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 riches of the glory of His inheritance'--now that word 'riches,' or
'wealth,' is a favourite of Paul's; and in this single letter occurs, if
I count rightly, five times. In addition to our text, it is used twice
in connection with God's grace, 'the riches of His grace' once in
connection with Jesus, 'the unsearchable riches of Christ'; and once in
a similar connection to, though with a different application from, our
text, 'the riches of His glory.' Always, you see, it is applied to
something that is special and properly divine. And here, therefore, it
applies, not to the abundance of any creatural good, however exuberant
and inexhaustible the store of it may be, but simply and solely to that
unwearying energy, that self-feeding and ever-burning and never-decaying
light, which is God. Of Him alone it can be said that work does not
exhaust, nor Being tend to its own extinction, nor expenditure of
resources to their diminution. The guarantee for eternal blessedness is
the 'riches' of the eternal God, and so we may be sure that no time can
exhaust, nor any expenditure empty, either His storehouse or our wealth.
And again, the 'glory' is not the lustrous light, however dazzling to
our feeble eyes that may be, of any creature that reflects the light of
God, but it is the far-flashing and never-dying radiance of His own
manifestation of Himself to the hearts and souls of them that love Him.
And so the 'inheritance is incorruptible and undefiled, and fadeth not
away'; not merely by reason of the communicated will of God operating
upon creatures whom He preserves untarnished by corruption, and ungnawed
by decay, but because He Himself is the 'inheritance,' and on Him time
hath no power. On His wealth all His creatures may hang for ever; and it
shall be as it was in the sweet parable of the miracle of old, the
fragments that remain will be more than when the meal began. 'The riches
of the glory of His inheritance.'
II. Now notice, secondly, the heirs.
The words of my text receive, perhaps, their best commentary and
explanation in those words which the writer of them heard, on the
Damascus road, when the voice from heaven spoke to him about men
'obtaining an inheritance among them that are sanctified.' It almost
sounds like an echo of that long past, but never-to-be-forgotten voice,
when our Apostle writes as he does in our text.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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