His great palace He makes her
'windows of agates' and _all_ her 'borders of pleasant stones.'
So we have a right to enlarge our desires and stretch our confidence of
what we may possess and become to this, His boundless bound--'The riches
of glory.'
But another form in which the standard, or measure, is stated in this
letter is: 'The working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ,
when He raised Him from the dead' (i. 19, 20); or, as it is put with a
modification, 'grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ'
(iv. 7). That is to say, we have not only the whole riches of the divine
glory as the measure to which we may lift our hopes, but lest that
celestial brightness should seem too high above us, and too far from us,
we have Christ in His human-divine manifestation, and especially in the
great fact of the Resurrection, set before us, that by Him we may learn
what God wills we should become. The former phase of the standard may
sound abstract, cloudy, hard to connect with any definite anticipations;
and so this form of it is concrete, historical, and gives human features
to the fair ideal. His Resurrection is the high-water mark of the divine
power, and to the same level it will rise again in regard to every
Christian. The Lord, in the glory of His risen life, and in the riches
of the gifts which He received when He ascended up on high, is the
pattern for us, and the power which fulfils its own pattern. In Him we
see what man may become, and what His followers must become. The limits
of that power will not be reached until every Christian soul is
perfectly assimilated to that likeness, and bears all its beauty in its
face, nor till every Christian soul is raised to participation in
Christ's dignity and sits on His throne. Then, and not till then, shall
the purpose of God be fulfilled and the gift which is measured by the
riches of the Father's glory, and the fulness of the Son's grace, be
possessed or conceived in its measureless measure.
But there is a third form in which this same standard is represented.
That is the form which is found in our text, and in other places of the
epistle: 'According to the power that worketh in us.'
What power is that but the power of the Spirit of God dwelling in us?
And thus we have the measure, or standard, set forth in terms
respectively applying to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. For
the first, the riches of His glory; for the second, His Resurrection and
Ascension; for the third, His energy working in Christian souls. The
first carries us up into the mysteries of God, where the air is almost
too subtle for our gross lungs; the second draws nearer to earth and
points us to an historical fact that happened in this everyday world;
the third comes still nearer to us, and bids us look within, and see
whether what we are conscious of there, if we interpret it by the light
of these other measures, will not yield results as great as theirs, and
open before us the same fair prospect of perfect holiness and conformity
to the divine nature.
There is already a Power at work within us, if we be Christians, of
whose workings we may be aware, and from them forecast the measure of
the gifts which it can bestow upon us. We may estimate what will be by
what we know has been, and by what we feel is. That is to say, in other
words, the effects already produced, and the experiences we have already
had, carry in them the pledge of completeness.
I suppose that if the mediæval dream had ever come true, and an
alchemist had ever turned a grain of lead into gold, he could have
turned all the lead in the world in time, and with crucibles and
furnaces enough. The first step is all the difficulty, and if you and I
have been changed from enemies into sons, and had one spark of love to
God kindled in our hearts, that is a mightier change than any that
remains to be effected in order to make us perfect. One grain has been
changed, the whole mass will be so in due time.
The present operations of that power carry in them the pledge of their
own completion. The strange mingling of good and evil in our present
nature, our aspirations so crossed and contradicted, our resolution so
broken and falsified, the gleams of light, and the eclipses that
follow--all these in their opposition to each other, are plainly
transitory, and the workings of that Power within us, though they be
often overborne, are as plainly the stronger in their nature, and meant
to conquer and to endure. Like some half-hewn block, such as travellers
find in long abandoned quarries, whence Egyptian temples, that were
destined never to be completed, were built, our spirits are but partly
'polished after the similitude of a palace,' while much remains in the
rough. The builders of these temples have mouldered away and their
unfinished handiwork will lie as it was when the last chisel touched it
centuries ago, till the crack of doom; but stones for God's temple will
be wrought to completeness and set in their places. The whole threefold
divine cause of our salvation supplies the measure, and lays the
foundation for our hopes, in the glory of the Father, the grace of the
Son, the power of the Holy Ghost. Let us lift up our cry: 'Perfect that
which concerneth me, forsake not the works of thine own hands,' and we
shall have for answer the ancient word, fresh as when it sounded long
ago from among the stars to the sleeper at the ladder's foot, 'I will
not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.'
