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
We have seen, in a previous sermon, that a characteristic note of this
letter is the frequent occurrence of that phrase 'according to.' I also
then pointed out that it was employed in two different directions. One
class of passages, with which I then tried to deal, used it to compare
the divine purpose in our salvation with the historical process of the
salvation. The type of that class of reference is found in a verse just
before my text, 'according to the good pleasure of His will.' There is a
second class of passages to which our text belongs, where the comparison
is not between the purpose and its realisation, but between the stores
of the divine riches and the experiences of the Christian life. The one
set of passages suggests the ground of our salvation in the deep purpose
of God; the other suggests the measure of the power which is working out
that salvation.
The instances of this second use of the phrase, besides the one in my
text, 'according to the riches of His grace,' are such as these:
'According to the riches of His glory'; 'According to the power that
worketh in us'; 'According to the measure of the gift of Christ';
'According to the energy of the might of His power, which He wrought in
Christ when He raised Him from the dead.'
Now it is clear that all these are varying forms of the same thing. They
vary in form, they are identical in substance. What a Jew calls a
'cubit' an Englishman calls a 'foot,' but the result is pretty nearly
the same. Shillings, marks, francs, are various standards; they all come
to substantially the same result. These varying measures of the divine
gift which is at work in man's salvation, have this in common, that they
all run out into God's immeasurable, unlimited power, boundless wealth.
And so, if we gather them together, and try to focus them in a few
words, they may help to widen our conceptions of what we ought to expect
from God, to bow us in contrition as to the small use that we have made
of it, and to open our desires wide, that they may be filled.
I only aspire, then, to deal with these four forms which I have already
suggested.
I. The measure of our possible attainments is the whole wealth of God.
'According to the riches of His grace.' Another angle at which the same
thought is viewed appears in another part of the letter, where we have
this variation in the expression, 'According to the riches of His
glory.' 'Grace' and 'Glory' are generally opposed antithetically; in
this epistle they are united, for in the verse before my text I read:
'To the praise of the glory of His grace.' So the first thought is, the
whole wealth of God is available for every Christian soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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