that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that you may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person,
Parallel Translations
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that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that you may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person,
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that he wolde graunt you acordynge to the ryches of his glory that ye maye be strenghted with myght by his sprete in the inner man
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That he might graunt you according to the riches of his glorie, that ye may be strengthened by his Spirit in the inner man,
Cross-references (26)
Passages linked to Ephesians 3:16 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Colossians 1:11 strengthened with all power, according to the might of his glory, for all endurance and perseverance with joy,
- Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.
- Isaiah 40:29-31 He gives power to the weak. He increases the strength of him who has no might. Even the youths faint and get weary, and the young men utterly fall; but those who wait for Yahweh will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run, and not be weary. They will walk, and not faint.
- Isaiah 41:10 Don’t you be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. Yes, I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness.
- Zechariah 10:12 I will strengthen them in Yahweh; and they will walk up and down in his name,” says Yahweh.
- 2 Timothy 4:17 But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, that through me the message might be fully proclaimed, and that all the Gentiles might hear. So I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.
- 2 Corinthians 4:16 Therefore we don’t faint, but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day.
- Ephesians 6:10 Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might.
- 2 Corinthians 12:9 He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Most gladly therefore I will rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest on me.
- Psalms 28:8 Yahweh is their strength. He is a stronghold of salvation to his anointed.
- Philippians 4:19 My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
- Romans 7:22 For I delight in God’s law after the inward man,
- 1 Corinthians 16:13 Watch! Stand firm in the faith! Be courageous! Be strong!
- Psalms 138:3 In the day that I called, you answered me. You encouraged me with strength in my soul.
- Romans 9:23 and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory,
- Matthew 6:13 Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.’
- Ephesians 1:18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
- Ephesians 3:8 To me, the very least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,
- Colossians 1:27 to whom God was pleased to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
- Ephesians 1:7 in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,
- Jeremiah 31:33 “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says Yahweh: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and I will write it in their heart. I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
- Hebrews 11:34 quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, grew mighty in war, and caused foreign armies to flee.
- 1 Peter 3:4 but in the hidden person of the heart, in the incorruptible adornment of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.
- Romans 2:29 but he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit not in the letter; whose praise is not from men, but from God.
- Ephesians 2:7 that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus;
- Job 23:6 Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No, but he would listen to me.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (16 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 16. That he would give to you. Paul wishes…
16. That he would give to you. Paul wishes that the Ephesians should be strengthened; and yet he had already bestowed on their piety no mean commendation. But believers have never advanced so far as not to need farther growth. The highest perfection of the godly in this life is an earnest desire to make progress. This strengthening, he tells us, is the work of the Spirit; so that it does not proceed from man’s own ability. The increase, as well as the commencement, of everything good in us, comes from the Holy Spirit. That it is the gift of Divine grace, is evident from the expression used, that he would give to you This the Papists utterly deny. They maintain that the second grace is bestowed upon us, according as we have individually deserved it, by making a proper use of the first grace. But let us unite with Paul in acknowledging that it is the “gift” of the grace of God, not only that we have begun to run well, but that we advance; not only that we have been born again, but that we grow from day to day.
According to the riches of his glory. These words are intended to express still more strongly the doctrine of Divine grace. They may be explained in two ways: either, according to his glorious riches, making the genitive, agreeably to the Hebrew idiom, supply the place of an adjective, — or, according to his rich and abundant glory. The word glory will thus be put for mercy, in accordance with an expression which he had formerly used, “to the praise of the glory of his grace.” (Ephesians 1:6) I prefer the latter view.
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In the inner man. By the inner man, Paul means the soul, and whatever relates to the spiritual life of the soul; as the outward man denotes the body, with everything that belongs to it, — health, honors, riches, vigor, beauty, and everything of that nature. “Though our outward man perish, yet our inward man is renewed day by day;” that is, if in worldly matters we decay, our spiritual life becomes more and more vigorous. (2 Corinthians 4:16) The prayer of Paul, that the saints may be strengthened, does not mean that they may be eminent and flourishing in the world, but that, with respect to the kingdom of God, their minds may be made strong by Divine power.
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.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain See Rom. 7:22.
See Rom. 7:22.
According to the greatness of his mercy.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 16 That he would grant you, according to the…
16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;
Ver. 16. According to the riches of his glory] That is, of his grace; so 2Co 3:18. {See Trapp on "2Co 3:18"}
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.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain The riches of his glory; i.e. the abundance of…
The riches of his glory; i.e. the abundance of his power: see Rom 6:4.