II. Notice the relation of the divine working to our thoughts and
desires.
The Apostle in his fervid way strains language to express how far the
possibility of the divine working extends. He is able, not only to do
all things, but 'beyond all things'--a vehement way of putting the
boundless reach of that gracious power. And what he means by this
'beyond all things' is more fully expressed in the next words, in which
he labours by accumulating synonyms to convey his sense of the
transcendent energy which waits to bless: 'exceeding abundantly above
what we ask.' And as, alas! our desires are but shrunken and narrow
beside our thoughts, he sweeps a wider orbit when he adds 'above what we
_think_.' He has been asking wonderful things, and yet even his
farthest-reaching petitions fall far on this side of the greatness of
God's power. One might think that even it could go no further than
filling us 'with all the fulness of God.' Nor can it; but it may far
transcend our conceptions of what that is, and astonish us by its
surpassing our thoughts, no less than it shames us by exceeding our
prayers.
Of course, all this is true, and is meant to apply, only about the
inward gifts of God's grace. I need not remind you that, in the outer
world of Providence and earthly gifts, prayers and wishes often surpass
the answers; that there a deeper wisdom often contradicts our thoughts
and a truer kindness refuses our petitions, and that so the rapturous
words of our text are only true in a very modified and partial sense
about God's working _for_ us in the world. It is His work _in_ us
concerning which they are absolutely true.
Of course we know that in all regions of His working He is _able_ to
surpass our poor human conceptions, and that, properly speaking, the
most familiar, and, as we insolently call them, 'smallest' of His works
holds in it a mystery--were it none other than the mystery of
Being--against which Thought has been breaking its teeth ever since men
began to think at all.
But as regards the working of God on our spiritual lives, this passing
beyond the bounds of thought and desire is but the necessary result of
the fact already dealt with, that the only measure of the power is God
Himself, in that Threefold Being. That being so, no plummet of our
making can reach to the bottom of the abyss; no strong-winged thought
can fly to the outermost bound of the encircling heaven. Widely as we
stretch our reverent conceptions, there is ever something beyond. After
we have resolved many a dim nebula in the starry sky, and found it all
ablaze with suns and worlds, there will still hang, faint and far before
us, hazy magnificences which we have not apprehended. Confidently and
boldly as we may offer our prayers, and largely as we may expect, the
answer is ever more than the petition. For indeed, in every act of His
quickening grace, in every God-given increase of our knowledge of God,
in every bestowment of His fulness, there is always more bestowed than
we receive, more than we know even while we possess it. Like some gift
given in the dark, its true preciousness is not discerned when it is
first received. The gleam of the gold does not strike our eye all at
once. There is ever an unknown margin felt by us to be over after our
capacity of receiving is exhausted. 'And they took up of the fragments
that remained, twelve baskets full.'
So, then, let us remember that while our thoughts and prayers can never
reach to the full perception, or reception either, of the gift, the
exuberant amplitude with which it reaches far beyond both is meant to
draw both after it. And let us not forget either that, while the grace
which we receive has no limit or measure but the fulness of God, the
working limit, which determines what we receive of the grace, is these
very thoughts and wishes which it surpasses. We may have as much of God
as we can hold, as much as we wish. All Niagara may roar past a man's
door, but only as much as he diverts through his own sluice will drive
his mill, or quench his thirst. God's grace is like the figures in the
Eastern tales, that will creep into a narrow room no bigger than a
nutshell, or will tower heaven high. Our spirits are like the magic tent
whose walls expanded or contracted at the owner's wish--we may enlarge
them to enclose far more of the grace than we have ever possessed. We
are not straitened in God, but in ourselves. He is 'able to do exceeding
abundantly above what we ask or think.' Therefore let us stretch desires
and thoughts to their utmost, remembering that, while they can never
reach the measure of His grace in itself, they make the practical
measure of our possession of it. 'According to thy faith' is the real
measure of the gift received, even though 'according to the riches of
His glory' be the measure of the gift bestowed. Note, again,