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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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