Ephesians 3:17

17. that Christ may dwell] This clause is in close connexion with the preceding. The “strengthening” is the requisite to the “dwelling”; the “dwelling” the sure sequel to the “strengthening.” See last note but one.

“Christ”:—lit. “the Christ,” as so often in this Epistle (Eph_1:10; Eph_1:12; Eph_1:20, Eph_2:5; Eph_2:13, Eph_3:4; Eph_3:8; Eph_3:11, Eph_4:7; Eph_4:12-13; Eph_4:20, Eph_5:2; Eph_5:5; Eph_5:14; Eph_5:23; Eph_5:25, Eph_6:5; besides uncertain readings).—Not to press distinctions too far, we may yet point out that the Lord is here presented not specially as Jesus, but as the Messiah, in His anointed majesty as the Prophet, Priest, and King of His saints. The thought of His Presence includes that of our tenderest affections towards Him, but rises also above it. It is the Presence of the Supreme Teacher, Redeemer, and Possessor.

“dwell”:—the Gr. verb indicates permanent abode. It is akin to the noun, Eph_2:22; where see note. See it used 2Pe_3:13, of the eternal presence of Righteousness in the New Universe. It marks a residence quite different from transient or casual lodgment.

The tense is the aorist (infinitive), and the idea of the aorist is singleness of act. Accordingly, the Lord is viewed here as not merely “dwelling,” but, in a definite act, “coming to dwell,” “taking up abode.” The question arises, did the Apostle contemplate the Ephesians as all alike devoid of the Indwelling in question, and needing it to begin? It is difficult to grant this, in an Epistle addressed to a large community, and one evidently rich in life and love. Well-nigh every stage of spiritual development must have been represented there. Yet the aorist must have its meaning. And surely the account of it is this, that the Apostle views them each and all as ever needing, at whatever stage of spiritual life, such an access of realization and reception as should be, to what had preceded, a new Arrival and Entrance of Christ in the heart. Local images are always elastic in the spiritual sphere; and there is no contradiction thus in the thought of the permanent presence of One who is yet needed to arrive.

On the other hand there are possible stages of Christian experience in which, practically, the Lord’s “coming in to dwell,” as here, would be a thing wholly new; and many such cases, doubtless, were found at Ephesus. Not only here but throughout the N.T. the saint is viewed as meant to enjoy a prevailing, not an intermittent, intercourse with his Lord in faith and love; on habitual “access,” “confidence,” “peace and joy in believing,” and “fruit-bearing” power. Where such enjoyment does not as yet exist there is still lacking that which is in view here. True, it will be only a crude analysis that will claim to discern and decide peremptorily in such spiritual problems. But this does not alter the facts and principles of the matter in themselves.

in your hearts] A phrase important for the interpretation of the clause. It shews that the Indwelling here is subjective rather than objective; an Indwelling conditioned by the saint’s realization. “Christ” is “in” every genuine disciple (2Co_13:5), in the sense of the disciple’s covenant and vital union with Him (1Co_6:15; 1Co_6:17). But this was certainly the case already with the Ephesian saints. Here then we have to do not so much with fact as with grasp on fact; the reception of the (already vitally present) Lord in habitual realization by the conscience, understanding, imagination, affections, and will. For the “heart” in Scripture is the “seat” of all these: see e.g. Gen_20:5; Deu_4:39; Isa_6:10; Mar_11:23; Luk_21:14; Act_11:23; Rom_5:5; 1Co_2:9; Jas_1:26; 1Jn_3:20. See on Eph_1:18.—“Though all of us is a temple for Him, yet the heart is the choir, where He properly sitteth” (Bayne (cent. 17), On the Ephesians).

by faith] That is, trustful acceptance; holy and humble reliance upon Divine promises, such promises as those of Joh_14:21; Joh_14:23; Rev_3:20. Observe that the Indwelling here in view is to be effectuated by means of spiritual action (God-given, as this passage has shewn, but not the less personal) on the saint’s part. And observe that it is not aspiration, but faith, that is the action. Aspiration will certainly be present, as an essential condition; there must be conscious desire. But it is faith, submissive trust in the Promiser, which is alone the effectuating and maintaining act.

Lit., “through the faith”:—i.e., perhaps, “by means of your faith,” faith as exercised by you; but the article must not be pressed in translation, where an abstract principle is the noun.—“The faith” in the sense of the Christian creed is manifestly not in place here, where the context is full of the idea of the actions of grace in the soul.

that ye] Here appears the holy purpose of the experience just described. The Indwelling is to be specially in order to the attitude and the knowledge now to follow.

being rooted and grounded in love] “In love” is highly emphatic by position in the Gr.—Does it mean the love of God for us, or ours for God? Perhaps it is needless to seek a precise answer. “Love, generally” (Alford), is to be the region of this great experience of the soul; a sphere of which the Divine Love and the regenerate spirit’s response are, as it were, the hemispheres. But we may at least suggest, with Eph_1:4 in mind (see note there), that the Divine Love is mainly in view. Is it quite intelligible to regard the saint’s love as the soil and basis of his saintship? For observe it is the saints themselves, not this or that in them (“ye being rooted, &c.”), that the Love in question thus sustains and feeds.

The chain of thought will thus be: “I pray that your hearts may so receive Christ as their perpetual Indweller, that you may, in this profound intimacy with Him, see and grasp your acceptance and life in the Eternal Love, manifested through Him.”

“rooted and grounded”:—perfect participles. The second, lit. founded, recurs to the imagery of the Temple and its basis; ch. 2. The first, giving a metaphor much rarer with St Paul (Col_2:7 is the only close parallel), suggests the additional idea of derived life and its development. The saints are viewed both as “trees of the Lord, full of sap,” deep in the rich soil of the Love of God (cp. Psa_1:3; Psa_92:12-13; Jer_17:8), and as constituent stones of the great Temple which rests ultimately on the same Love.—Col_2:7, just quoted, gives the same collocation of ideas, but with differences. The participle there rendered “built up” is present; “being builded upon.” And “in Him” takes the place of “in love.” This latter difference is no discrepancy; “the love of God is in Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom_8:39).

Such, as to root and basis, is the true saint’s position. It is not created, but realized, when the experience of Eph_3:17 takes place in him. And the following clauses dilate on the spiritual use which he is to make of it.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Eph_3:17

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love.

The substance of Christianity

Here is the sum and substance of Christianity: That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. It is the whole of Christianity; that is to say, it is the whole of it in the same way that an acorn is the whole of a tree. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend, with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know--what? The whole nature of God? The whole science of human government? The whole moral theory of the world?--and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. That is, no intellection can ever follow the outgush of experience, and reproduce it in the form of ideas. While the intellect may interpret the experience of the heart, it after all stands afar off from it, and never can partake of the experience itself. It passes knowledge. And to know the love of Christ, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. This is the very supreme of philosophy. It touches the lines and foundation elements of Christianity. Christianity differs from all other religions, not in the fact that it commands a worship--for all do; not simply in the superior view which it gives of God; but by demanding a peculiar condition of heart toward Christ. Other religions demand reverence, and worship, and obedience, and uprightness--that is all. Christ is said to be the end of the law. In other words, that which the whole law means is comprised in Him. Christ in a man--that is the Christian religion. It is Christ dwelling by love in his heart--dwelling in his heart by faith. Out of this will grow many doctrines, and many inferences; but it is the seminal form, the germinent element, in Christianity. It is the personal relationship of the individual heart to the Lord Jesus Christ as its supreme Head and Lover. That not only makes a man a Christian, but brings him into the central point of the Christian system. Everywhere in the New Testament this one element stands forth--the personal identification of the human heart with the Lord Jesus Christ. There are three ways by which Christ can be presented to us:--

1. By the senses. That we shall not have again on earth.

2. By the intellect. That is the presentation of Christ doctrinally or theologically.

3. By the heart. That is the reception of Christ by the form of an actual experience; by such a cooperation of the reason with the imagination that we are able to bring the invisible person near to us, and so bountifully reproduce Him, and so beautifully set Him forth, that He becomes to us the chiefest among ten thousand, and the one altogether lovely; so that every sweet thing in us goes out to Him as every dewdrop in the sunshine evaporates and goes up towards the sun. This is receiving Christ by faith. It is not the rejecting of the senses; it is the non-using of them, rather. It is not the despising of the reason; it is an auxiliary use of the reason. But it is the manly way of taking hold of the Lord Jesus Christ by the enthusiasm of love, and making Him the supreme object of our desire, and of our allegiance. This is receiving Christ by faith; and if we continue so to receive Him, then He dwells in our hearts by faith--that is, by heart-sanctifying love. This I understand to be the distinctive peculiarity of Christianity, not only, but that without which there cannot be any Christianity. There can be no Christianity to the man who does not personally take Christ by faith. There is no substitute for this personal experience, and there can be no system of Christianity which does not provide for this personal experience, towards the Lord Jesus Christ.

I remark, then, in view of this exposition, that--

1. Any system which leaves out the central figure is not Christian, and has no right to wear that name. For Christianity consists in such an enthusiastic love of the individual human heart for Christ, that they are unified, that there is a substantial, indissoluble oneness between them as there is between the child and the parent; and that it is the cause of all the after life and action of the individual person. If that is denied, Christianity is denied. If Christ is so expounded that such an experience is impossible, Christianity is destroyed in the destruction of the very fundamental idea of Christ.

2. As the Christian system is not held by those who leave out the central figure, so every Christian system is imperfectly held by those who only hold it in a philosophical form. This latter mode is far in advance of the former, which I have just been criticising; but still the holding of the Lord Jesus Christ speculatively and philosophically, the teaching of Him only technically and psychologically in this way, is so imperfect a holding of Him that it cannot for a moment compare with the full-orbed glory of Christianity as it is set forth in the earliest narratives and teachings of the New Testament. I would not underrate the value of an intellectual conception of Christ; but I would hold it as an auxiliary, and as a guide. The intellect cannot fulfil the conditions of Christianity. It is the heart by which a man must believe unto salvation. It is not Christ as analyzed, as stated in technical terms, that ever will affect a man. Every man must by the inflammation of his own heart feeling find his Christ. A creed is just like a philosophers telescope. He sweeps the heavens to see if he can find the star for which he is searching; and by and by the glass brings it to his eye. The glass helps him, but it is not the glass that sees the star. It is the eye that does that. The glass is a mere instrument by which to identify the star, and magnify it, and bring it near, and shut off other things. A blind man could net see a heavenly body with a telescope, no matter how powerful it might be. A creed is a philosophers telescope by which we identify philosophical truths, and magnify them, and bring them near; but it is the heart that is to apprehend them. It is the heart that is to interpret the things that are marked out by our creed or philosophy.

3. The heart may embrace Christ with an enthusiasm of love, though the intellectual perception is imperfect and vague. It is better that the intellectual perception should be full and clear; nevertheless, a man can embrace Christ by the heart without the help of the understanding, far better than he can embrace Christ by the understanding without the aid of the heart. Thousands and thousands there have been, I believe, who have loved Christ, and have lived on their love to Him, and have died by the power of that love, and have been translated to glory, though they could not have defined the Divine nature, nor reduced their faith to any intellectual expression. They would have been larger and happier Christians, doubtless, if they had added to the heart element the intellectual element also; but it is possible for one to take hold of Christ with the heart. It is possible for one who has but slender endowments of reason to take hold of Christ. (H. W. Beecher.)

True knowledge of God

We come to a knowledge of Christ by shaping ourselves into His nature. We do not come to know Christ by gathering together arguments from physical science, nor by grouping texts out of the written Word of God: we come to a knowledge of Christ by a personal experience of those qualities which inhere in Him, and which, in power, constitute His divinity. He who has in himself a moral quality which corresponds to that which is in Jesus Christ, and has great sensibility in it, will have a knowledge of Jesus Christ, of God in Christ, or of the Eternal Father, as the case may be. He will have in himself a knowledge which he cannot have by any external process of reasoning. The sensibility of a corresponding nature is a true interpretation, and is the highest argument possible, under such circumstances. It is so much of us as is godlike that gives us the evidence of God. A moral state carried up to a certain degree of intensity will develop evidence and power in the direction of truths of its own kind. And he who is, like Christ, built up in love--built vertically, built laterally, built all round; he whose nature it is to dwell centrally in this great, enriching, all-controlling element and power of love, will have brought into his mind a realization of the existence of God, and of the power of Gods nature as a Being of love, which will be overwhelming and all-satisfying; which you cannot get from science, because science does not touch it; and which you cannot get from mere reasoning, because reasoning does not reach to it. We may help ourselves by reasoning, and we may gain analogies by science; if we turn to the natural world we may find there evidence of the existence of God, so far as Divine quality is represented by power and matter; but when we rise to the moral and personal elements of the Divine character, nature has nothing in it which can explain them to us--unless we be nature; and we are. There is nothing in nature, aside from man, out of which we can develop these attributes of the Divine Being. We can apprehend them only by having in us moral qualities which correspond to them, and by having them as sensitive to the Divine presence as the thermometer is to the presence of heat, or as the barometer is to the pressure of the atmosphere, or to the presence of moisture in it. These qualities--heat and moisture--are indicated to us by certain instruments; and here is an instrument, the soul of man, existing in the power of a true regenerated love; and this is that which detects the presence, and is inspired by the touch, of the Divine nature, and bears witness to it. It is said that God bears witness in us; but not a whit more than we bear witness to His presence. I sat last summer sometimes for hours in the dreamy air of the mountains, and saw, over against the Twin Mountain House, the American aspen, of which the forests there are full. I saw all the coquetries and blinkings of that wonderful little tree--the witch, the fairy tree, of the forest. As I sat there, when there was not a cloud moving, when there was not a ripple on the glassy surface of the river, when there was not a grain of dust lifted, when everything was still--dead still--right over against me was that aspen tree; and there was one little leaf quivering and dancing on it. It was so nicely poised on its long, slender stem that it knew when the air moved. Though I did not know it, though the dust did not know it, and though the clouds did not know it, that leaf knew it; and it quivered and danced, as much as to say: O wind! you cant fool me. It detected the motion of the air when nothing else could. Now, it only requires sensibility in us to detect physical qualities, if we have the corresponding qualities; or social elements, if we have the corresponding elements; or moral attributes, if we have the corresponding attributes. We detect all qualities by the sensibility in us of corresponding qualities which reveal them to us. And he who has largely the Divine element will be able to recognize the Divine existence. That element in him is the power by which he is brought to a knowledge of God. In view of this exposition, I remark--

I. That the attempt to prove a God by scientific tests, applying physics strictly, can only reach a small way up. There is an argument that can be constructed that will satisfy--those that it will satisfy; but it is only a little way that it can go. And as I do not think that men can, by scientific observation, test and determine that which lies outside of all physics, so neither do I think this failure need lead to the scepticisms which some men make, but which, thank God, the most eminent scientific men do not make, who are many of them reverent, and who are all of them, I believe, seekers after the truth. The greatest physicists of the day are men who want to know the truth, not only as it is related to matter and to men, but as it is related to Divinity. But that makes no difference. You cannot prove nor disprove by matter that which lies beyond matter; and if, through all the material universe, there is no sign nor hint of God, it does not make any difference in the truth of His spiritual existence.

II. The difficulties which beset the existence of God as a personal Being, of intellect, of emotion, and of will--a transcendent and glorified man (for that is as near as we can come to it)--these difficulties are not alleviated when we turn in other directions. I am speaking in an age which runs strongly in the line of scepticism as to the existence of God. Because men have not seen Him, and cannot apply to Him the same tests that they apply to matter, there is a strong drifting towards atheism. I see no alleviation in that direction. That we exist, that nature exists, that there is an infinite chain of cause and effect, that it has had a past history, and that it is to have a future history, we cannot deny. We cannot deny that the vast universe is a fact, except by shutting our eyes. You meet the same difficulties in the realm of sense. When you say that matter is eternal, you do not help anything. It is useless to attempt to stop the thought by a word. You do not stop the thought at all. We go back on it. It is more difficult for me, a thousand times, to conceive that there is in the universe a self-ordering nature, than it is to conceive of a personal God who takes care of the universe, as we take care of an estate, or of a kingdom. Neither do I find any relief in turning to the poets. There is no relief for me in atheism, or pantheism, or in the idea that the sum total of the universe, and that all causes and effects, are God; that the whole physical creation is the body of God; that all the intelligence diffused through all creatures is the intelligence of God; that matter and mind, as they exist distributed through the universe, are only another name for God. By adopting this theory we may run away from some grievous difficulties; but we run into as many others that are no less grievous. I would rather shut my eyes and give up trying to understand my God, than undertake to trace Him partly in myself, partly in you, partly in the laws of matter, and partly in the laws of mind. In such a diffused thought of God there is no relief to me from the difficulties which inhere in this subject. The prime trouble is, that we are not large enough to understand God on any theory. (H. W. Beecher.)