To be strengthened with might; further degrees of spiritual strength, proceeding from God’s power as the fountain.
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By his Spirit; as the immediate worker of all inherent grace.
In the inner man; the reasonable powers of the soul as renewed by grace, the same as heart in the next verse, and spirit, 1Th 5:23; see 2Co 4:16.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith,....…
That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith,.... This is another petition put up by the apostle for the Ephesians, which is for the inhabitation of Christ in them: the inhabitant Christ is he who dwells in the highest heavens, who dwells in the Father, and the Father in him, in whom all fulness dwells, the fulness of the Godhead, and the fulness of grace; so that those in whose hearts he dwells cannot want any good thing, must be in the greatest safety, and enjoy the greatest comfort and pleasure; and this inhabitation of Christ prayed for is not to be understood in such sense, as he dwells everywhere, being the omnipresent God; or as he dwells in the human nature; nor of his dwelling merely by his Spirit, but of a personal indwelling of his; and which is an instance of his special grace: he dwells in his people, as a king in his palace, to rule and protect them, and as a master in his family to provide for them, and as their life to quicken them; it is in consequence of their union to him, and is expressive of their communion with him, and is perpetual; where he once takes up his residence, he never totally and finally departs: the place where he dwells is not their heads, nor their tongues, but their hearts; and this is where no good thing dwells but himself and his grace; and where sin dwells, and where he is often slighted, opposed, and rebelled against: the means by which he dwells is faith; which is not the bond of union to Christ, nor the cause of his being and dwelling in the hearts of his people; but is the instrument or means by which they receive him, and retain him, and by which they have communion with him:
that ye being rooted and grounded in love; either in love to God, and one another; for faith and love go together; and love is sometimes weak, and needs establishing; and what serves to root and ground persons in it, are the discoveries of God's love, views of Christ's loveliness, the consideration of blessings received, and the communion they have with God, and Christ, and one another, and a larger insight into the doctrines of the Gospel: or rather in the love of God to them; which is the root and foundation of salvation; this is in itself immovable and immutable; but saints have not always the manifestations of it, and sometimes call it in question, and have need to be rooted and grounded in it; which is to have a lively sense of it, and to be persuaded of interest in it, and that nothing shall be able to separate from it.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain The riches of his glory - The immense fulness…
The riches of his glory - The immense fulness of his glorious wisdom, power, and mercy. The inner man - The soul.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 16. That he would grant you] This prayer…
Verse 16. That he would grant you] This prayer of the apostle is one of the most grand and sublime in the whole oracles of God. The riches of the grace of the Gospel, and the extent to which the soul of man may be saved here below, are most emphatically pointed out here. Every word seems to have come immediately from heaven; labouring to convey ideas of infinite importance to mankind. No paraphrase can do it justice, and few commentators seem to have entered into its spirit; perhaps deterred by its unparalleled sublimity. I shall only attempt a few observations upon the terms, to show their force and meaning; and leave all the rest to that Spirit by which these most important words were dictated. In the mean time referring the reader to the discourse lately published on this prayer of the apostle, entitled, The Family of God and its Privileges.
That he would grant you-You can expect nothing from him but as a free gift through Christ Jesus; let this be a ruling sentiment of your hearts when you pray to God.
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According to the riches of his glory] According to the measure of his own eternal fulness; God's infinite mercy and goodness being the measure according to which we are to be saved. In giving alms it is a maxim that every one should act according to his ability. It would be a disgrace to a king or a noble-man to give no more than a tradesman or a peasant. God acts up to the dignity of his infinite perfections; he gives according to the riches of his glory.
To be strengthened with might] Ye have many enemies, cunning and strong; many trials, too great for your natural strength; many temptations, which no human power is able successfully to resist; many duties to perform, which cannot be accomplished by the strength of man; therefore you need Divine strength; ye must have might; and ye must be strengthened every where, and every way fortified by that might; mightily and most effectually strengthened.
By his Spirit] By the sovereign energy of the Holy Ghost. This fountain of spiritual energy can alone supply the spiritual strength which is necessary for this spiritual work and conflict.
