The more accurate rendering of the Revised Version reads '_the_ grace,'
and the definite article points to it as a definite and familiar fact in
the Ephesian believers to which the Apostle could point with the
certainty that their own consciousness would confirm his statement. The
wording of the Greek further implies that the grace was given at a
definite point in the past, which is most naturally taken to have been
the moment in which each believer laid hold on Jesus by faith. It is
further to be noted that the content of the gift is the grace itself and
not the graces which are its product and manifestation in the Christian
life. And this distinction, which is in accordance with Paul's habitual
teaching, leads us to the conclusion, that the essential character of
the grace given through the act of our individual faith is that of a new
vital force, flowing into and transforming the individual life. From
that unspeakable gift which Paul supposed to be verifiable by the
individual experience of every Christian, there would follow the graces
of Christian character in which would be included the deepening and
purifying of all the natural capacities of the individual self, and the
casting out from thence of all that was contrary to the transforming
power of the new life.
Such an utterance as this, so quietly and confidently taking for granted
that the experience of every believer verifies it in his own case, may
well drive us all to look more earnestly into our own hearts, to see
whether in them are any traces of a similar experience. If it be true,
that to every one of us is given _the_ grace, how comes it that so many
of us dare not profess to have any vivid remembrance of possessing it,
of having possessed it, or of any clear consciousness of possessing it
now? There may be gifts bestowed upon unconscious receivers, but surely
this is not one of these. If we do not know that we have it, it must at
least remain very questionable whether we do have it at all, and very
certain that we have it in scant and shrivelled fashion.
The universality of the gift was a startling thing in a world which, as
far as cultivated heathenism was concerned, might rightly be called
aristocratic, and by the side of a religion of privilege into which
Judaism had degenerated. The supercilious sarcasm in the lips of
Pharisees, 'This people which knoweth not the law are cursed,' but too
truly expresses the gulf between the Rabbis and the 'folk of the earth'
as the masses were commonly and contemptuously designated by the former.
Into the midst of a society in which such distinctions prevailed, the
proclamation that the greatest gift was bestowed upon all must have come
with revolutionary force, and been hailed as emancipation. Peter had
penetrated to grasp the full meaning and wondrous novelty of that
universality, when on Pentecost he pointed to 'that which had been
spoken by the prophet Joel' as fulfilled on that day, 'I will pour forth
of my Spirit upon all flesh ... Yea, and on my servants and handmaidens
... will I pour forth of my Spirit.' The rushing, mighty wind of that
day soon dropped. The fiery tongues ceased to quiver on the disciples'
heads, and the many voices that spoke were silenced, but the gift was
permanent, and is poured out now as it was then, and now, as then, it is
true that the whole company of believers receive the Spirit, though
alas! by their own faults it is not true that 'they are all _filled_
with the Holy Spirit.'
Christ is the giver. He has 'power over the Spirit of Holiness' and as
the Evangelist has said in his comment on our Lord's great words, when
'He stood and cried,' 'If any man thirst let him come unto Me and
drink,' 'This spake He of the Spirit which they that believed on Him
were to receive.' We cannot pierce into the depth of the mutual
relations of the three divine Persons mentioned in the context, but we
can discern that Christ is for us the self-revealing activity of the
divine nature, the right arm of the Father, or, to use another metaphor,
the channel through which the else 'closed sea' of God flows into the
world of creatures. Through that channel is poured into believing hearts
the river of the water of life, which proceeds out of the one 'throne of
God and of the Lamb.' This gift of the Spirit of Holiness to all
believers is the deepest and truest conception of Christ's gifts to His
Church. His past work of sacrifice for the sins of the world was
finished, as with a parting cry He proclaimed on Calvary, and the power
of that sacrifice will never be exhausted, but the taking away of the
sins of the world is but the initial stage of the work of Christ, and
its further stages are carried on through all the ages. He 'worketh
hitherto,' and His present work, in so far as believers are concerned,
is not only the forthputting of divine energy in regard to outward
circumstances, but the imparting to them of the Divine Spirit to be the
very life of their lives and the Lord of their spirits. Christian people
are but too apt to give undue prominence to what Christ did for them
when He died, and to lose sight, in the overwhelming lustre of His
unspeakable sacrifice, of what He is doing for them whilst He lives. It
would tend to restore the proportions of Christian truth and to touch
our hearts into a deeper and more continuous love to Him, if we more
habitually thought of Him, not only as the Christ who died, but also as
the Christ who rather is risen again, who is even at the right hand of
God, who also maketh intercession for us.