Christ inhabiting the moral nature of man

The effect of a reverie is to create a mental presence, thus we see in image of the mind those from whom we are separated. Faith in Christ brings Him down in spiritual presence to perform His saving offices.

I. The firm heart is figurative to denote the highest and purest part of man. It may be compared to a house divided into apartments. Christ must dwell in every room or division. He must dwell in our thought, affection, reason, understanding, judgment, conversation, action, whole life; He must dwell in motive, desire, purpose, will; must have more than the tongue, or to flit through the brain: the heart, the whole of man, He wants. And no transient stay, but constant residence.

II. Christ brings to the heart many rich treasures. Knowledge of the future, all the promises and blessings of new covenant.

III. Faith is the key to unlock the door of the heart for Christ to dwell with us. (J. A. Fullerton.)

Christ in the heart

I. When Christ enters the human heart to dwell in it, evil tenants must go out.

II. When Christ comes into a heart to dwell, casting out evil tenants, he does not come alone; He brings with Him all those things that accompany salvation.

1. When Christ dwells in the human heart, He dwells there as a living power, not merely attracting all our other affections, but moving, renewing, sanctifying, moulding us according to His own idea, working His own pleasure in us, making men faithful in their daily business, true, righteous, strong for their daily service, for labour, for suffering, for sorrow, for waiting, for whatever Providence may appoint.

2. When Christ enters a human heart to dwell there, He enters it and abides as an undying joy.

3. When Christ abides in a human heart, He is in it as an immortal hope. (James Culross, D. D.)

The indwelling of Christ in His people

I. What it is not.

1. It is not personal.

2. It is not visionary.

3. It is not merely emotional.

II. What it is.

1. It is the result of faith as realizing His presence.

2. It is the result of the communication of the Holy Spirit, by which He is graciously present.

3. It is the result of His love. (G. Brooks.)

Christ dwelling in the heart

In your hearts; in the central region of your moral life--that region in which thought springs up, the region of affection and desire, the region in which purposes are formed, in which future actions have their birth; may Christ dwell there. The conception is not a difficult one to lay hold of. Take a case from ordinary life. A widowed mother lives in a cottage by the sea; her only boy is a sailor; she has not seen him for years; for years he has been far away, sailing from land to land; but her heart is full of him; she thinks of him by day, she dreams of him by night; how tenderly she handles every relic that he left behind him when he went away; how the glass in her spectacles grows dim as she reads his letters; his name is never missed out from her prayers; and many and many a time, when she is busy about her daily work, the thought of her boy will flash into her heart like a beam of golden sunlight; the stars speak about him, and so does every white-sailed ship away out on the sea. Nobody has any difficulty in understanding what is meant when it is said that her boy dwells in her heart. So may Christ dwell in your hearts, the object of trust, of affection, of allegiance. (James Culross, D. D.)

The three Advents

The Advent of Christ may be considered as a three-fold fact--or, perhaps, we may more properly speak of three Advents. The first of these was the coming of Christ upon the earth, the entrance into the sphere of visible and material things of a Divine and spiritual revelation. But not only do we recognize the Advent of Christ in the material world--in the world of nature. We also discern His Advent in history--in the world of social facts and movements. Explain it as we may, it cannot be denied that since the coming of Jesus there has been a vast and progressive change in society. It has been truly said that the world can never be the same after that Advent as it was before it, as it would be without it. The distinctive boundary lines of ancient and modern history meet just at that point of time on which Jesus stands. There is a life, a spirit, an expression in the world since that time that it did not show before that time. But there is still another Advent of Christ in which these that I have now referred to are, so to speak, realized and completed. And that is the Advent of Christ in the individual soul. Here is a peculiar characteristic of Christianity. The Author and Finisher of our faith is not like the founders of other systems--merely an objective teacher or lawgiver, or a leader in external and material conquests, carrying the kingdom of God with the sharp edge of the sword. He is an inward Saviour--the indwelling source of spiritual life. The profoundest result of Christs Advent is marked by an intimate connection between Jesus and the soul of the believer.

I. The conditions of the advent. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith requires an earnest belief in Christ. I observe that this belief must be as specific as the Advent, not a mere historic belief; not a languid acknowledgment of the fact that Christ has come into the world. Again, a mere conventional or traditional acquiescence is not the kind of faith that is required, an acquiescence by which men are called Christians in the sense in which we are a Christian community. True faith is an earnest, original action of the individual soul, moved by strong conviction. That faith is good for nothing which you take and adopt from another. You cannot receive a faith from your fathers. There is a time when we can indicate to our children the landmarks of fight. But even the minds of children should not be cast into a fixed mould. We should not say, Search no more; here is the image of our fathers, and the image and superscription must be stamped upon the waxen substance of your minds; let it harden there! We say, there is the old Bible; let your minds become developed, and your own experience will shed light upon it. So learn for yourselves an original, active, earnest faith that comes out of every mans soul, Which he struggles and wrestles for as Jacob wrestled in the night with the angel. We should feel as the Samaritans did: Now we believe, not because of thy saying; for we … ourselves … know that this is the Christ. But they themselves saw Him and knew Him, and from an earnest and original conviction of their own souls they believed in Him. Conviction is a personal exercise of trust. It is a spontaneous, complete yielding of the whole soul to that in which we trust.

II. The manner of the advent. What is meant when we say that Christ dwells in the hearts of men? We do not mean that an actual Christ dwells there; we mean that the spirit of Christ dwells in the hearts of men. And the spirit is really the man. The man is not in his outward or physical form. The real man is the soul, the spirit, and character. The moral standard of Christianity is not a verbal rule, but a character. The rule of Christian life is not an outward law; it is a character. When our characters are assimilated to Christs character, or when Christs character permeates and controls us, then Christ dwells in our hearts. There is no mysticism in that--nothing unreal, nor anything we cannot grasp. Christ dwells in the heart as a character--as a spirit of life. It is by the spirit, and not the outward form that Christ dwells in us. One man may today show the spirit of Christ in the disposition of his wealth; another man may do likewise in his poverty. The man who uses his wealth in a humble, lowly spirit--with the spirit of the loving Jesus; who makes it not merely the instrument of selfish aggrandizement and outward development--he feels that wealth is the gift of God. The outward condition does not make a man like Christ; but the inward spirit. Thus Christianity is adapted to all conditions. The spirit of love is fitted for all conditions. Be you rich or poor--do you stand in a prominent or obscure and lowly place before men--have the spirit of Christ! Let it dwell in your heart! Be truly Christ-like in your home and business relations, fulfilling the duties that rest upon you, as did those who went about Palestine of old preaching the gospel to the poor. Does God take note of the actual size and description of your goodness? Who can tell what shall be Gods minister--the little bird in the air, the snow in the field, the lilies that are dressed better than Solomon! All are agents of Gods instruction. Use your instruments to minister good to man, to make the best use of the little you have. Drop the pebble in the water, and who can tell how wide its ripples will extend in the stream? Do your little acts of goodness and live a true life, and God will see to the rest, and make, perhaps, your small practical action to result higher and deeper than you can calculate.

III. Sphere and result of the advent. We are brought to consider the sphere and result of the Advent. Christs Advent is in and through individual souls. To be sure we contemplate Christianity as the grandest scheme of social regeneration, and the only true scheme that the world has ever known. It came and Unbarred partitions that divided man from man. It aimed at a new and better social state; it aims at it now. And men have looked forward to a New Jerusalem, and that Christ would come with a shout and gather together His elect. Christianity speaks to individuals. It did not call upon communities at first. It did not call nations, but individuals--Peter, James, and John and Nathaniel, and in due time Paul. And if the world is to be made better, it is to be made better through individual souls. Christs kingdom is essentially an inward kingdom. Its power is silent and hidden. It is the progress of a conviction. Sometimes when yon look upon the shore, the sea extends before you smooth and glassy, and the shore is covered with slimy weeds, and by and by you walk that way again, and the great sea has come up, and the shore you looked upon is no more to be seen. So silent and hidden forces are pouring into the world, and all at once we discover the world is made better; but not by a sharp shock or outward convulsion. The geologist tells us the earth has never been made by any sudden formation, but by one thing being added to another. So social changes have been made--not by quick shocks, but by silent action. How strange are the revolutions taking place in society; and how different from what they were a few years ago. We see men holding to opinions unpopular some few years ago, when they would be called fanatics, fools, and madmen. But lo! that opinion becomes the adopted law of the land; it is the ruling force; it is the recognized idea. What has come about? It is the silent work of the Divine kingdom in the individual heart. (E. H. Chapin, D. D.)

Christ dwelling in the heart

Show the privilege of having Christ to dwell in the heart, by considering what He does there. In general: He brings with Him all the promises and blessings of the new covenant (1Co_1:1, etc.; 2Co_1:20; Eph_1:3).

1. He rebukes the heart (Rev_2:4-5; Rev_3:19).

2. He humbles the heart (Act_9:5-6; Eph_3:8).

3. He sets it at liberty from sin and Satan (Luk_11:1, etc).

4. He reveals His love to it (Eph_3:17-19).

5. He weans it from other things (Php_3:7-8).

6. He strengthens it (Isa_57:15; Psa_33:26).

7. He satisfies it in the want of outward blessings.

8. He reconciles it--God and man (2Co_5:19-21).

9. He fills it with the hope of glory (Col_1:27).

10. He sups with it, and it with Him (Rev_3:20). (H. Foster, M. A.)

The indwelling Christ

Two remarks of an expository character will prepare the way for the lessons of these verses. The first is as to the relation of this clause to the preceding. It might appear at first sight to be simply parallel with it, expressing substantially the same ideas under a somewhat different aspect. The operation of the strength-giving Spirit in the inner man might very naturally be supposed to be equivalent to the dwelling of Christ in our hearts by faith. So many commentators do, in fact, take it; but I think that the two ideas may be distinguished, and that we are to see in the words of my text the second step in this prayer, which is in some sense a result of the strengthening with might by the Spirit in the inner man. I need not enter in detail into the reasons for taking this view of the connection of the clause which is obviously in accordance with the climbing-up structure of the whole verse. It is enough to point it out as the basis of my further remarks. And now the second observation with which I will trouble you before I come to deal with the thoughts of the verse is as to the connection of the last words of it. You may observe that in reading the words of my text I omitted the that which stands in the centre of the verse. I did so, because the words, Ye being rooted and grounded in love in the original do stand before the that, and are distinctly separated by it from the subsequent clause. They ought not therefore to be shifted forward into it, as our translators and the Revised Version have, I think, unfortunately done, unless there were some absolute necessity either from meaning or from construction. I do not think that that is the case; but on the contrary, being carried forward into the next clause, which describes the result of Christs dwelling in our hearts by faith, they break the logical flow of the sentence by mixing together result and occasion. And so I attach them to the first part of this verse, and take them to express at once the consequence of Christs dwelling in the heart by faith, and the preparation or occasion for our being able to comprehend and know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. Now that is all with which I need trouble you in the way of explanation of the meaning of the words. Let us come now to deal with their substance.

I. Mark, then, the apostles desire here that all Christian people may possess the indwelling Christ, To begin with, let me say in the plainest, simplest, strongest way that I can, that that dwelling of Christ in the believing heart is to be regarded as being a plain literal fact. It is not to be weakened down into any notion of participation in His likeness, sympathy with His character, submission to His influence, following His example, listening to His instruction, or the like. A dead Plato may so influence his followers, but that is not how a living Christ influences His disciples. It is no mere influence, derived and separable from Him, however blessed and gracious that influence might he, but it is the presence of His own self, exercising influences which are inseparable from His presence, and only to be realized when He dwells in us. I preach, and rejoice that I have to preach, a Christ that died, yea! rather, that is risen again; who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Nor do I stop there, but I preach a Christ that is in us, dwelling in our hearts if we be His at all. Well, then, further observe that the special emphasis of the prayer here is that this indwelling may be an unbroken and permanent one. Any of you who can consult the original for yourselves will see that the apostle here uses a compound word which conveys the idea of intensity and of continuity. What he desires, then, is not merely that these Ephesian Christians may have occasional visits of the indwelling Lord, or that at some lofty moments of spiritual enthusiasm they may be conscious that He is with them, but that always, in an unbroken line of deep, calm receptiveness, they may possess, and know that they possess, an indwelling Saviour. God means and wishes that Christ may continuously dwell in our hearts; does He to your own consciousness dwell in yours? And then the last thought connected with this first part of my subject is that the heart strengthened by the Spirit is fitted to be the temple of the indwelling Christ. How shall we prepare the chamber for such a guest? How shall some poor occupant of some poor but by the wayside, fit it up for the abode of a prince? The answer lies in these words that precede my text. You cannot strengthen the rafters and lift the roof and adorn the halls and furnish the floor in a manner befitting the coming of the King; but you can turn to that Divine Spirit who will expand and embellish and invigorate your whole spirit, and make it capable of receiving the indwelling Christ. That these two things which are here considered as cause and effect may, in another aspect, be considered as but varying phases of the same truth is only part of the depth and felicity of the teaching that is here. For if you come to look more deeply into it the Spirit that strengtheneth with might is the Spirit of Christ; and He dwells in mens hearts by His own Spirit. So that the apparent confusion, arising from what in other places are regarded as identical, being here conceived as cause and effect, is no confusion at all, but is explained and vindicated by the deep truth that nothing but the indwelling of the Christ can fit for the indwelling of the Christ. The lesser gift of His presence prepares for the greater measure of it; the transitory inhabitation fits for the more permanent. Where He comes in smaller measure He opens the door and fits the heart for His own more entire indwelling. Unto him that hath shall be given. It is Christ in the heart that makes the heart fit for Christ to dwell in the heart. You cannot do it by your own power; turn to Him and let Him make you temples meet for Himself.

II. So now, in the second place, notice the open door through which the Christ comes in to dwell--that He may dwell in your hearts by faith. More accurately we may render through faith, and might even venture to suppose that the thought of faith as an open door through which Christ passes into the heart floated half distinctly before the apostles mind. Be that as it may, at all events faith is here represented as the means or condition through which this dwelling takes effect. You have but to believe in Him and He comes, drawn from heaven, floating down on a sunbeam, as it were, and enters into the heart and abides there. But do not forget that the faith which brings Christ into the spirit must be a faith which works by love if it is to keep Christ in the spirit. You cannot bring that Lord into your hearts by anything that you do. The man that cleanses his own soul by his own strength, and so expects to draw God into it, has made the mistake which Christ pointed out when He told us that when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man he leaves his house empty, though it be swept and garnished. Moral reformation may turn out the devils, it will never bring in God. And in the emptiness of the swept and garnished heart there is an invitation to the seven to come back again and fill it. And whilst that is true, remember, on the other hand, that a Christian man can drive away his Master by evil works. The sweet songbirds and the honey-making bees are said always to desert a neighbourhood before a pestilence breaks out in it. And if I may so say, similarly quick to feel the first breath of the pestilence is the presence of the Christ which cannot dwell with evil. You bring Christ into your heart by faith, without any work at all; you keep Him there by a faith which produces holiness.