In the inner man] In the soul. Every man is a compound being; he has a body and a soul. The outward man is that alone which is seen and considered by men; the inward man is that which stands particularly in reference to God and eternity. The outward man is strengthened by earthly food, c. the inward man, by spiritual and heavenly influences. Knowledge, love, peace, and holiness, are the food of the inward man; or rather Jesus Christ, that bread of life which came down from heaven: he that eateth this bread shall live and be strengthened by it. The soul must be as truly fed and nourished by Divine food as the body by natural food.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain According to the riches of his glory - According…
According to the riches of his glory - According to the glorious abundance of his mercy; see Phi 4:19. Out of those stores of rich grace which can never be exhausted. The word “riches,” so often used by Paul, denotes “abundance,” and the idea here is, that his grace was inexhaustible and ample for all their needs.
To be strengthened with might - To be powerfully strengthened. That is, to give you abundant strength to bear trials; to perform your duties; to glorify his name.
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In the inner man - In the heart, the mind, the soul; see the notes on Rom 7:22. The “body” needs to be strengthened every day. In like manner the soul needs constant supplies of grace. Piety needs to be constantly invigorated, or it withers and decays. Every Christian needs grace given each day to enable him to bear trials, to resist temptation, to discharge his duty, to live a life of faith.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain according to--that is in abundance consonant to the riches…
according to--that is in abundance consonant to the riches of His glory; not "according to" the narrowness of our hearts. Col 1:11, "Strengthened with all might according to His glorious power."
by--Greek, "through"; "by means of His Spirit."
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in--The Greek implies, "infused into."
the inner man-- (Eph 4:22, Eph 4:24; Pe1 3:4); "the hidden man of the heart." Not predicated of unbelievers, whose inward and outward man alike are carnal. But in believers, the "inner (new) man," their true self, stands in contrast to their old man, which is attached to them as a body of death daily being mortified, but not their true self.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 16. Riches of his glory—An affluence too abounding for…
16. Riches of his glory—An affluence too abounding for any one race alone. Strengthened with might—For the immense attainments of Eph_3:18-19. In—Rather, into; implying the inpouring of the might of the divine Father. This favours Meyer’s thought, that Paul’s prayer for their might is antithetic to their faintness, in Eph_3:13. Their faintness did, indeed, (as Eadie objects,) take occasion from the mere “personal wrongs” of St. Paul; nevertheless it was a spiritual weakness unmanning their whole Christian might. He might well pray, therefore, for the whole wonderful energizing expressed in the following verses; for spiritual power is in sum total what he asks.
Inner man—The spirit, in antithesis to the body, the outer man. And also, perhaps, the spirit, as the ethical Ego, in which all spiritual operations are centered, in distinction from the anima, or soul, in which the animal and secular intellectualities reside. So Rom_7:22 : “I delight in the law of God after the inward man.” Yet the Holy Spirit in the inner man sheds his purifying power through body and soul as well as spirit. Note on Mat_5:8, and 1Th_5:23.
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The phrase inner man is found in a similar sense in Plato; but there is no reason for supposing it borrowed by Paul directly from Plato. It was probably current among thinkers in Paul’s day, as such terms become in periods when men deeply reflect.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 16. according to the riches of his glory] I.…
16. according to the riches of his glory] I. e., as He can do Who is Lord of the resources of an Eternal Nature and Heavenly Kingdom. (See on Eph_1:18 for the phrase “riches of glory” in another reference.) The glory of God is, in brief, Himself, as the Infinite and Holy One, with all results, for Himself and His creatures, of His being such.
to be strengthened] The Gr. verb is elsewhere used with ideas of spiritual firmness and vigour (Luk_1:80; Luk_2:40; 1Co_16:13). So it is here. The saints are to be so strengthened as not to fear things of which nature is afraid; even the felt indwelling of the Holy One, and His absolute dominion in the inmost heart.
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with might] The power of God.
by his Spirit] The Holy Ghost; everywhere present in the doctrine of this Epistle. He is so to deal with “the inner man” as that the presence of Christ shall be permanent in the heart. Cp. Rom_8:9-10, where observe the transition from, “the Spirit of God dwelleth in you”, to, “Christ is in you.” And see, too, the Lord’s words, Joh_14:16; Joh_14:18; Joh_14:21; Joh_14:23; Joh_16:7; Joh_17:11. There we find that while He is “no more in the world,” and it is “expedient that He go away,” yet “the Spirit of Truth” shall not only come, but so come that the disciples shall not be “left orphans”; their Lord shall “come to them”; His Father and He will “make Their abode” with each faithful believer. We thus get fragments of a Divine comment on the glorious passage now before us; to the effect that this Presence, this permanent Indwelling, of the Saviour, is essentially a Presence in and by the Spirit, mediated by the Spirit; not physical, or quasi-physical, or under any mode other than, and different from, a Presence through the Spirit’s agency upon the “inner man.” Where the Spirit “permanently abides,” there, and therefore, does the Saviour so abide; with just this difference, or condition, that we are to think, in the passage before us, of the indwelling Spirit as directing His agency expressly and specially in the direction of making the Saviour’s Presence a permanent reality to the “heart.”
