Expositions of Holy Scripture: Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. JohnMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Ephesians -- Commentaries; Bible. Epistle of John, 1st -- Commentaries; Bible. Peter -- Commentaries
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.'
MEASURELESS POWER AND ENDLESS GLORY
'Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all
that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
21. Unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all
ages, world without end. Amen.'--Eph. iii. 20, 21.
One purpose and blessing of faithful prayer is to enlarge the desires
which it expresses, and to make us think more loftily of the grace to
which we appeal. So the Apostle, in the wonderful series of
supplications which precedes the text, has found his thought of what he
may hope for his brethren at Ephesus grow greater with every clause. His
prayer rises like some songbird, in ever-widening sweeps, each higher in
the blue, and nearer the throne; and at each a sweeter, fuller note.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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