III. And the last point is the consequence of this indwelling of Christ, ye being, or as the words might more accurately be translated, Ye, having been rooted and grounded in love. Where He comes He comes not empty handed. He brings His own love, and that consciously received produces a corresponding and answering love in our hearts to Him. So there is no need to ask the question here whether love means Christs love to me or my love to Christ. From the nature of the case both are included--the recognition of His and the response by mine are the result of His entering into the heart. This love, the recognition of His and the response by mine, is represented in a lovely double metaphor in these words as being at once the soil in which our lives are rooted and grow, and the foundation on which our lives are built and are steadfast. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Christ in the heart

A soldier of Napoleons great army was wounded one day by a bullet which entered his breast above his heart; he was carried to the rear, and the surgeon was probing the wound with his knife, when at length the guardsman exclaimed, An inch deeper, and you will find the emperor. And the Christian soldier, even when most sorely pressed and pierced by his foes, is conscious that were his heart laid open by their wounds, it would only discover the name of his great Captain deeply engraven there.

The heart a temple

It is related in ecclesiastical history that the parents of Origen used to uncover his breast as he slumbered and print their kisses over his heart; for they said, This is a temple of the Holy Ghost! (Chas. S. Robinson, D. D.)

Inward religion

Liturgies, although a great lawmaker, would allow none of his laws to be written. He would have the principles of government interwoven in the lives and manners of the people as most conducive to their happiness. The multiplication of Bibles that stand upon bookshelves or lie upon tables is an easy matter, but to multiply copies of walking scriptures, in the form of holy men who can say, Thy Word have I hid in my heart, is much more difficult. (New Handbook of Illustration.)

Root religion

The being of a grace must go before the increase of it; for there is no growth without life, no building without a foundation. Put a dry stick into the ground, and dress and water it as much as you will, it will continue the same until it rot; but set a living plant by the side of it, and though much less at first, yet it soon begins to shoot, and in time becomes a wide-spreading tree. (J. Stoughton.)

Rooted in Christ

Paul Jeanne ascribes amazing fertility to the soil of Mentone, and backs his assertions by a story which reads like a legend. He says that a stranger coming to pay a visit to his Mentonese friends stuck his walking stick into the ground and forgot it. Coming back some days afterwards to seek his cane, he was surprised to find it putting forth leaves and young branches. He declares that the little tree has grown vastly, and is still to be seen in the Rue Saint Michel. We have not seen it, and are afraid that to inquire for it in the aforesaid Rue would raise a laugh at our expense. We may believe the story or not as we please; but it may serve as an emblem of the way in which those grow who are by grace planted in Christ. All dry and withered like a rod we are thrust into the sacred soil, and life comes to us at once, with bud and branch and speedy fruit. Aarons rod that budded was not only a fair type of our Lord, but a cheering prophecy of ourselves. Whenever we feel dead and barren let us ask to be buried in Christ afresh, and straightway we shall glorify His name by bearing much fruit. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Christ dwelling in the heart

A wounded soldier boy was dying in a hospital, the lady who watched by his bedside said to him, My dear boy, if this should be death that is coming upon you, are you ready to meet your God? He answered, I am ready, dear lady; for this has long been His dwelling place; and as he spoke, he placed his hand upon his heart. Do you mean, questioned the lady, gently, that God dwells and rules in your heart? Yes, he answered, but his voice sounded far off, sweet, and low, as if it came from a soul already well on its way through the dark valley of the shadow of death.

Love to Christ

To be in the heart of anyone is to be the object of cordial affection; to dwell in His heart is to be the object of that affection constantly and habitually; and to dwell in the heart by faith is to be the object of an intelligent and enlightened affection.

I. In the first place, then, this is not the desire that Christ must be in their mind and understanding, as the object of simple, abstract, uninfluential knowledge. Many may be the persons and opinions in our minds that are not objects of attachment, but, on the contrary, of indifference, or even of aversion. We know merely that they are there, and what they are. Some of them we would rather have absent from our minds, and some of them we would banish from them altogether; but to be in the heart is to be admired, esteemed, loved--loved with cordiality and ardour. We cannot express fervent attachment in more energetic terms than in the language of the apostle, I would that Christ might dwell in your hearts. And what is expressed here, that we are in our hearts to do? Can anything be stronger than the attachment which shares life and death with its object? Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend. The love, then, that Christ demands of His people is fervent love; not a lifeless indifference, a mere negation of hatred, a lukewarm, spiritless neutrality. No. He must be in the heart, and must have the chief place there.

II. Rooted and grounded in love are meant to express in another form the same idea, firmly fixed in the experience and manifestation of this sacred affection. The figure is double, and is taken from a tree and a building. To the stability of the former a root is necessary, proportioned to the expansion of the branches; to the stability of the latter a foundation is necessary, corresponding to the magnitude of the superstructure. Great profession of attachment, without real firmness of inward principle, is like a wide-spreading tree with short roots, with little hold of the soil, that may stand for a little and be admired, but is in danger of falling from every blast that assails it; or like a house with little foundation, built on the sand or on soft ground, presenting a very imposing appearance to the eye, but when the rain descends, and the winds blow and beat violently against it, immediately it comes to the ground, and involves its inmates in ruin. And what is the love that promises that stability? It is love that is rooted and grounded in knowledge--that has not been the product of a hasty examination or of a superficial observation.

III. And this leads me to the third feature of love, that it be intelligent and enlightened, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. It is very obvious that there must be knowledge in order to faith, and faith in order to love. That cannot be loved which is not known, and that person cannot be loved, the qualities of whose character, fitted to attract affection, are not believed. It is only by faith that Christ can enter the heart; it is only as the object of faith that He can be the object of love, and faith will be in proportion to spiritual intelligence, and spiritual intelligence in proportion to faith. It is an enlightened attachment that can show good cause for its ardour and its glow. Connected inseparably with love to Christ for what He is, is love to Christ for what He has done; and this, too, is founded in knowledge: Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich. It is when this grace is known that love takes possession of the heart, and it is by the faith of it that He continues to dwell there; and as knowledge grows, and faith is strengthened, love is invigorated. That love to Christ, as one of the great principles of all active obedience, is founded in knowledge and rooted in faith. The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again. Thus have I endeavoured to show what the nature of the principle is which the apostle prays for in behalf of the believing Ephesians--that it is a fervent, constant, intelligent, and enlightened attachment to the Lord Jesus, that Christ might dwell in their hearts. In conclusion, allow me to remark.

1. That the prayer implies, that this state of heart must come from above--from the Spirit of the living God.

2. The heart in which Christ dwells must be a purified heart. Jesus Christ is the brightness of His Fathers glory, and the express image of His person; He is the holy one and the just. An unrenewed and unholy heart would be no fit residence for Him. When the Holy Spirit introduces Himself into any heart, He purifies that heart from dross and corruption. Christ has said, Blessed are the pure in heart. If any heart remains impure and shows itself so by what proceeds from it, it is quite evident that Christ has no hold there.

3. I would just notice, that the heart in which Christ dwells must be an undivided heart. (R. Wardlaw, D. D.)

Rooted in love

I seem to see that grand old oak that I have known, and you may have known such an one from your childhood. What a massive, enormous column of a stem; it is girt with a mass of branches holding up a forest of verdure. You remember it when you were a child, and now you are a man it does not seem to be any older! What generations have rested under its shadows, and what generations have been carried past it to yonder churchyard! How often the storm has visited it! and the violent tempest has shaken its branches and wrestled with it! But still, while many a similar tree has been torn up by the roots, this old oak has shaken its fists at the storm! The storms of wind and rain have done it no harm! There it remains, and there it will remain, unmoved; and while other trees have been uprooted, and the grass has been burnt, and the flowers are hanging their heads, how is it that that old oak remains, so grand and bright in its verdure? Because it is feeding at the reservoirs and secret streams deep down in the earth; and so, while this oak is first strengthened to resist the hurricane, and then receiving nourishment from the deep hidden springs and streams, it can stand firmer and firmer. Oh, that we may be so rooted in love, and grounded in love! Look at yonder castle, built upon the spur of the mountain. How grey it is! It looks like the colour of the mountain itself; it bears the tints of the neighbouring rocks. How often have the rains descended upon it, and the storms beaten upon its walls! But it still stands, because it is firmly fixed upon its rocky foundation. It is established there, and held to its rocky holding by strong clamps, so that the storm and the torrent cannot shake it. So may we be rooted and grounded in level (Newman Hall, LL. B.)

Rooted and grounded

The apostle supplies us with two figures to show the force and necessity of religious affection. It is as the root to the tree, that which holds it in the earth, conveys to it the nourishment of the soil, enables it to live, to grow, to thrive, to blossom, and bear fruit, and also to stand upright against the wind and storms. It is the foundation of the building, that on which all the rest depends, that without which all the rest must fall. Nay, it is the ground under the foundation, the solid earth, which supports building, foundation, and all. A building with no foundation, a tree without a root, these give us some notion of a Christian without love. This explains to those of you who love not Christ, who love Him not through faith in His redemption, this explains why your purposes fall headlong to the ground, why your thoughts of heaven, and intentions to be holy, show fair for no other end, than to wither in the bud. Be you then, my brethren, rooted and grounded in love. Be persuaded that Christ Jesus, the Son of God, the express image of the Fathers glory, died for sinners, died for you. (C. Girdlestone, M. A.)

The relation of love to knowledge

We must have love to be the root and to be the ground. And the tree will be abundant understanding, and the fruit thereof the fulness of God. And this is no more than we find often to be the case in worldly briefness, and in human learning. They make most progress who most love their work. They, who like what they are employed in, do better, prosper more, advance far the most rapidly, understand far the most thoroughly. How then can we reasonably expect to make progress in Christian knowledge, if we make not first progress in Christian love? How can we wonder that so many are wandering in error, when so few are united in the bond of peace? How can we help being ourselves dark in our understandings, as long as we continue cold in our hearts? Let us begin at the right beginning. Let us pray this day, and this day forth forever, that God may move us to the love of all that He reveals, and so bring us to a right knowledge of the truth. (C. Girdlestone, M. A.)

Rooted and grounded in love

The root is taken from the field of nature--the grounding, or founding, from the world of art. The root is laid in the soil to imbibe its virtues--the foundation is placed on its base to sustain the edifice. The root grows, and produces fruit--the foundation stands, and gives strength. The root needs continual supply--the foundation rests in its completeness, and is alway. Now see how well the two blend together to make one whole. The grand foundation or ground of everything is love--Gods love. Because God is love, therefore His love goes forth to sinners. Because His love went forth to sinners, He provided a way by which He could restore sinners back again to happiness and to Himself--and so Jesus died for them. And since Jesus died for sinners, therefore God chose me, drew me, pardoned me, spoke peace to me. And having loved us enough to do this, what will not the same love do?--what prayer will He not hear?--what good thing can He withhold? That is a foundation. It wilt support anything--any comfort, any work, any hope I ever choose to build upon it. It is like some mathematical proposition, which cannot be assailed, and the whole problem is actually contained within it, and only wants to be worked out. It stands to the soul like solid adamant to the whole temple--a foundation. Now the root. I cast my affections down into the character and the being of God; I wind them about His attributes; I strike them into His promises; I drive them deep into His faithfulness. There, the roots of my affection lie. They take up, they drink in, the nature of the love they live in;--they are always assimilating themselves to it, and they send up its sweet savour by little, silent threads, which are always running to the fountain of life. My words, my actions, my whole outer being, cannot choose but mould itself to them, and take that love. Because of those secret processes of the roots which are in Christ, I love. I love simply because I am rooted in love. So the foundation supplied the strong argument, and then the root gave the essence of the necessity for the new nature. My intellect rests upon its foundation; and my heart draws its tenderness from its root. I can edify myself in my grounding, and I am sanctified in my rooting. I grow by resting, and by double processes my inner life is made and assured. And yet both owe themselves to one simple thing, and that one simple thing is love, and that love is of Christ:--Rooted and grounded in love. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

Rooted in love

Two cognate conceptions--one borrowed from the processes of nature, and the other from human art--are employed to indicate at once the life, the growth, the strength, and the stability of a Christians hope. A tree and a tower are the material objects which are used here as alphabetic letters to express a spiritual thought. More particularly, as a tree depends for life and growth upon its roots being embedded in a genial soil, and a tower depends for strength and stability upon its foundation, the apostle desires, by aid of these conceptions, to express and illustrate the corresponding features of the Christian life. If disciples are compared to living trees, love is the soil they grow in; if they ate compared to a building, love is the foundation on which it stands secure. Let us, at present, confine our attention to the first of these associated conceptions.

I. The soil in which the living tree is planted: it is love. A question rises here at the outset which must be settled ere we can advance a step with the exposition--What is the love in which the trees of righteousness are rooted? Whether is it Gods love to man, or mans love to God and to his brother? The question admits of an answer at once easily intelligible and demonstrably true. The love in which the roots of faith strike down for nourishment is not human but Divine. It is not even that grace which is sovereign and Divine in its origin, but residing and acting in a renewed human heart: it is the attribute, and even the nature, of Deity, for God is love. The soil which bears and nourishes the new life of man is the love of God in the gift of His Son. Having determined the first point--that the soil in which faiths roots can freely grow is found in God, not in man--we must now weigh well what attribute or manifestation of God it is that permits and invites the confidence of the fallen. The justice of God does not afford a soil on which the hope of sinners can thrive. As well might you expect the tender roots of a living plant to strike kindly down into hot ashes, as expect the trust of a guilty soul to go into the righteousness of God for support. No; there is nothing on this side but a fearful looking for of judgment to devour. Neither can human hopes grow in a mixture of mercy and justice such as men, in ignorance of the gospel, when conscience is uneasy, may mingle for themselves. There is only one place in which righteousness and peace can meet without mutually destroying each other, and that is in the Cross of Christ the Substitute. In Christ, but not elsewhere, God is at once just, and the justifier of the sinful who believe.

II. The plant that is rooted in the ground represents a believer getting all his support and all his sustenance from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our lord. Under this head, the first point that occurs is the very obvious one, that before any measure of growth can be obtained there must be life. Of what avail would richness of soil be to rows of dead branches? A withered branch draws no sap from the most fertile ground. Faith fastens on Gods revealed love in the covenant, and satisfies itself from this inexhaustible treasury; but who and what first creates faith? The living will, by the instincts of nature, seek convenient food; but how shall the dead be restored to life? Let it be granted that faith, appropriating Gods love, sustains the living, the question remains, Who quickens the dead? In the last resource, an answer to this question must be sought in the sovereignty of God and the ministry of the Spirit; but we must beware of so regarding Gods part in it as to miss or neglect our own. Live is the first thing in the Spirits ministry but believe is the first thing in the duty of man. To Gods eye, looking downward from His own eternity, the order of events is, Live, that you may believe; but to our eye, as we stand on earth and look upwards, the order of events is, Believe, that you may live. Our part is not to produce life, but to exercise trust. Honour God by referring the origin of life to His sovereign grace and power; but obey God by believing in Jesus Christ whom He has sent. Let us neither intrude into His province nor neglect our own. But even when the plant is living, many obstacles may intervene to prevent it from freely pushing down its roots and drinking up the richness of the soil. Stones of stumbling lie in the way of the living root, and hinder its growth. Sometimes the history of vegetable life, concealed for generations, is afterwards thrown open. When a forest tree, that has outlived several generations of its owners, is at last thrown down by a tempest, and its roots all exposed to the inspection of the passer-by, many secret passages of its early history are at length revealed. Each bend of those gnarled roots has a tale to tell--of various offers and disappointments, and conflicts and victories. Here, in the centre of the circular mass, the main stem was pointing perpendicularly downward when the tree was young, perhaps a century ago; but ere it had gone far in that direction, it had struck against a stone. The fibre, then young and pliable, had sensitively turned as soon as it felt the obstacle, and grew for a little upward, as if retracing its steps. Then it had bent to one side and crept along the surface of the stone, intending, so to speak, to turn its flank and plunge into the deep earth beyond its outmost edge. Once or twice in its horizontal course it came to hollows in the stone, and ever instinctively seeking downward, penetrated to the bottom of each; but finding no opening, it came always up again, and pursued its course on the horizontal line. But, long ere it reached the margin of the great rock, it found a rent, narrow, indeed, but thorough. Into this minute opening it thrust a needle-like point. It succeeded in pushing that pioneer through. Tasting thereby of the rich soil below, it thence drew new strength for itself. Strong now in that acquired strength, it increased its bulk and rent the rock asunder. You may now see the two halves of the cleaved rock hanging on the mighty root that rent them. Now the victor has overcome its adversaries, and makes a show of them openly. It holds the remnants of its ancient enemy aloft as trophies of its victory. It is thus that a living soul struggles against all obstructions, and either round them or through them, penetrates into the unlimited love of God as it is in Christ. There the life satisfies itself and becomes strong. This man is more than conqueror through Him that loved him. When the saved are drawn at length from the ground in which the new life secretly grew, and all the history of their redemption revealed in the better land, themselves and others will read with interest the record of the struggle, and the final victory. It will then be seen that every hindrance which the tempter threw in faiths way only exercised and so strengthened faith. They who have had the hardest conflict in throwing obstacles aside that they might freely draw from redeeming love in Christ, draw most freely from that love when they reach it: as that woman who had pined many years in disease, and spent all her means on other physicians, drew proportionally a larger draught from the fountain when she touched its lip at last. (W. Arnot, D. D.)