Compare further the Seven Epistles of the Revelation, where the voice of the glorified Saviour is identified, in every instance, with that of the Spirit.
in the inner man] Lit., “into the inner man”; as if to say, “deep in it”; “penetrating far into it.”—“The inner man”:—see for the same phrase, Rom_7:22; 2Co_4:16. Here it means, practically, the regenerate human spirit. In itself, the phrase may mean no more than the invisible as against the material in man; but the three N. T. passages thus before us indicate its actual reference, in St Paul’s vocabulary, to the regenerate self.
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.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (16) To be strengthened with might by his Spirit…
(16) To be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.—From the Father, as the source of all life and being, St. Paul passes on to the Spirit, “proceeding from the Father,” as the giver of life to men. His prayer here, as in Eph_1:17, is for the gift of the Spirit, but under some difference of aspect. There the prayer is for illumination, here for strength to grasp the mystery, to be rooted in love, and be filled up to the fulness of God. Accordingly, there the inner man is represented only by the “eyes of the heart;” here (as in Rom_7:22; 2Co_4:16) we hear of the “inner man” in his entirety, including all faculties—intellectual, emotional, moral—which make up his spiritual nature. And St. Paul emphasises this prayer very strikingly by asking that the gift may be “according to the riches of His glory,” unlimited as the illimitable glory of the Divine Nature itself. Moreover, a greater closeness of communion is clearly indicated here. For light is a gift from without; strength comes from an indwelling power, making itself perfect in weakness, and continually growing from grace to grace.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain That he would grant you, according to the riches…
That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory. The standard or measure of the Divine giving is brought into view.
of his glory" is a more emphatic expression than "glorious riches," though substantially the same in meaning. God"s standard of giving is liberal, bountiful, overflowing. An image of the riches of his glory is seen in the starry heavens, which proclaim at once the vast riches and surpassing glory of God. Or in the beautiful appearance of an autumn sunset, where the whole sky is flecked with clouds brightened into a sea of glory. In prayer, it is both useful for ourselves and glorifying to God to recognize his bountifulness to remember that he gives us a King. (2Sa_24:23) To be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man. The inner man is the seat of influence, but with us it is the scat of spiritual feebleness. Most men may contrive to order their outward conduct suitably; but who has control of the inner man? Faith, trust, humility, love, patience, and the like graces which belong to the inner man, are what we are weakest in, and what we have least power to make strong. In this very region it is sought that the Ephesians might be strengthened with might by the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit is available for this very purpose for all that ask him.
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A prayer for spiritual strength.
This beautiful supplication suggests several interesting points.
I IT IS A PRAYER FOR THE SAINTS. It is not for their conversion, but that they might have life still more abundantly. The apostle"s desire was to make men eminent Christians, to quicken them in the heavenly race, to promote in them a growth in grace and knowledge which would contribute to their spiritual robustness.
II THE BLESSING SOUGHT IS REGARDED AS A FREE GIFT, "That he would grant you... to be strengthened." All true prayer proceeds upon the supposition that we can expect nothing from God but as a free gift through Jesus Christ. There must be a sense of want along with a spirit of entire dependence on the Lord, so that the believer may realize the sweetness of the promise, "My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus". (Php_4:19)
III THE BLESSING IS SPIRITUAL STRENGTH. "Strengthened with might in the inner man." It is not a prayer for physical strength, which is a matter of slight moment in God"s sight, though it is often made the subject of foolish boasting among men; nor for intellectual strength, which is a much more important factor in human life; but for strength in the inner man." This is not to be confounded with "the new man." It is rather "the hidden man of the heart"; (1Pe_3:4) the man "created after (Eph_4:24) in righteousness and holiness; the interior principle of spiritual life; the personification of out" intellectual and spiritual life, with its impulses, its feelings, its struggles. This is the sphere, the direction, the destination, of the strength prayed for. It is a prayer that God would make us eminent in grace and goodness, that our souls may prosper and. be in health like our bodies, that we may be able to grapple with all our spiritual enemies, to resist temptation, to endure afflictions, to perform the duties of our Christian calling. If we have strength, we shall be able to run in the way of God"s commandments. (Isa_40:31) Our physical strength is renewed from day to day by food and rest. So is our spiritual strength daily renewed by the Bread of life; and thus the apostle could say of himself, "I can do all things through Christ; which strengtheneth me.