Rooted and grounded in love

I. The grace implored.

1. The love of God includes admiration of His character.

2. The love of God includes gratitude for His benefits.

3. The love of God includes delight in His communion.

II. Its specified importance.

1. The love of God is the essence of religion.

2. The love of God is the germ of holiness.

3. The love of God is the source of happiness.

4. The love of God is the test of meetness for heaven.

III. The characteristics of it implied.

1. Sincere, and not sentimental.

2. Permanent, and not temporary. (G. Brooks.)

Rooted and grounded in love

Observe, again, it is not rooted and grounded in any other perfection of God. I am satisfied that the love here spoken of, as you will see in a moment, is Gods love to us in the first instance; and the apostle does not say.

and this is very remarkable--being rooted and grounded in wisdom, or truth, or even faithfulness. And why? Because you will notice that all those perfections, invaluable as they are in their application to ourselves and the whole scheme of redemption, still do not touch the heart: they never would draw the roots of man to God. I can look at God, and behold Him in all His beauty, as a faithful, holy, just, and true God, but my heart remains perfectly unmoved; there is not one of Gods perfections, except love, that can draw forth the roots of my heart unto Himself; there is not one of Gods other perfections that could, if brought into exercise, have knit my soul to Him; I should have stood aloof from God, apart from this one attribute. I say again, I could have looked at Him and admired Him, in a cold and abstract sense, on account of His other perfections, as mere moral attributes; but His love, His own love, and nothing else, could ever touch the heart of poor lost, fallen man. It is there, observe--in the manifestation of that love--that union is again effected between God and man. And therefore I need not say to you, that the very essence of the gospel economy is the manifestation of that love. See, then, the propriety of this expression--rooted and grounded in love. You know perfectly well, in regard of any of your fellow creatures, that you may admire their qualities and attainments, and everything else of that character; still, these do not touch your heart; but when there is a strong expression of love towards yourself on the part of that fellow creature, if anything conceivable could draw forth your affections, and induce what is here implied by being rooted and grounded in the affection of that person, it is the very fact of his love drawing you to him. Hence this expression here--being rooted and grounded in love: that is, knowing His love, appreciating it, entering thoroughly into it, having such an understanding of it and such a belief of its personal adaption to yourself, if appropriated in all its fulness, that there is a manifest return--that the roots of your heart are drawn and infixed into God, and you come back into that fellowship with Him which never can and which never could result from anything whatever but the manifestation of Gods own love to you. Brethren, I would say, do you not feel from your inmost souls day by day that religion is an absolute nonentity, that it is pure vanity, excepting as it lays hold of a mans heart and affections? Do you not feel that it is utterly uninfluential, independent of that? But now let us look at two or three particulars connected with my more immediate text, which I want to be fixed upon your minds. Rooted and grounded in love! I have explained to you briefly, as well as I could, what is implied in that: it is such a perception of Gods love--its length, and breadth, and depth, and height--that our affections are placed firmly upon it; all their roots are fixed deeply into it. Now, then, I want to know particularly some of the results that will follow from it in our own experience.

1. There will be a necessary enlargement of our own hearts affections. My brethren, do believe this, that like every other faculty or feeling or quality belonging to man, his affections have become straitened. This is part and parcel of mans miserable and sinful condition. He has not the love he ought to have for any object; he is narrowed up into his own selfishness. Now, when we get a right view of Gods love, and that love comes into our hearts, what follows? The expansion of our own affections. It is a common saying, and a perfectly true one, that small things will satisfy small minds; but I tell you that the converse or another view of that proposition is true: small things will make small minds. If you exercise your mind upon small matters, your mind becomes diminished in its powers and capabilities--if you exercise your mind upon great matters, your mind expands; if the heart is fixed on a small object of affection, its affections become small--if on a comprehensive one, the affections are enlarged. Now look at God. God becomes the object of a mans affection when he enters into this text. What follows? The expansion of his heart. Hence the Psalmist--When Thou hast set my heart at liberty. I repeat, that if you can enter into the depth and length and height and breadth of Gods love in Christ to you, one result will be an expansion of heart and affection back towards God.

2. Another result will be this--a feeling of perfect security in regard to your everlasting state. You will never enter into this until you enter into the depths of Gods love.

3. Again, confidence will be the result. When I know that God is my own God, that He is with me always, that His promise will be fulfilled to me, what follows? I have perfect confidence. How can I have this? Why, let God be for me--I say from my inmost soul, let God be for me, and I care not whether man or devil is for or against me, comparatively. Is God absolute, or is He not? I say God is absolute, and controls all things. Then let me have God, and if I love Him I do have Him, and I stand with perfect confidence--in no strength of my own, with no sufficiency to think a good thought, but God undertakes for me.

4. Fruitfulness. If a tree strikes its roots deep, the tree is secure--if the foundation of a building is deep, the building is secure; if I see the depths of Gods love, and the roots of my heart are struck deep into Gods love, there is abundant reason for my security. But in regard to fruitfulness and a high and exalted state, how can you have that without the roots are struck deep? Can you build a high house or a tower without a good foundation? Can you have a high tree, luxuriant in foliage and fruit, if you have not deep roots? How then can you have a high Christian, an exalted Christian, an elevated experience? Only by the roots being struck deep into Gods love. (Capel Molyneux, B. A.)

Love, the result of Christs indwelling

Where Christ abides in a mans heart, love will be the very soil in which his life will be rooted and grow. That love will be the motive of all service, it will underlie as the productive cause, all fruitfulness. All goodness and all beauty will be its fruit. The whole life will be as a tree planted in this rich soil. And so the life will grow, not by effort only, but as by an inherent power drawing its nourishment from the soil. This is blessedness. It is heaven upon earth that love should be the soil in which our obedience is rooted, and from which we draw all the nutriment that turns to flowers and fruit. Where Christ dwells in the heart love will be the foundation upon which our lives are builded steadfast and sure. The blessed consciousness of His love, and the joyful answer of my heart to it, may become the basis upon which my whole being shall repose, the underlying thought that gives security, serenity, steadfastness to my else fluctuating life. I may so plant myself upon Him, as that in Him I shall be strong, and then my life will not only grow like a tree and have its leaf green and broad, and its fruit the natural outcome of its vitality, but it will rise like some stately building, course by course, pillar by pillar, until at last the shining topstone is set there. He that buildeth on that foundation shall never be confounded. For, remember, that deepest of all, the words of my text may mean that the incarnate personal love becomes the very soil in which my life is set and blossoms, on which my life is founded.

Thou, my Life, O let me be

Booted, grafted, built in Thee.

Christ is love, and love is Christ. He that is rooted and grounded in love has the roots of his being, and the foundation of his life fixed and fastened in that Lord. So, dear brethren, go to Christ like those two on the road to Emmaus; and as Fra Angelico has painted them on his convent wall, put out your hands and lay them on His, and say, Abide with us. Abide with us! And the answer will come: This is My rest forever; here--mystery of love!--will I dwell, for I have desired it. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Eph 3:17-19. That Christ may dwell in your hearts — May be always present with you, and may reside continually in you, by his purifying and comforting influences, so as to direct your judgment, engross your affections, and govern all your passions and tempers. See on Joh 17:23; Gal 2:21. By faith — By means of a continual exercise of faith in him, and in the truths and promises of his gospel. “The apostle had called the church the temple of God, Eph 2:21; here he represents every individual believer as the habitation of Christ, who came from heaven that he might rule in the hearts of men. And surely the indwelling of Christ in our hearts by faith in his doctrines and promises, is a much greater honour than that which the temple of Ephesus was said to possess, through the residence of an image of Diana, falsely reported to have fallen down from Jupiter, Act 19:35 : also a better preservative from evil than the votaries of that idol pretended to possess, by carrying about her shrine, mentioned Act 19:24.” That being rooted and grounded — Deeply fixed and firmly established; in love — Both in an experimental knowledge of God’s love to you, and in the exercise of a fervent love to him in return, and to each other, which will be a never-failing source of piety and virtue in your hearts and lives. The word τεθεμελιωμενοι, here rendered grounded, is used in allusion to a building, agreeably to the apostle’s representation of the Christian Church as the temple of God, built not of stones, but of men who believe and obey the gospel. And, (as the pious Professor Frank observes,) in the following clause, “he expresses his wish that the foundation might be so extensively and deeply laid, and that a superstructure might be raised, extending itself to such a magnificent length, and breadth, and height, as to be fitted to receive the sacred guest, that he might dwell, as it were, uncrowded in their hearts.” May be able to comprehend — So far as a human mind is capable; with all saints — That which all, who are worthy of the name of saints, do in some measure attain unto here, and shall fully understand hereafter; what is the breadth — Of the love of Christ, embracing all mankind; and length — From everlasting to everlasting; and depth — Descending into the abyss of our sin and misery to rescue us thence; and height — Exalting us to the summit of heavenly glory and felicity, to the dignity of God’s sons and daughters here, and to the vision and enjoyment of him hereafter. And to know the love of Christ — Continually aspiring after more enlarged and affecting views thereof, even of the love which he hath displayed in purchasing his church with his own blood, and redeeming it out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation, Rev 5:9; which, however, after all we can say or think of it, as to its nature, extent, and excellence, does and ever will infinitely surpass our knowledge and comprehension. “This prayer of the apostle does not imply any contradiction, for though the love of Christ be so great that it cannot be comprehended by the understanding of men, the apostle with great propriety prayed that they might know as much of it as the limited nature of their faculties permitted them to know, in order to their being sensible of the wisdom and power of God in gathering the Christian Church, not only from among the Jews, but from among the idolatrous Gentiles also;” and in bestowing on the members of that church such unspeakable blessings of grace here, and in preparing for them such blessings of glory hereafter. That ye might be filled with all the fulness of God — Macknight, who applies this clause to the church at Ephesus, collectively considered, rather than to the individuals of which it was composed, observes, “Having told the Ephesians, (Eph 2:21-22,) that the Jews and Gentiles were formed into a holy temple, for a habitation of God by the Spirit, he prays that this great temple might be filled with all the fulness of the presence of the true God, inhabiting every part of it by the gifts and graces of the Spirit, chap. Eph 4:6. For in that respect the Christian Church far exceeded the temple at Ephesus, which had nothing in it pretending to divinity, but the lifeless image of an idol placed in a corner of it.” The apostle, however, rather intended this, as he evidently did all the preceding clauses of his prayer, to be applied, not so much to that or any other church in general, as to each individual believer therein in particular. He therefore prayed that the mind and heart of each might be enlarged more abundantly, so as to admit larger communications than ever of divine light, love, wisdom, holiness, power, and glory, till at length they should arrive in the heavenly state, to full perfection in the knowledge, image, and enjoyment of God, where that which is perfect being come, they should know even as they also were known, and possess love in proportion to their knowledge.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. Reversing the usual order, the prayer begins (ver. 16) by asking the blessing of the Third Person of the Godhead; now we have a cluster of petitions connected with the Second Person. The first of these is for the indwelling of Christ in their hearts, as opposed to mere occasional visits or influences from Christ; the instrument by which this blessing is attained being their faith. Christ exercising a constant power within them, both in the active and passive movements of the heart, giving the sense of pardon and acceptance, molding the will, sweetening the emotions, enlightening and confirming the conscience, purifying the whole springs and principles of action. This to be secured by their faith, opening the door, receiving Christ in all his fullness, resting and living on him, believing his promises, and longing for his appearing the second time. In order that ye, having been rooted and grounded in love. Two images are combined to make the idea emphatic that of a tree and that of a building; denoting what is both the starting-point and the support of the Christian"s life, viz. love. In what sense? The love of Christ is specified afterwards (ver. 19), but this may be as a pre-eminent branch of that manifold love which bears on the Christian life the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; the love of the brethren to one another; and the reciprocal love evoked from the believer by the reception of this love. Evidently it is implied that the Christian life can begin and flourish only in such an atmosphere of love; as warm sunshine is needed to start and advance the life of a plant, so love is needed to start and carry on the life of the soul. Experience of Divine love is a great quickening and propelling power. "One glance of God, a touch of his love, will free and enlarge the heart, so that it can deny all and part with all and make an entire renunciation of all to follow him" (Archbishop Leighton).

The indwelling of Christ in believers.

Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." Whether we regard this clause of the prayer as representing the result, or the purpose, or the source of the spiritual strength spoken of in the previous clause, it is in very close relationship with it. Its own meaning is perfectly clear.

I THE INDWELLER CHRIST. There is a threefold idea suggested by the term.

1. The believer is regarded as a temple or house to be divinely inhabited. It is originally a house in ruins, to be restored as a beautiful temple of the Lord. Judging by the analogy of restoring a ruined house, the first operation is a cleansing out of the rubbish; the second, an opening of the windows to admit the pure air of heaven, and a kindling of a fire on the hearth; the third is a closing up or all the cracks or openings in the walls by which the wind or air finds access; and the fourth is the furnishing of the rooms with such articles of convenience as our taste and our means may enable us to procure. Similarly, when the Lord takes up his abode in the sinner"s heart, the process, though not successive in point of time, includes, first, the application of the blood of Christ to "the heart sprinkled from an evil conscience;" second, the opening of the windows of the understanding to displace the tainted atmosphere of man"s thoughts, and the kindling of the fire of love Divine in the heart; third, the watchful closing up of those avenues in the soul through which sin so easily finds access; and fourth, the furnishing of the soul with the needed graces of the Spirit.

2. The indwelling is here ascribed to Christ. It is elsewhere ascribed to the Holy Spirit: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?". (1Co_3:16) It is likewise ascribed to the Father: "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him". (1Jn_4:16) These varying forms of expression find their solution in the doctrine of the Trinity. He that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father, and be that hath the Son hath the Father; then, again, he that hath the Son hath the Spirit of Christ: "The Spirit of God dwelleth in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you ... the Spirit is life because of righteousness". (Rom_8:9, Rom_8:10) Therefore, when the apostle speaks of Christ dwelling in our hearts, he refers to the Spirit"s indwelling, for Christ dwells in his people by his Spirit. But there is a distinction in the modes of this indwelling: the Father dwells in us by love; (1Jn_4:16) the Son by faith; (Eph_3:17) the Spirit lies hid in the heart, working the faith in the one case anti the love in the other.

3. It implies an abiding habit of life. Christ does not come as a sojourner or as a wayfaring man, that turneth aside to tarry for the night, but as a constant dweller. Herein lies our security for the continuance, the power, the comfort, of this life.

II THE SEAT OF INDWELLING THE HEART. This is the true shrine. The word signifies the seat of religious knowledge as well as feeling. Thus Christ sits at the very center of spiritual life, himself the very Life of that life, (Gal_2:20) controlling all its impulses and movements. The objects we most desire we treasure in the heart. The heart wearies of many things, but can never weary of this Divine Visitant, who can speak with commanding voice when the soul is disturbed by suggestions of sin. "If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart". (1Jn_3:20) The Lord is the supreme Possessor of the heart "now sprinkled from an evil conscience.

III THE SUBJECTIVE MEANS OF THE INDWELLING FAITH. This is not to be regarded merely as the means of our justification, or as the root of our spiritual life, but as its continuously sustaining principle, according to the apostle"s teaching: "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and. the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God". (Gal_2:20) This is the faith that worketh by love, that purifies the heart, that overcometh the world. It is the principle of spiritual communion; it is that by which we realize the presence, the excellence, the power, of Christ in us; it is that which radiates all grace and peace through the believer"s heart. T.C.

The real presence.

No great delusion could attain wide influence unless it were the counterfeit or perversion of a valuable truth, and unless it promised to satisfy some deep, natural desire. The doctrine of the real presence is a pathetic witness to the yearning of the soul for personal fellowship with Christ, and to the truth that he does come into the lives of his pestle.

I CHRIST"S PRESENCE IS REAL. It is not enough that he should be with us only as "the choir invisible" of the departed great are near; i.e. in our memory and in his influence. We are not satisfied with having his spirit among us in the sense in which the spirit of Plato and the spirit of Shakespeare are still with those who read "Phaedo" and "Hamlet." Christ promised to be personally present with his disciples. (Mat_28:20) He ascended up into heaven, not that he might be removed from us, but that, passing from the material to the spiritual world, he might come into the closer contact with our souls.

II CHRIST"S PRESENCE IS IN OUR HEARTS. He touches us through our thoughts and affections. There lies our true self, and it is to our true self that he comes. He makes his presence felt by the truths he inspires, the love he rouses, and the strength he infuses, just as the sun"s presence is felt in the seed when it begins to germinate in its dark tomb beneath the earth. In this way Christ is even more near to us than he was to Zacchaeus when he sat at the publican"s table, or to John when the beloved disciple leaned on his Master"s bosom.

III CHRIST"S PRESENCE IS ABIDING. He comes "not to sojourn;" he abides with us. He is with us when, busy in doing his will, we are not thinking of the Lord himself, as the master is among the workmen who for the moment are too diligent to look at him. He is with us in hours of spiritual night when we are not enjoying communion with him, as a friend may be by our side in the dark, near though undiscovered. He is with us in our weariness when we have not strength and heart to pray, as the mother watches her sick child while he lies moaning and quite unconscious of her gentle nursing.

IV CHRIST"S PRESENCE IS ENJOYED THROUGH FAITH. He is not in every heart; for there are Christless souls. Nor is he fully present with each one of his own people; for it is on behalf of true Christians that St. Paul prays for the strength to receive Christ. He is near to us just in proportion as our faith is vigorous to lay hold of him. We cannot put our fingers in the nail-prints. We must trust the unseen presence. We must not look for any second sense, any mystical intuition; for that is as much walking by sight as if we saw our Lord with our bodily eyes. Faith is pure trust in that of which we have no direct apprehension. By this faith we receive Christ. W.F.A.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

EPHESIANS

THE INDWELLING CHRIST

Eph 3:17

We have here the second step of the great staircase by which Paul’s fervent desires for his Ephesian friends climbed towards that wonderful summit of his prayers-which is ever approached, never reached,-’that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.’

Two remarks of an expository character will prepare the way for the lessons of these verses. The first is as to the relation of this clause to the preceding. It might appear at first sight to be simply parallel with the former, expressing substantially the same ideas under a somewhat different aspect. The operation of the strength-giving Spirit in the inner man might very naturally be supposed to be equivalent to the dwelling of Christ in our hearts by faith. So many commentators do, in fact, take it; but I think that the two ideas may be distinguished, and that we are to see in the words of our text, as I have said, the second step in this prayer, which is in some sense a result of the ‘strengthening with might by the Spirit in the inner man.’ I need not enter in detail into the reasons for taking this view of the connection of the clause, which is obviously in accordance with the climbing-up structure of the whole verse. It is enough to point it out as the basis of my further remarks.

And now the second observation with which I will trouble you, before I come to deal with the thoughts of the verse, is as to the connection of the last words of it. You may observe that in reading the words of my text I omitted the ‘that’ which stands in the centre of the verse. I did so because the words, ‘Ye being rooted and grounded in love,’ in the original, do stand before the ‘that,’ and are distinctly separated by it from the subsequent clause. They ought not, therefore, to be shifted forward into it, as our translators and the Revised Version have, I think, unfortunately done, unless there were some absolute necessity either from meaning or from construction. I do not think that this is the case; but on the contrary, if they are carried forward into the next clause, which describes the result of Christ’s dwelling in our hearts by faith, they break the logical flow of the sentence by mixing together result and occasion. And so I attach them to the first part of this verse, and take them to express at once the consequence of Christ’s dwelling in the heart by faith, and the preparation or occasion for our being able to comprehend and know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. Now that is all with which I need trouble you in the way of explanation of the meaning of the words. Let us come now to deal with their substance.

I. Consider the Indwelling of Christ, as desired by the Apostle for all Christians.

To begin with, let me say in the plainest, simplest, strongest way that I can, that that dwelling of Christ in the believing heart is to be regarded as being a plain literal fact.

To a man who does not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, of course that is nonsense, but to those of us who do see in Him the manifested incarnate God, there ought to be no difficulty in accepting this as the simple literal force of the words before us, that in every soul where faith, howsoever feeble, has been exercised, there Jesus Christ does verily abide.

It is not to be weakened down into any notion of participation in His likeness, sympathy with His character, submission to His influence, following His example, listening to His instruction, or the like. A dead Plato may so influence his followers, but that is not how a living Christ influences His disciples. What is meant is no mere influence derived but separable from Him, however blessed and gracious that influence might be, but it is the presence of His own self, exercising influences which are inseparable from His presence, and only to be realised when He dwells in us.

I think that Christian people as a rule do far too little turn their attention to this aspect of the Gospel teaching, and concentrate their thoughts far too much upon that which is unspeakably precious in itself, but does not exhaust all that Christ is to us, viz. the work that He wrought for us upon Calvary; or to take a step further, the work that He is now carrying on for us as our Intercessor and Advocate in the heavens. You who listen to me Sunday after Sunday will not suspect me of seeking to minimise either of these two aspects of our Lord’s mission and operation, but I do believe that very largely the glad thought of an indwelling Christ, who actually abides and works in our hearts, and is not only for us in the heavens, or with us by some kind of impalpable and metaphorical presence, but in simple, that is to say, in spiritual reality is in our spirits, has faded away from the consciousness of the Christian Church.

And so we are called ‘mystics’ when we preach Christ in the heart. Ah, brother! unless your Christianity be in the good deep sense of the word ‘mystical,’ it is mechanical, which is worse. I preach, and rejoice that I have to preach, a ‘Christ that died, yea! rather that is risen again; who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.’ Nor do I stop there, but I preach a Christ that is in us, dwelling in our hearts if we be His at all.

Well, then, further observe that the special emphasis of the prayer here is that this ‘indwelling’ may be an unbroken and permanent one. Any of you who can consult the original for yourselves will see that the Apostle here uses a compound word which conveys the idea of intensity and continuity. What he desires, then, is not merely that these Ephesian Christians may have occasional visits of the indwelling Lord, or that at some lofty moments of spiritual enthusiasm they may be conscious that He is with them, but that always, in an unbroken line of deep, calm receptiveness, they may possess, and know that they possess, an indwelling Saviour.

And this, I think, is one of the reasons why we may and must distinguish between the apparently very similar petition in the previous verse, about which we spoke in the last sermon, and the petition which is now occupying us; for, as I shall have to show you, it is only as ‘strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man’ that we are capable of the continuous abiding of that Lord within us.

Oh! what a contrast to that idea of a perpetual unbroken inhabitation of Jesus in our spirits and to our consciousness is presented by our ordinary life! ‘Why shouldst Thou be as a wayfaring man that turneth aside to tarry for a night?’ may well be the utterance of the average Christian. We might, with unbroken blessedness, possess Him in our hearts, and instead, we have only ‘visits short and far between’ Alas, alas, how often do we drive away that indwelling Christ, because our hearts are ‘foul with sin,’ so that He

‘Can but listen at the gate

And hear the household jar within.’

Christian men and women! here is the ideal of our lives, capable of being approximated to {if not absolutely in its entirety reached} with far more perfection than it ever has yet been by us. There might be a line of light never interrupted running all through our religious experience. Instead of that there is a light point here, and a great gap of darkness there, like the straggling lamps by the wayside in the half-lighted squalid suburbs of some great city. Is that your Christian life, broken by many interruptions, and having often sounding through it the solemn words of the retreating divinity which the old profound legend tells us were heard the night before the Temple on Zion was burnt:-’Let us depart?’ ‘I will arise and return unto My place till they acknowledge their offences.’ God means and wishes that Christ may continuously dwell in our hearts. Does He to your own consciousness dwell in yours?

And then the last thought connected with this first part of my subject is that the heart, strengthened by the Spirit, is fitted to be the Temple of the indwelling Christ. How shall we prepare the chamber for such a guest? How shall some poor occupant of some wretched hut by the wayside fit it up for the abode of a prince? The answer lies in these words that precede my text. You cannot strengthen the rafters and lift the roof and adorn the halls and furnish the floor in a manner befitting the coming of the King; but you can turn to that Divine Spirit who will expand and embellish and invigorate your whole spirit, and make it capable of receiving the indwelling Christ.

That these two things which are here considered as cause and effect may, in another aspects be considered as but varying phases of the same truth, is only part of the depth and felicity of the teaching that is here; for if you come to look more deeply into it, the Spirit that strengtheneth with might is the Spirit of Christ; and He dwells in men’s hearts by His own Spirit. So that the apparent confusion, arising from what in other places are regarded as identical being here conceived as cause and effect, is no confusion at all, but is explained and vindicated by the deep truth that nothing but the indwelling of the Christ can fit for the indwelling of the Christ. The lesser gift of His presence prepares for the greater measure of it; the transitory inhabitation for the more permanent. Where He comes in smaller measure He opens the door and makes the heart capable of His own more entire indwelling. ‘Unto him that hath shall be given.’ It is Christ in the heart that makes the heart fit for Christ to dwell in the heart. You cannot do it by your own power; turn to Him and let Him make you temples meet for Himself.

II. So now, in the second place, notice the open door through which the Christ comes in to dwell-’that He may dwell in your hearts by faith.’

More accurately we may render ‘through faith’ and might even venture to suppose that the thought of faith as an open door through which Christ passes into the heart, floated half distinctly before the Apostle’s mind. Be that as it may, at all events faith is here represented as the means or condition through which this dwelling takes effect. You have but to believe in Him and He comes, drawn from heaven, floating down on a sunbeam, as it were, and enters into the heart and abides there.

Trust, which is faith, is self-distrust. ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.’ Rivers do not run on the mountain tops, but down in the valleys. So the heart that is lifted up and self-complacent has no dew of His blessing resting upon it, but has the curse of Gilboa adhering to its barrenness; but the low lands, the humble and the lowly hearts, are they in which the waters that go softly scoop their course and diffuse their blessings. Faith is self-distrust. Self-distrust brings the Christ.

Faith is desire. Never, never in the history of the world has it been or can it be that a longing towards Him shall be a longing thrown back unsatisfied upon itself. You have but to trust, and you possess. We open the door for the entrance of Christ by the simple act of faith, and blessed be His name! He can squeeze Himself through a very little chink, and He does not require that the gates should be flung wide open in order that, with some of His blessings, He may come in.

Mystical Christianity of the false sort has much to say about the indwelling of God in the soul, but it spoils all its teaching by insisting upon it that the condition on which God dwells in the soul is the soul’s purifying itself to receive Him. But you cannot cleanse your hearts so as to bring Christ into them, you must let Him come and cleanse them by the process of His coming, and fit them thereby for His own indwelling. And, assuredly, He will so come, purging us from our evil and abiding in our hearts.

But do not forget that the faith which brings Christ into the spirit must be a faith which works by love, if it is to keep Christ in the spirit. You cannot bring that Lord into your hearts by anything that you do. The man who cleanses his own soul by his own strength, and so expects to draw God into it, has made the mistake which Christ pointed out when He told us that when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man he leaves his house empty, though it be swept and garnished. Moral reformation may turn out the devils, it will never bring in God, and in the emptiness of the swept and garnished heart there is an invitation to the seven to come back again and fill it.

And whilst that is true, remember, on the other hand, that a Christian man can drive away his Master by evil works. The sweet song-birds and the honey-making bees are said always to desert a neighbourhood before a pestilence breaks out in it. And if I may so say, similarly quick to feel the first breath of the pestilence is the presence of the Christ which cannot dwell with evil. You bring Christ into your heart by faith, without any work at all; you keep Him there by a faith which produces holiness.

III. And the last point is the gifts of this indwelling Christ,-’ye being,’ or as the words might more accurately be translated, ‘Ye having been rooted and grounded in love.’

Where He comes He comes not empty-handed. He brings His own love, and that, consciously received, produces a corresponding and answering love in our hearts to Him. So there is no need to ask the question here whether ‘love’ means Christ’s love to me, or my love to Christ. From the nature of the case both are included-the recognition of His love and the response by mine are the result of His entering into the heart. This love, the recognition of His and the response by mine, is represented in a lovely double metaphor in these words as being at once the soil in which our lives are rooted and grow, and the foundation on which our lives are built and are steadfast.

There is no need to enlarge upon these two things, but let me just touch them for a moment. Where Christ abides in a man’s heart, love will be the very soil in which his life will be rooted and grow. That love will be the motive of all service, it will underlie, as its productive cause, all fruitfulness. All goodness and all beauty will be its fruit. The whole life will be as a tree planted in this rich soil. And so the life will grow not by effort only, but as by an inherent power drawing its nourishment from the soil. This is blessedness. It is heaven upon earth that love should be the soil in which our obedience is rooted, and from which we draw all the nutriment that turns to flowers and fruit.

Where Christ dwells in the heart, love will be the foundation upon which our lives are builded steadfast and sure. The blessed consciousness of His love, and the joyful answer of my heart to it, may become the basis upon which my whole being shall repose, the underlying thought that gives security, serenity, steadfastness to my else fluctuating life. I may so plant myself upon Him, as that in Him I shall be strong, and then my life will not only grow like a tree and have its leaf green and broad, and its fruit the natural outcome of its vitality, but it will rise like some stately building, course by course, pillar by pillar, until at last the shining topstone is set there. He that buildeth on that foundation shall never be confounded.

For, remember that, deepest of all, the words of my text may mean that the Incarnate Personal Love becomes the very soil in which my life is set and blossoms, on which my life is founded.

‘Thou, my Life, O let me be

Rooted, grafted, built in Thee.’

Christ is Love, and Love is Christ. He that is rooted and grounded in love has the roots of his being, and the foundation of his life fixed and fastened in that Lord.

So, dear brethren, go to Christ like those two on the road to Emmaus; and as Fra Angelico has painted them on his convent wall, put out your hands and lay them on His, and say, ‘Abide with us. Abide with us!’ And the answer will come:-’This is my rest for ever; here’-mystery of love!-’will I dwell, for I have desired it,’ even the narrow room of your poor heart.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter 15

KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE

Eph_3:17-19

WE were compelled to pause before reaching the end of the apostles comprehensive prayer. But we must not let slip the thread of its connection. Eph_3:19 is the necessary sequel and counterpart of Eph_3:18. The catholic love which embraces "all the saints" and "comprehends" in its wide dimensions the extent of the Redeemers kingdom, admits us to a deeper knowledge of Christs own love. The breadth and length, the height and depth of the work of Christ in men and the ages give us a worthier conception of the love that inspired and sustains it. "In the Church" at once "and in Christ Jesus" Gods glory is revealed. Our Church views react upon our views of Christ and our sense of His love. Bigotry and exclusiveness towards His brethren chill the heart towards Himself. Our sectarianism stints and narrows our apprehensions of the Divine grace.