IV THE SOURCE OF THIS STRENGTH IS THE SPIRIT OF GOD. "By the Spirit." Here is the Fountain of spiritual energy. The Spirit strengthens the believer by leading him to the fullness of grace that is in Christ, by shedding abroad the love of God in his heart, by applying the promises of the gospel, by making the Scriptures sources of that "joy of the Lord which is our strength," and thus causing us to go from strength to strength till at last we stand before God in Zion. It is easy to see, indeed, that the Fountain of strength is in the Spirit; for all the nine graces of the Spirit love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance (Gal_5:22) are so many factors of this inward power. They promote the freedom and efficiency of life.
V THE MEASURE OF THIS STRENGTH. "According to the riches of his glory." The apostle asks it in no limited measures; he asks it in the measure of the riches of that glory which is seen in his blended and harmonious attributes. God will act up to the dignity of his infinite perfections. "Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it, saith the Lord;" "Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full." There is an inexhaustible source of mercy upon which we may draw at pleasure in the supreme exigencies of our life.
VI CONSIDER THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BLESSING ASKED FOR. There is happiness in strength, there is misery in weakness; there is efficiency in strength, there is futility in weakness.
1. Our usefulness depends on large supplies of spiritual strength. If we are weak, what good can we do in the world? "Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing.
2. We glorify God by this fuller strength. It is not enough to have grace enough to carry us to heaven; we must abound in the fruits of righteousness to the praise and glory of God, Let us, then, pray earnestly that we may become strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might," and that our inward man may be renewed day by day, even though our outward man show signs of weakness and decay. T.C.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain That He would grant you, according to the riches…
Eph_3:16
That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.
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The measure of Gods power
The man of the world is full of what he can do; the Christian of what he cannot do. Here, we have the inward power for which we may ask to supply our deficiency.
I. The measure of this power.
1. Measured by Himself. His perfection, His excellence. Man measures by his imperfection and poverty.
2. Measured by the extent of Himself. Man measures by his own ideas of his own need. God, who forgives according to the riches of His grace, makes known upon the forgiven the riches of His glory.
II. The nature of the supply, culminating in the indwelling of Christ.
1. The character of the indwelling (Col_2:7).
(1) Christ, the essence of love, dwelling in us, and so filling our hearts with true love.
(2) Faith working by love.
2. The effects of the indwelling. Able to comprehend or grasp (see Php_3:12-13)--
(1) Breadth of promise and blessing. Length--reaching to the end. Depth--going down to the lowest. Height--raising up to heavenly places.
(2) To know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. Known only by those taught by the Spirit. Known only by those in whom it dwells.
(3) Filled with all the fulness of God. God gives Himself to us all, according to our size. Here meet mans measure and Gods. (J. H. Rogers, M. A.)
Spiritual strength
There are five significant terms here--keys by which we may partly unlock this divine casket, so that its precious contents, the riches of the Fathers glory, may be set free and shed abroad.
I. Faith. You are to be strengthened with might. The seat of the strength imparted is the inner man; it is the strength, not of outward propping, but of inward peace and power. The agency by which it is imparted is that of the Holy Spirit; for He alone has access directly and immediately into the inner man; He alone, the Spirit of God, can deal effectually with spirits of men. The essence of it is Christ dwelling in your hearts; Christ living in you; Christ in you, the Lord your righteousness, the Lord your strength; Christ in you, the hope of glory. And the means or instrument of your receiving it is your simple hearts faith.
II. To faith succeeds love. You are to be rooted and grounded in love. These images or figures suggest the ideas of a grove and a building. You are to be rooted as the trees that constitute a grove, and grounded as the stones and pillars of a building. Love is the soil, rich, deep, and generous, and withal, homogeneous all through, in which all the trees are rooted. It is also the soft and tender lime or mortar, the close-drawing and close-fixing cement, in which, through successive layers, the stones are deposited or imbedded.