I. St. Paul prays that we may "know (not comprehend) the love of Christ"; for it "passes knowledge." Amongst the Greek words denoting mental activity, that here employed signifies knowledge in the acquisition rather than possession - getting to know. Hence it is rightly, and often used of things Divine that "we know in part," our knowledge of which falls short of the reality while it is growing up to it. Thus understood, the contradiction of the apostles wish disappears. We know the unknowable, just as we "clearly see the invisible things of God". {Rom_1:20} The idea is conveyed of an object that invites our observation and pursuit, but which at every step outreaches apprehension, each discovery revealing depths within it unperceived before. Such was the knowledge of Christ to the soul of St. Paul. To the Philippians the aged apostle writes: "I do not reckon myself to have apprehended Him. I am in pursuit! I forget the past; I press on eagerly to the goal I have but one object in view and sacrifice everything for it, - that I may win Christ:"

In all the mystery of Christ, there is nothing more wonderful and past finding out than His love. For nigh thirty years Paul has been living in daily fellowship with the love of Christ, his heart full of it and all the powers of his mind bent upon its comprehension: he cannot understand it yet! At this moment it amazes him more than ever.

Great as the Christian community is, and large as the place and part assigned to it by this epistle, that is still finite and a creation of time. The apostles doctrine of the Church is not beyond the comprehension of a mind sufficiently loving and enlightened. But though we had followed him so far and had well and truly apprehended the mystery he has revealed to us, the love of Christ is still beyond us. Our principles of judgment and standards of comparison fail us when applied to this subject. Human love has in many instances displayed heroic qualities; it can rise to a divine height of purity and tenderness; but its noblest sacrifices will not bear to be put by the side of the cross of Christ. No picture of that love but shows poor and dull compared with the reality; no eloquence lavished upon it but lowers the theme. Our logical framework of doctrine fails to enclose and hold it; the love of Christ defies analysis and escapes from all our definitions. Those who know the world best, who have ranged through history and philosophy and the life of living men and have measured most generously the possibilities of human nature, are filled with a wondering reverence when they come to know the love of Christ. "Never man spake like this man," said one; but verily never man loved like Jesus Christ. He expects to be loved more than father or mother; for His love surpasses theirs. We cannot describe His love, nor delineate its features as Paul saw them when he wrote these lines. Go to the Gospels, and behold it as it lived and wrought for men. Stand and watch at the cross. Then if the eyes of your heart are open, you will see the great sight-the love that passeth knowledge.

When, turning from Christ Himself to His own person and presence, before whom praise is speechless, we contemplate the manifestations of His love to mankind; when we consider that its fountain lies in the bosom of the Eternal; when we trace its footsteps prepared from the worlds foundation, and perceive it choosing a people for its own and making its promises and raising up its heralds and forerunners; when at last it can hide and refrain itself no longer, but comes forth incarnate with lowly heart to take our infirmities and carry our diseases-yea, to put away our sin by the sacrifice of itself; when we behold that same Love which the hands of men had slain, setting up its cross for the sign of its covenant of peace with mankind, and enthroned in the majesty of heaven waiting even as a bridegroom joyously for the time when its ransomed shall be brought home, redeemed from iniquity and gathered unto itself from all the kindreds of the earth; and when we see how this mystery of love, in its sufferings and glories and its deep-laid plans for all the creatures, engages the ardent study and sympathy of the heavenly principalities, -in view of these things, who can but feel himself unworthy to know the love of Christ or to speak one word on its behalf? Are we not ready to say like Peter, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord"?

This is a revelation that searches every mans soul who looks into it. What is there so confounding to our reason and our human self-complacency as the discovery: "He loved me; He gave Himself up for me"-that He should do it, and should need to do it! It was this that went to Sauls heart, that gave the mortal blow to the Jewish pride in him, strong as it was with the growth of centuries. The bearer of this grace and the ambassador of Christs love to the Gentiles, he feels himself to be "less than the least of all the saints." We carry in our hands to show to men a heavenly light, which throws our own unloveliness into dark relief.

II. The love of Christ connects together, in the apostles thoughts, the greatness of the Church and the fulness of God. The two former conceptions-Christs love and the Churchs greatness-go together in our minds; knowing them, we are led onwards to the realisation of the last. The "fulness (pleroma) of God," and the "filling (or completing) of believers in Christ" are ideas characteristic of this group of epistles. The first of these expressions we have discussed already in its connection with Christ, in Eph_1:23; we shall meet with it again as "the fulness of Christ" in Eph_4:13. The phrase before us is, in substance, identical with that of the latter text. Christ contains the Divine plenitude; He embodies it in His person, and conveys, it to the world by His redemption. St. Paul desires for the Asian Christians that they may receive it; it is the ultimate mark of his prayer. He wishes them to gain the total sum of all that God communicates to men. He would have them "filled"-their nature made complete both in its individual and social relations, their powers of mind and heart brought into full exercise, their spiritual capacities developed and replenished-"filled unto all the plenitude of God."

This is no humanistic or humanitarian ideal. The mark of Christian completeness is on a different and higher plane than any. that is set up by culture. The ideal Christian is a greater man than the ideal citizen or artist or philosopher: he may include within himself any or all of these characters, but he transcends them. He may conform to none of these types, and yet be a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Our race cannot rest in any perfection that stops short of "the fulness of God." When we have received all that God has to give in Christ, when the community of men is once more a family of God and the Fathers will is done on earth as in heaven, then and not before will our life be complete. That is the goal of humanity; and the civilisation that does not lead to it is a wandering from the way. "You are complete in Christ," says the apostle. The progress of the ages since confirms the saying.

The Apostle prays that his readers may know the love of Christ. This is a part of the Divine plenitude; nor is there anything in it deeper. But there is more to know. When he asks for "all the fulness," he thinks of other elements of revelation in which we are to participate. Gods wisdom, His truth, His righteousness, along with His love in its manifold forms, -all the qualities that, in one word, go to make up His holiness, are communicable and belong to the image stamped by the Holy Spirit on the nature of Gods children. "Ye shall be holy, for I am holy" is Gods standing command to His sons. So Jesus bids His disciples, "Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." St. Pauls prayer "is but another way of expressing the continuous aspiration and effort after holiness which is enjoined in our Lords precept" (Lightfoot).

While the holiness of God gathers up into one stream of white radiance the revelation of His character, "the fulness of God" spreads it abroad in its many-coloured, richness and variety. The term accords with the affluence of thought that marks this supplication. The might of the Spirit that strengthens weak human hearts, the greatness of the Christ who is the guest of our faith, His wide-spreading kingdom and the vast interests it embraces and His own love surpassing all, - these objects of the souls desire issue from the fulness of God; and they lead us in pursuing them, like streams pouring into the ocean, back to the eternal Godhead. The mediatorial kingdom has its end: Christ, when He has "put down all rule and authority": will at last "yield it up to His God and Father"; and "the Son Himself will be subjected to Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all". {1Co_15:24-28} This is the crown of the Redeemers mission, the end of which His love to the Father seeks. But when that end is reached, and the soul with immediate vision beholds the Fathers glory, the Plenitude will be still new and unexhausted; the soul will then begin its deepest lessons in the knowledge of God which is life eternal.

St. Paul is conscious of the extreme boldness of the prayer he has just uttered. But he protests that, instead of going beyond Gods purposes, it falls short of them. This assurance rises, in Eph_3:20-21, into a rapture of praise. It is a cry of exultation, a true song of triumph, that breaks from the Apostles lips:-

"Now unto Him that is able to do above all things, - Yea, far exceedingly beyond what we ask or think, -According to the power that worketh in us: To Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus, Unto all generations of the age of the ages.-Amen!" (Eph_3:20-21).

Praise soars higher than prayer. When St. Paul has reached in supplication the summit of his desires, he sees the plenitude of Gods gifts still by a whole heaven outreaching him. But it is only from these mountain-tops hardly won in the exercise of prayer, in their still air and tranquil light, that the boundless realms of promise are visible. Gods giving surpasses immeasurably our thought and asking; but there must be the asking and the thinking for it to surpass. He puts always more into our hand and better things than we expected-when the expectant hand is reached out to Him.

Mans desires will never overtake Gods bounty. Hearing the prayer just offered, unbelief will say: "You have asked too much. It is preposterous to expect that raw Gentile converts, scarcely raised above their heathen debasement, should enter into these exalted notions of yours about Christ and the Church and should be filled with the fulness of God! Prayer must be rational and within the bounds of possibility, offered with the understanding as well as with the spirit, or it becomes mere extravagance."-The apostle gives a twofold answer to this kind of scepticism. He appeals to the Divine omnipotence. "With men," you say, "this is impossible." Humanly speaking, St. Pauls Gentile disciples were incapable of any high spiritual culture; they were unpromising material, with "not many wise or many noble" amongst them, some of them before their conversion stained with infamous vices. Who is to make saints and godlike men out of such human refuse as this! But "with God," as Jesus said, "all things are possible." Faex urbis, lux orbis: "the scum of the city is made the light of the world." The force at work upon the minds of these degraded pagans-slaves, thieves, prostitutes, as some of them had been-is the love of Christ; it is the power of the Holy Ghost, the might of the strength which raises the dead to life eternal.

Let us therefore praise Him "who is able to do beyond all things"-beyond the best that His best servants have wished and stiiven for. Had men ever asked or thought of such a gift to the world as Jesus Christ? Had the prophets foreseen one-tenth part of his greatness? In their boldest dreams did the disciples anticipate the wonders of the day of Pentecost and of the later miracles of grace accomplished by their preaching? How far exceedingly had these things already surpassed the utmost that the Church asked or thought.

St. Pauls reliance is not upon the "ability" alone, upon the abstract omnipotence of God. The force upon which he counts is lodged in the Church, and is in visible and constant operation. "According to the power that worketh in us "he expects these vast results to be achieved. This power is the same as that he invoked in verse 16, -the might of the Spirit of God in the inward man. It is the spring of courage and joy, the source of religious intelligence {Eph_1:17-18} and personal holiness, the very power that raised the dead body of Jesus to life, as it will raise hereafter all the holy dead to share His immortality. {Rom_8:11} St. Paul was conscious at this time in a remarkable degree of the supernatural energy working within his own mind. It is of this that he speaks to the Colossians, in language very similar to that of our text, when he says: "I toil hard, striving according to His energy that works in me in power." As he labours for the Church in writing that epistle, he is sensible of another Power acting within his spirit, and distinguished from it by his consciousness, which tasks his faculties to the utmost to follow its dictates and express its meaning.

The presence of this mysterious power of the Spirit St. Paul constantly felt when engaged in prayer, -"The Spirit helpeth our infirmities"; He "makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered". {Rom_8:26-27} On this point the experience of earnest Christian believers in all ages confirms that of St. Paul. The sublime prayer to which he has just given utterance is not his own. There is more in it than the mere Paul, a weak man, would have dared to ask or think. He who inspires the prayer will fulfil it. The Searcher of hearts knows better than the man who conceived it, infinitely better than we who are trying for our own help to interpret it, all that this intercession means. God will hear the pleading of His Spirit. The Power that prompts our prayers, and the Power that grants their answer are the same. The former is limited in its action by human infirmity; the latter knows no limit. Its only measure is the fulness of God. To Him who works in us all good desires, and works far beyond us to bring our good desires to good effect, be the glory of all forever!

In such measure, then, shall glory be to God "in the Church and in Christ Jesus." We see how the Church takes up the foreground of Pauls horizon. This epistle has taught us that God desires far more than our individual salvation, however complete that might be. Christ came not to save men only, but mankind. It is "in the Church" that Gods consummate glory will be seen. No man in his fragmentary self-hood, no number of men in their separate capacity can conceivably attain "unto the fulness of God." It will need all humanity for that, to reflect the full-orbed splendour of Divine revelation. Isolated and divided from each other, we render to God a dimmed and partial glory. "With one accord, with one mouth" we are called to "glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Wherefore the Apostle bids us "receive one another, as Christ also received us, to the glory of God". {Rom_15:6-7}

The Church, being the creation of Gods love in Christ and the receptacle of His communicative fulness, is the vessel formed for His praise. Her worship is a daily tribute to the Divine majesty and bounty. The life of her people in the world, her witness for Christ and warfare against sin, her ceaseless ministries to human sorrow and need proclaim the Divine goodness, righteousness, and truth. From the heavenly places where she dwells with Christ, she reflects the light of Gods glory, and makes it shine into the depths of evil at her feet. It was the Churchs voice that St. John heard in heaven as "the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders; saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigneth!" Each soul new-born into the fellowship of faith adds another note to make up the multitudinous harmony of the Churchs praise to God.

Nor does the Church by herself alone render this praise and honour unto God. The display of Gods manifold wisdom in His dealings with mankind is drawing admiration, as St. Paul believed, from the celestial spheres (Eph_3:10). The story of earths redemption is the theme of endless songs in heaven. All creation joins in concert with the redeemed from the earth, and swells the chorus of their triumph. "I heard," says John, in another place, "a voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures, and the elders, saying with a great voice. Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain! And every created thing which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all things that are in them, heard I saying":

"Unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, Be blessing and honour and glory and dominion-For ever and ever."

But the Church is the centre of this tribute of the universe to God and to His Christ. The Church and Christ Jesus are wedded in this doxology, even as they were in the foregoing supplication (Eph_3:18-19). In the Bride and the Bridegroom, in the Redeemed and the Redeemer, in the many brethren and in the Firstborn is this perfect glory to be paid to God. "In the midst of the congregation" Christ the Son of man sings evermore the Fathers praise. {Heb_2:12} No glory is paid to God by men which is not due to Him; nor does He render to the Father any tribute in which His people are without a share. "The glory which thou hast given me I have given them," said Jesus to the Father praying for His Church, "that they may be one, even as we are one". {Joh_17:22} Our union with each other in Christ is perfected by our union with Him in realising the Fathers glory, in receiving and manifesting the fulness of God.

The duration of the glory to be paid to God by Christ and His Church is expressed by a cumulative phrase in keeping with the tenor of the passage to which it belongs: "unto all generations of the age of the ages." It reminds us of "the ages to come" through which the apostle in Eph_2:7 foresaw that Gods mercy to his own age would be celebrated. It carries our thoughts along the vista of the future, till time melts into eternity. When the apostle desires that Gods praise may resound in the Church "unto all generations, " he no longer supposes that the mystery of God may be finished speedily as men count years. The history of mankind stretches before his gaze into its dim futurity. The successive "generations" gather themselves into that one consummate "age" of the kingdom of God, the grand cycle in which all "the ages" are contained. With its completion time itself is no more. Its swelling current, laden with the tribute of all the worlds and all their histories, reaches the eternal ocean.

The end comes: God is all in all. At this furthest horizon of thought, Christ and His own are seen together rendering to God unceasing glory.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

3:17 Having Christ . . . make his home in your hearts is the source of spiritual power for life and ministry (see John 14:16-17, 23; 15:4-5; Gal 2:20).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Connecting Statement:

Paul continues the prayer he began in Ephesians 3:14.

that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, that you will be rooted and grounded in his love

This is the second item for which Paul prays that God will "grant" the Ephesians "according to the riches of his glory." The first is that they would "be strengthened" (Ephesians 3:16).

that Christ may live in your hearts through faith

Here "heart" represents a person's inner being, and "through" expresses the means by which Christ lives within the believer. Christ lives in the hearts of believers because God graciously allows them to have faith. AT: "that Christ may live within you because you trust in him" (See: Metonymy)

faith, that you will be rooted and grounded in his love. May you have strength so you can understand

Possible meanings are 1) "faith. I pray that you will be rooted and grounded in his love so that you can understand" or 2) "faith so you will be rooted and grounded in his love. I also pray that you can understand"

that you will be rooted and grounded in his love

Paul speaks of their faith as if it were a tree that has deep roots or a house built on a solid foundation. AT: "that you will be like a firmly rooted tree and a building built on stone" (See: Metaphor)

so you can understand

This is the second item for which Paul bends his knees and prays; the first is that God will grant that they be strengthened (Ephesians 3:16) and that Christ may live in their hearts through faith (Ephesians 3:17). And "understand" is the first thing that Paul prays that the Ephesians themselves will be able to do.

all the believers

"all believers in Christ" or "all the saints"

the width, the length, the height, and the depth

Possible meanings are 1) these words describe the greatness of God's wisdom, AT: "how very wise God is" or 2) these word describe the intensity of Christ's love for us. AT: "how much Christ loves us" (See: Metaphor)

that you may know the love of Christ

This is the second thing that Paul prays that the Ephesians will be able to do; the first is that they "understand." AT: "that you can know how great Christ's love for us is"

that you may be filled with all the fullness of God

This is the third item for which Paul bends his knees and prays (Ephesians 3:14-16). The first is that they would "be strengthened" (Ephesians 3:16), and the second is that they "can understand" (Eph 3:18).

translationWords

Christ

heart

faith

love

believe

God

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

Eph 3:17. Κατοικῆσει) that Christ may dwell for ever. It is without any connecting particle [Asyndeton]. Where the Spirit of God is, there also is Christ.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Eph_3:17. Κατοικῆσαι κ.τ.λ.] Parallel to δυνάμει κραταιωθῆναι, etc., which declarat, quale sit interioris hominis robur, Calvin. According to Rückert, something different from what forms the object of the first petition is here prayed for, and there is a climax. In this way we should have, in the absence of a connecting particle, to take the infinitive, with de Wette, as the infinitive of the aim; but the circumstance that with Christians the being strengthened by the Spirit, who is indeed the Spirit of Christ, cannot at all be thought of as different from the indwelling of Christ (Rom_8:9-10; 2Co_12:9; Php_4:13; Rom_15:17 f.), and the subsequent ἐῤῥιζ. κ. τεθεμ., which manifestly further expresses the conception of the κραταιωθῆναι, decide for the former view. The explanatory element, however, lies in the emphatically prefixed κατοικῆσαι: that Christ may take up His abode by means of faith in your hearts. In the Holy Spirit, namely, which is the Spirit of Christ (see on Rom_8:9-10; Gal_2:20; Gal_4:6; 2Co_3:17), Christ fulfils the promise of His spiritual presence in the hearts (Joh_14:23; comp. above, on Eph_2:17; 2Co_13:5), in which faith is the appropriating instrument on the part of man (hence διὰ τῆς πίστεως). Where thus there is a κραταιωθῆναι διὰ τοῦ πνεύματος, there is also to be found a κατοικῆσαι of Christ; because the former is not possible without a continuous activity of Christ in the hearts. Opposed to the κατοικῆσαι of Christ in the hearts is a transitory (πρόσκαιρος) reception of the Holy Spirit (Gal_3:3). A more precise definition, by virtue of which the clause κατοικῆσαι κ.τ.λ. may in reality be an explanatory clause to that which precedes, is thus before us, namely, in the prefixed emphatic κατοικῆσαι itself. This in opposition to Harless and Olshausen, who find this more precise definition only in the following ἐν ἀγ. ἐῤῥιζ. κ. τεθεμ.

On κατοικεῖν in the spiritual sense, comp. Col_1:19; Col_2:9; Jam_4:5; 2Pe_3:13; Test. XII. Patr. pp. 652, 734; and the passages in Theile, ad Jac. p. 220. The conception of the temple, however, is not found here; for the temple would be the dwelling of God, and Christ the corner-stone, Eph_2:20 ff.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Eph 3:17 . κατοικῆσαι τὸν Χριστὸν διὰ τῆς πίστεως ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ὑμῶν : that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith . The presence of Christ, His stated presence ( κατοικεῖν as contrasted with παροικεῖν = sojourn, cf. Gen 37:1 ), the taking up of His abode in them ( cf. the use of κατοικεῖν in Mat 12:45 ; Luk 11:26 ; 2Pe 3:13 ; and also its application to Christ Himself in another relation in Col 1:19 ), is also embraced in the scope of Paul’s prayer. The indwelling expressed here by the comp. κατοικεῖν is also expressed by the simple οἰκεῖν (Rom 8:9 ; 1Co 3:16 ). Its seat is the καρδία the centre of feeling, thinking, willing ( cf. Delitzsch, Bib. Psych. , iv., 5). And the means or channel through which it takes possession of the heart is faith , the διὰ πίστεως indicating the receptivity which is the condition on our side. There remains, however, the question of the construction . The κατοικῆσαι , etc., may be taken as dependent on the δῷ and as forming a second boon contemplated in the gift prayed for, as if = “and that He may grant you also that Christ may dwell in your hearts” (Mey., Abb., etc.). Or it may be taken as dependent on the κραταιωθῆναι , etc., expressing the contemplated result of the gift of strength (inf. of consequence; cf. Act 5:3 ; Heb 6:10 ; Rev 5:5 ; Rev 16:9 , etc.), = “to the effect that Christ may dwell in your hearts”. The omission of the connecting καί is no insuperable objection to the former; for cases of asyndeton are sufficiently common. But the second view (so Ell., Alf., etc.) is on the whole to be preferred, as it deals better both with the grammatical connection and with the emphatic position of the κατοικῆσαι . The former view has the difficulty of taking two somewhat different grammatical constructions as parallels, and it fails to bring out as the latter does the advance in the thought. The indwelling of Christ is the higher boon which is in view as the end and effect of the strengthening . ἐν ἀγάπῃ ἐῤῥιζωμένοι καὶ τεθεμελιωμένοι : ye having been rooted and grounded in love . Nothing can legitimately be made of the anarthrous ἀγάπῃ , the article being often dropped before abstract nouns, and especially after a preposition (Win.-Moult., pp. 148, 149). As the ἀγάπῃ is also without any αὐτοῦ or other defining gen., it appears to have its most general sense here, not “the love of God ” or “the love of Christ ” in particular, but love , the Christian principle or grace which is “the bond of perfectness” (Col 3:14 ). In this love they are described (by two perf. parties.) as “having been rooted and grounded ”. If the terms ἐῤῥιζεμένοι , τεθεμελιωμένοι , were used in their proper etymological connotation, they might suggest much. The former might convey the idea of subjects deriving their life and growth from love; and the latter the idea of subjects built up on the basis of love as living stones in the Divine temple. But the terms are also used without any reference to their original, etymological sense ῥιζοῦν , e.g. , in Soph., Œd. C. , 1591, means simply to establish something firmly . So here the two words probably express the one simple idea of being securely settled and deeply founded . Thoroughly established in love, having it not as an uncertain feeling changing with every change of experience, but as the constant principle of their life this they must be if they are fully to apprehend the magnitude of Christ’s love. Here, again, the construction is a difficult question. Westcott and Hort attach ἐν ἀγάπῃ to the κατοικῆσαι clause and the ἐῤῥιζωμένοι καὶ τεθεμελιωμένοι to the ἵνα clause. But the ἐν καρδίαις ὑμῶν seems a proper and adequate conclusion and completion of the idea of the indwelling . Many (including Meyer, Winer, Buttm., AV, RV, etc.) connect the whole clause with the ἵνα , = “in order that, being rooted and grounded in love, ye may be able”. This gives an excellent sense, and examples of the transposition of part of a sentence from the natural place after the ἵνα to one before it are found elsewhere in the NT ( e.g. , Act 19:4 ; 1Co 9:15 ; 2Co 2:4 ; Gal 2:10 ; Col 4:16 ; 2Th 2:7 ; cf. Buttm., Gr. of N. T. Greek , p. 389). On the other hand, the relevancy of most, if not all, of these examples is not above suspicion ( cf. Ell. and Abb. in loc. ), and it does not appear that in the present passage there is any such emphasis on the ἐν ἀγάπῃ as can explain its peculiar position. Hence it is better on the whole to connect it with the preceding (as is done in one way or other by Chrys., Luth., Harl., Bleek, De Wette, Alf., Ell., Abb., etc.), and take it as another instance of the nom. absol. or participial anacolouthon ( cf. Win.-Moult., p. 715; Krüger, Sprachl. , § 56, 9, 4; Buttm., Gr. of N. T. Greek , p. 298; Blass, Gr. of N. T. Greek , p. 285). So we translate it “ye having been rooted and grounded in love in order that ye may be able,” etc. The rooting and grounding are expressed by the perf. part., as they indicate the state which must be realised in connection with the indwelling of Christ before the ability for comprehending the love of Christ can be acquired.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Eph_3:17

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, κατοικῆσαι τὸν Χριστὸν διὰ τῆς πίστεως ἐν ταῖς καρδίἀς ὑμῶν. Christ dwells in his people he dwells in their hearts; he dwells in them through faith. These are the truths contained in this passage.

As to the first, viz. the indwelling of Christ, it does not differ from what is expressed in the preceding verse, further than as indicating the source or nature of that spiritual strength of which that verse speaks. When Paul prayed that his readers might be strengthened in the inner man, he prayed that Christ might dwell in them. The omnipresent and infinite God is said to dwell wherever he specially and permanently manifests his presence. Thus he is said to dwell in heaven, Psa_123:1; to dwell among the children of Israel, Num_35:34; in Zion, Psa_9:11; with him that is of an humble and contrite spirit, Isa_57:11; and in his people, 2Co_6:16. Sometimes it is God who is said to dwell in the hearts of his people, sometimes the Spirit of God, sometimes, as in Rom_8:9, it is the Spirit of Christ; and sometimes, as Rom_8:10, and in the passage before us, it is Christ himself. These varying modes of expression find their solution in the doctrine of the Trinity. In virtue of the unity of the divine substance, he that had seen the Son, hath seen the Father also; he that hath the Son hath the Father; where the Spirit of God is, there God is; and where the Spirit of Christ is, there Christ is. The passage in Rom_8:9, Rom_8:10 is specially instructive. The apostle there says, The Spirit of God dwelleth in you. Now, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his; and if Christ be in you, etc. From this it is plain that Christs being in us, means that we have his Spirit; and to have his Spirit means that the Spirit of God dwells in us. When, therefore, the apostle speaks of Christ dwelling in our hearts, he refers to the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, for Christ dwells in his people by his Spirit. They thus become partakers of his life, so that it is Christ that liveth in them, Gal_2:20. This is the true and abiding source of spiritual strength and of all other manifestations of the divine life.

Christ is said to dwell in ἐν ταῖς καρδίἀς, the hearts of his people. The two common figurative senses of the word heart in Scripture, are, the feelings as distinguished from the understanding, and the whole soul, including the intellect and affections. It is in this latter sense the Scriptures speak of an understanding heart, 1Ki_3:9, 1Ki_3:12; Pro_8:5; and of the thoughts, devices and counsels of the heart, Jdg_5:15; Pro_19:21; Pro_20:5. According to the Bible religion is not a form of feeling to the exclusion of the intellect, nor a form of knowledge to the exclusion of the feelings. Christ dwells in the heart, in the comprehensive sense of the word. He is the source of spiritual life to the whole soul; of spiritual knowledge as well as of spiritual affections.

By faith, διὰ τῆς πίστεως, by means of faith. There are two essential conditions of this indwelling of Christ; a rational nature, and, so far as adults are concerned, faith. The former is necessarily presupposed in all communion with God. But it is not with every rational nature that God enters into fellowship. The indwelling of Christ includes more than the communion of spirit with spirit. It implies congeniality. This faith produces or involves; because it includes spiritual apprehension the perception of truth and excellence of the things of the Spirit; and because it works by love; it manifests itself in the exercise of complacency, desire and delight. The most beautiful object might be in the apartment of a blind man, and he not be sensible of its presence; or if by any means made aware of its nearness, he could have no delight in its beauty. Christ dwells in us by faith, because it is by faith we perceive his presence, his excellence, and his glory, and because it is by faith we appropriate and reciprocate the manifestations of his love. Faith is to this spiritual communion, what esteem and affection are to the fellowships of domestic life.

Charles Hodge — Commentary on Romans (1835), First Corinthians (1857), and Ephesians (1856) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

That--So that.

dwell--abidingly make His abode (Joh 14:23). Where the Spirit is there Christ is (Joh 14:16, Joh 14:18).

by faith--Greek, "through faith," which opens the door of the heart to Jesus (Joh 3:20). It is not enough that He be on the tongue, or flit through the brain: the heart is His proper seat [CALVIN]. "You being rooted and grounded in love" (compare Eph 3:19), is in the Greek connected with this clause, not with the clause, "that ye may be able to comprehend." "Rooted" is an image from a tree; "grounded" (Greek, "founder," "having your foundations resting on"), from a building (compare Notes,, see on Eph 2:20-21; Col 1:23; Col 2:7). Contrast Mat 13:6, Mat 13:21. "Love," the first-fruit of the Spirit, flowing from Christ's love realized in the soul, was to be the basis on which should rest their further comprehension of all the vastness of Christ's love.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 17. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith] In this as well as in many other passages, and particularly that in Eph 2:21, (where see the note,) the apostle compares the body or Church of true believers to a temple, which, like that of Solomon, is built up to be a habitation of God through the Spirit. Here, as Solomon did at the dedication of the temple at Jerusalem, 2Ch 6:1, c., Paul, having considered the Church at Ephesus completely formed, as to every external thing, prays that God may come down and dwell in it. And as there could be no indwelling of God but by Christ, and no indwelling of Christ but by faith, he prays that they may have such faith in Christ, as shall keep them in constant possession of his love and presence. God, at the beginning, formed man to be his temple, and while in a state of purity he inhabited this temple when the temple became defiled, God left it. In the order of his eternal mercy, Christ, the repairer of the breach, comes to purify the temple, that it may again become a fit habitation for the blessed God. This is what the apostle points out to the believing Ephesians, in praying that Christ κατοικησαι, might intensely and constantly dwell in their hearts by faith: for the man's heart, which is not God's house, must be a hold of every foul and unclean spirit; as Satan and his angels will endeavour to fill what God does not.

That ye, being rooted and grounded in love] Here is a double metaphor; one taken from agriculture, the other, from architecture. As trees, they are to be rooted in love-this is the soil in which their souls are to grow; into the infinite love of God their souls by faith are to strike their roots, and from this love derive all that nourishment which is essential for their full growth, till they have the mind in them that was in Jesus, or, as it is afterwards said, till they are filled with all the fulness of God. As a building, their foundation is to be laid in this love. God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, c. Here is the ground on which alone the soul, and all its hopes and expectations, can be safely founded. This is a foundation that cannot be shaken and it is from this alone that the doctrine of redemption flows to man, and from this alone has the soul its form and comeliness. IN this, as its proper soil, it grows. ON this, as its only foundation, it rests.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

17. That Christ may dwell. He explains what is meant by “the strength of the inner man.” As

“it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell,” (Colossians 1:19,)

so he who has Christ dwelling in him can want nothing. It is a mistake to imagine that the Spirit can be obtained without obtaining Christ; and it is equally foolish and absurd to dream that we can receive Christ without the Spirit. Both doctrines must be believed. We are partakers of the Holy Spirit, in proportion to the intercourse which we maintain with Christ; for the Spirit will be found nowhere but in Christ, on whom he is said, on that account, to have rested; for he himself says, by the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me.” (Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18.) But neither can Christ be separated from his Spirit; for then he would be said to be dead, and to have lost all his power.

Justly, therefore, does Paul affirm that the persons who are endowed by God with spiritual vigor are those in whom Christ dwells. He points to that part in which Christ peculiarly dwells, in your hearts, — to show that it is not enough if the knowledge of Christ dwell on the tongue or flutter in the brain.

May dwell through faith. The method by which so great a benefit is obtained is also expressed. What a remarkable commendation is here bestowed on faith, that, by means of it, the Son of God becomes our own, and “makes his abode with us!” (John 14:23.) By faith we not only acknowledge that Christ suffered and rose from the dead on our account, but, accepting the offers which he makes of himself, we possess and enjoy him as our Savior. This deserves our careful attention. Most people consider fellowship with Christ, and believing in Christ, to be the same thing; but the fellowship which we have with Christ is the consequence of faith. In a word, faith is not a distant view, but a warm embrace, of Christ, by which he dwells in us, and we are filled with the Divine Spirit.

That ye may be rooted and grounded in love. Among the fruits of Christ’s dwelling in us the apostle enumerates love and gratitude for the Divine grace and kindness exhibited to us in Christ. Hence it follows, that this is true and solid excellence; so that, whenever he treats of the perfection of the saints, he views it as consisting of these two parts. The firmness and constancy which our love ought to possess are pointed out by two metaphors. There are many persons not wholly destitute of love; but it is easily removed or shaken, because its roots are not deep. Paul desires that it should be rooted and grounded, — thoroughly fixed in our minds, so as to resemble a well-founded building or deeply-planted tree. The true meaning is, that our roots ought to be so deeply planted, and our foundation so firmly laid in love, that nothing will be able to shake us. It is idle to infer from these words, that love is the foundation and root of our salvation. Paul does not inquire here, as any one may perceive, on what our salvation is founded, but with what firmness and constancy we ought to continue in the exercise of love.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(17) That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.—What that indwelling power is he now indicates, so passing to another Person of the Holy Trinity. It is (see Col_1:27) “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The indwelling of Christ (as here the construction of the original plainly shows) is not a consequence of the gift of the Spirit; it is identical with it, for the office of the Holy Spirit is to implant and work out in us the likeness of Christ. So in Joh_14:16-20, in immediate connection with the promise of the Comforter, we read: “I will not leave you orphaned; I will come to you.” “Ye shall know that . . . ye are in me and I in you.” Hence the life in the Spirit is described as “To me to live is Christ” (Php_1:21); “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal_2:20). Faith is simply the condition of that indwelling of Christ (comp. Eph_2:8), the opening of the door to Him that He may enter in.

The prayer is here complete, all that follows being but consequent from it. In accordance with the universal law of revelation, all is from the Father, all is through the Son vouchsafing to tabernacle in our humanity, all is by the Spirit effecting that indwelling of Christ in each individual soul.

That ye, being rooted and grounded in love.—The phrase “ye, being,” &c., stands in the original before the word “that,” as a kind of link between the previous clause and this, which seems to describe the consequence of the indwelling of Christ—viz., first love, next comprehension, and finally growth into the fulness of God.

The expression “rooted and grounded” (i.e., founded) contains the same mixture of metaphor as in 1Co_3:9, of the tree and the building—a mixture so natural as to pass into common usage. (Comp. Col_2:7, “rooted and being built up in Him.”) The idea implied in “rooted” is of the striking down deeper and spreading wider into the soil; in “founded” of the firm basis on which ultimately we rest. “In love:” Love is not itself the root or foundation (for this is Jesus Christ Himself), but the condition under which growth takes place. Generally that growth is upward, as in 1Co_8:1 : “Knowledge puffeth up, but love buildeth up;” or, as in Eph_4:16, where the body is said “to build itself up in love.” Here that growth is downward, deeper and deeper into the communion with God in Christ, as “faith is made perfect (or, efficient) by love.” As in relation to man, so also to God, love is at once the recognition of an existing unity between spirit and spirit, and a means—probably the only means—of making that unity energetic and deepening it continually. Hence love is the first consequence of the indwelling of Christ in the soul; and by it the soul becomes rooted and grounded in the unity, given by that indwelling, with man and God.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

May be able to comprehend with all saints,.... This is the end of their being rooted and grounded in love, that they, together with the rest of the saints interested in it, might have a larger and more comprehensive view of

what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; not of God himself, who is incomprehensible by finite minds, and is not to be found out to perfection; see Job 11:7 but either of the great mystery of salvation, particularly the mystery of the calling of the Gentiles mentioned in the beginning of the chapter; or of the spiritual building, the church, the dimensions of which are given, Rev 21:15 or rather of the love of God, which in its length reaches from one eternity to another; in its breadth to all the elect, in all ages, places, and nations; and in its depth to saints in the lowest state of life; and in its height to bring them to an exalted state in glory.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,

Ver. 17. That Christ may dwell] As the sun dwells in the house by his beams. Faith fetcheth Christ into the heart, as into his habitation; and if he dwell there, he is bound to all reparations.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith - see the notes, Eph 2:22. Expressions like this often occur in the Scriptures, where God is said to dwell in us, and we are said to be the temples of the Holy Spirit; see the Joh 14:23, note; 1Co 6:19, note.

That ye being rooted - Firmly established - as a tree is whose roots strike deep, and extend afar. The meaning is, that his love should be as firm in our hearts, as a tree is in the soil, whose roots strike deep into the earth.

And grounded - θεθεμελιωμένοι tethemeliōmenoi - “founded” - as a building is on a foundation. The word is taken from architecture, where a firm foundation is laid, and the meaning is, that he wished them to be as firm in the love of Christ, as a building is that rests on a solid basis.

In love - In love to the Redeemer - perhaps also in love to each other - and to all. Love was the great principle of the true religion, and the apostle wished that they might be fully settled in that.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Christ dwelleth in us by his gifts, and we are just by those his gifts remaining in us; and not by Christ’s proper justice only, as some modern innovators will have it. (Bristow) --- And this not by faith only, but by faith rooted and founded in charity, which accomplishes all virtues. (Bristow)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

That Christ; on whom this Spirit (who must strengthen you, as being a Spirit of might, Isa 11:2) resteth, Isa 61:1

May dwell in your hearts; may intimately and continually possess and fill, not your heads only with his doctrine, but your affections with his Spirit: see Joh 14:23.

By faith; whereby ye not only believe Cllrist’s truth, but receive and apprehend himself, and which is the means by which ye have union and communion with him.

That ye, being rooted and grounded in love: either he means:

1. Our love to God and our neighbour; and then he prays that their love might not be slight and superficial, but strong and firm. Or:

2. God’s love to us; and then he prays that the Ephesians, who had already tasted God’s love to them in Christ, might be more fully strengthened in the persuasion of that love.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

17. Christ… in your hearts—The powerful thought is, that Christ’s own spirit or temper may, by faith, or self-surrender on our part, supplant our own natural temper in our hearts, so that we may approximately live and speak as Christ would in our place.

That—In order that. Thus far he has prayed for the conditions that shall produce what follow.

Rooted and grounded—As Wordsworth finely says: “Rooted like a plant, and therefore always alive and growing; and grounded as a building, and therefore firmly established—in love.” The bishop’s words are abridged and improved from Adam Clarke.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Dwell - That is, constantly and sensibly abide.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Our apostle here proceeds with affectionate ardour to pray for further spiritual blessings on the behalf of his beloved Ephesians:

1. He prays that Christ may dwell in their hearts by his most holy faith. The phrase of dwelling in us, imports a very close and intimate union between Christ and believers; he dwells in them subjectively and effectively, by his gracious influences, by his powerful assistances, by his quickening impressions. The Holy Spirit is the bond of union on Christ’s part, and faith on our part.

2. He prays that they may be rooted and grounded in love; that is, that they might be so deeply possessed with the sense of God’s love, that they might be the very habit of their souls, and rooted nature in them.

3. He prays that the Ephesians may comprehend what is the breadth, length, depth, and height, of the love of God, and the mysteries of the gospel; intimating to us, that we are not to content ourselves with a superficial view of God’s free love in Christ, but to make an accurate inspection into all the dimensions of it: to view it in its breadth, and extending to all ages, Jewish and Christian; in its length, as reaching from eternity to eternity; in its depth, as it stoops down to succour and relieve the vilest and the greatest, if penitent sinners; in its height, whereby it reaches up to heaven, and entitles us to the joy and felicity of the saints above.

Verily, the love of God in Christ to a lost world, is so vast and boundless, so rich and matchless, exceeding not only our comprehension, but conceptions also, that not only the natural man cannot understand it, but the renewed man also is unable to fathom it, but must be daily endeavouring to take dimensions of it; for the love of Christ surpassingly transcends the knowledge of the most illuminated believer; it surpasses natural knowledge, apostolical knowledge, yea, angelical knowledge. That ye may be able to comprehend, with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height.

4. He prays that they may know the superlative love of Christ to a lost world is a transcendent love; that the knowledge of it may be attained in some measure, that it is our duty to seek after it, and search into it; but, after all, we can never fully comprehend it. What created understanding can know what is unknowable, or comprehend what is incomprehensible?

Learn, There are such dimensions and degrees in the love of Christ to sinners, which, at least in this present and imperfect state, do surpass all comprehension and conception; also that love whereby he took our nature upon him, that love whereby he took our sins upon him, is so stupendous and amazing, that the holy angels awfully admire it, but even their enlarged capacities cannot fully comprehend it.

5. He prays that they might be filled with all the fulness of God; that is, with such measures of grace, knowledge, faith, holiness, and love, which God hath appointed believers unto, and they are capable of, in this life.

Note here, 1. That there is a fulness in God, which we can neither be filled with, nor may we strive to be filled with; God is essentially full, originally full, independently full, inexhaustibly full, of all holiness and grace. Now this fullness of his is undiminishable, and consequently incommunicable.

Note, 2. That there is a fulness of God which we may, and therefore ought, to pray and endeavour to be filled with; namely, to be filled with the knowledge of God, to be filled with the grace and Spirit of God, to be filled with the wisdom of God, that we may know God more, serve him better, glorify him on earth, and be glorified with him in heaven. In a word, we may pray for, and strive to be filled with, such a measure of the fulness of God and his grace, as God shall see fit to give, and as our capacities are or may be prepared to receive; God is not straitened towards us, let us not be straitened in ourselves: Open thy mouth wide, says God, and I will fill it. Blessed be God for a present fulness of sufficiency, and for the hopes of a future fulness to satiety.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

ARGUMENT 13

HAVING BEEN ROOTED AND GROUNDED IN DIVINE LOVE

17,18. Here we have a double metaphor, involving the two most common scenes of life; i.e., trees and houses. The frugiculturist supplies his nurseries with seedlings, whose fruit is utterly worthless. In due time he cuts off the seedling, and grafts into the trunk the valuable fruit-bearing

twig. After a time of development, he spades up the tree out of the nursery, trims it excessively, both branch and root, and plants it out in his orchard forty feet from its nearest comrade. In the nursery it only had lateral roots; now the tap root penetrates down into the deep interior of the earth, ‘winds around the great rocks, and holds the tree secure amid the raging storms, which only bend it hither and thither, circulating the sap and keeping it from getting bark-bound, bringing in contact with its leaves an abundance of carbonic acid, so essential to its rapid growth and healthy development, till soon it bends beneath its load of delicious fruits as the years go by. We are born of Adam’s race mere seedlings, bearing only the bitter crab-apples of depravity. The Holy Ghost cuts us down, and grafts in the Divine nature in regeneration, thus giving us a new heart. If we spend our lives crowded up in a nursery, we will never do any good, but all prove failures. The glorious work of entire sanctification must thoroughly trim us root and branch, take us out of the old nursery, and transplant us in the open field, where we will have ample room to grow and bear fruit forever. When I responded to the call of Brother N.H. Harriman, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Tacoma, Washington, and preached for him eighteen days amid the wonderful sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost; when I bade them adieu, he said “Brothers and sisters, we had a house before this brother came, but the foundation was indifferent and quite superficial; during the ministry of this brother we have gone down deep to the bedrock, and laid a great solid foundation on the eternal strata, which neither men nor devils will ever be able to shake. On this foundation, by the grace of God, we will build a superstructure which shall tower forever, the admiration of angels unfallen and the “spirits of just men made perfect.” In the language of the Holy Ghost, deep and high are synonymous and interchangeable. When Charlie Tillman, he sweet singer of the Sunny South, got sanctified, he shouted aloud, “I have sunk to the top of Pisgab.”

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17. That Christ may dwell. This is the second petition. That they may so lay hold of Christ by faith that he will be to them a present Savior, in their hearts. That ye, being rooted and grounded in love. The third petition relates to the love of Christ.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

17. κατοικῆσαι κ.τ.λ. The result of the spiritual strengthening is to enable men to satisfy the conditions for the indwelling of the Christ in personal presence and power in the centre of their being. See on ἐν Χριστῷ (p. lxii ff.). κατοικῆσαι takes up the idea of the κατοικητήριον τοῦ θεοῦ (Β χριστοῦ) from Eph 2:22. The indwelling of God in the Church is ‘moral not mechanical.’ The whole Body is His temple. But He enters no heart that does not open to Him from within; cf. Rev 3:20. The conditions on which He will enter are laid down in Joh 14:23. These conditions correspond closely to the διά τῆς πίστεως ἐν ἀγάπῃ which St Paul specifies here. For ‘faith’ in St Paul is quickened by love (Gal 5:6; Gal 2:20) and issues in obedience. The indwelling here is represented as consequent on the strengthening, for the surrender of faith on our part, while essentially our own act, is yet beyond our power without the Divine assistance. Cf. Eph 2:8.

ἐν ἀγάπῃ. Cf. on Eph 1:4. Love is according to Joh 14:23 the all-embracing condition of the Divine indwelling. The word that the disciple must keep is the new commandment of love to the brethren, and love for Him who gave the commandment is the spring of obedience to it. So here our faith in Him who loved us, issuing in love to our brethren, creates as it were an atmosphere of love, which at once emanates from Him and binds us to Him in a mutual bond.

Cf. on the whole passage the letter to D. J. Vaughan in the Life and Letters of F. D. Maurice (II. p. 349).

ἑρριζωμένοι κ.τ.λ. Cf. Col 2:7. For the anacoluthon, cf. (with Robinson) Eph 4:2; Col 2:2; Col 3:16; 2Co 9:11. The use of the nominative in Apoc. seems to be an exaggeration of this habit. It would be possible on the analogy of 2Co 2:4; 2Th 2:7 &c. to regard the ἵνα as belated. It makes no substantial difference to the sense, as ἐρρ. καὶ τεθ. simply sum up the effect of the strengthening and the indwelling described in Eph 3:16-17. ἐρριζωμένοι, the thought of being ‘rooted’ in Christ has an O.T. foundation in Isa 11:10, quoted by St Paul in Rom 15:12 (cf. Rev 5:5; Rev 22:16). St Paul uses the figure to illustrate the ‘grafting in’ of the Gentiles (Rom 11:16 ff.). It is used by our Lord in the similitude of the Vine (John 15) as an illustration of mutual indwelling.

καὶ τεθεμελιωμένοι. Cf. Eph 2:20. Here as in 1Pe 2:4 the thought is of a personal relationship between each stone in the building and the Foundation.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17. κατοικῆσαι τὸν Χριστὸν διὰ τῆς πίστεως ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ὑμῶν. “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” κατοικῆσαι is, by many expositors, taken as the end or result of κραταιωθῆναι on account of, 1st, the asyndeton; 2nd, the emphatic position of the verb; and 3rd, the difference in the construction of the two clauses, which otherwise must be taken as co-ordinate. But although the use of the infinitive of end or result is often very lax, none of the instances cited in the grammars are parallel to this. Setting aside the cases in which the principal verb is one which means “to will, order,” etc., or which otherwise involves the notion of purpose, in those which remain the subject of the infinitive is the same as that of the verb on which it depends. The emphatic position of κατοικῆσαι seems sufficiently accounted for by the importance of the idea it expresses, and the rhetorical advantage of giving it a position parallel to that of κραταιωθῆναι. The asyndeton need cause no difficulty, considering the structure of the whole sentence. κατοικ. is not something added to κραται., but is a further definition of it. κατοικεῖν is found in N.T. only here and Col 1:19, Col 2:9 (but ἐγκατοικεῖν, 2Pe 2:8). It is very frequent in Sept. (as in classical authors also), and is opposed to παροικεῖν as the permanent to the transitory; cf. Gen 37:1, κατῴκει Ἰακὼβ ἐν τῇ γῇ οὗ παρῴκησεν ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ; and Philo, de Sacrif. Ab. et Cain, § 10, ὁ γὰρ τοῖς ἐγκυκλίοις μόνοις ἐπανέχων παροικεῖ σοφίᾳ, οὗ κατοικεῖ (Thayer). It is hardly probable that there is any allusion to the figure in 2:21, 22, for the indwelling here spoken of is not in the Church, but in the individual hearts. “How does Christ dwell in the hearts?” says Chrysostom. Listen to Christ Himself saying, “I and the Father will come and make our abode with him.” “In your hearts,” “ut sciamus non satis esse si in linguâ versetur aut in cerebro volitet,” Calvin.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

May dwell [κατοικησαι] . Settle down and abide. Take up His permanent abode, so that ye may be a habitation [κατοικητηριον] of God. See on ch. Eph 2:22. The connection is with the preceding clause : " to be strengthened, etc., so that Christ may dwell, the latter words having at once a climactic and an explanatory force, and adding the idea of permanency to that of strengthening.

By faith [δια της πιστεως] . Through your (the article) faith, as the medium of appropriating Christ. Faith opens the door and receives Him who knocks. Rev 3:20.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.