III. Faith and love lead on to comprehension, or taking in; a comprehensive survey of something very vast; and vast in all directions. I find myself mow, first strengthened as a believer, so as to be fit for standing alone; but at the same time, secondly, having all over me, and all through me, love; love being my soil and cement. I find myself thus introduced into a grand hall; a glorious amphitheatre, a temple of immeasurable dimensions; thronged and crowded with all the saints, all the holy ones, angels and men, into whose society I am strangely and of grace admitted. In company with them, and in full sympathy with them, I look behind, before, below, above; and see nought but one well-nigh boundless room and home for all the elect, all the saved. I comprehend its breadth and length and depth and height.
IV. Through this process of faith, love, and comprehension, we reach a marvellous knowledge; the knowledge of the unknowable--to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.
V. There remains one other great and final consummation which the apostles prayer would fain have you to reach: that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)
The Spirits gift of strength
I. The Christians need of strength.
1. The region where strength is required: the inner man. It is in the moral and spiritual nature that reinforcement is required--to do the duty, to withstand the temptation, to stand steadfast although outwardly alone. To this end he wants stronger convictions and motives, clearer principles of action, and confirmed habits of well-doing.
2. Why does the inward man require this?
(1) It is new born, and requires to grow.
(2) It is an opposition principle.
(3) It has a great work to accomplish.
II. The source whence this strength is derived. It is the gift of God: not by growth and development within itself, or adaptation to its circumstances merely, but through the direct influence of the Holy Spirit.
III. The law of its bestowment. Through faith, i.e., the exercise of faith.
1. Directly towards God.
2. Indirectly through the believer obeying the impulses and directions of the Holy Spirit. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)
Christian strength
1. The Christian needs to be strengthened with might in the inner man.
2. The might which the Christian needs is conveyed through the agency of the Holy Spirit.
3. This might is obtained in answer to prayer.
4. This might should be sought as from an inexhaustible source. (G. Brooks.)
Spiritual weakness prejudicial
It was an amusing distortion of a good hymn, but there was not a little sound philosophy in it, when the old negro preacher said--
Judge not the Lord by feeble saints.
And yet this is precisely what the great majority of unconverted men are doing all the time. They will not go to the Bible and give heed to what God Himself says. They have no ear for His voice of mercy that offers them salvation for the taking. They do not pay any attention to the solemn warnings that the Scriptures utter. They judge the Lord by feeble saints. They attempt to feed their starving souls on the imperfections of Christians--poor feed enough they find it! Because Gods people are not all they ought to be, therefore these cavillers will keep aloof from the religion which they confess. (American.)
Strength by feeding upon Christ
Now this lamb they were to eat, and the whole of it. Oh! that you and I would never cut and divide Christ so as to choose one part of Him and leave another. Let not a bone of Him be broken, but let us take in a whole Christ, up to the full measure of our capacity. Prophet, Priest, and King, Christ Divine and Christ Human. Christ loving and living, Christ dying, Christ risen, Christ ascended, Christ coming again, Christ triumphant over all His foes--the whole Lord Jesus Christ is ours. We must not reject a single particle of what is revealed concerning Him, but must feed upon it all as we are able. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Strength through the Spirit
When I was a student at Princeton, Professor Henry had so constructed a huge bar of iron, bent into the form of a horseshoe, that it used to hang suspended from another iron bar above it. Not only did it hang there, but it upheld four thousand pounds weight attached to it! That horseshoe magnet was not welded or glued to the metal above it; but through the iron wire coiled round it there ran a subtle current of electricity from a galvanic battery. Stop the flow of the current for one instant, and the huge horseshoe dropped. So does all the lifting power of a Christian come from the currents of spiritual influence which flow into his heart from the Living Jesus. The strength of the Almighty One enters into the believer. If his connection with Christ is cut off, in an instant he becomes as weak as any other man. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)
Vigorous spiritual life
By the inward man Paul means our central and highest life; and he prays that the life itself--not any particular portion of it--may be strengthened. Life is a mystery in its lowest as well as in its loftiest forms; but I suppose that we all attach a more or less definite conception to words which describe life as vigorous or feeble. When we say that a mans physical life is energetic we do not mean to say that any particular organ is strong, that he has great muscular force, can lift heavy weights and walk long distances; we mean to describe something which appears to us to lie within and beneath the physical organization, and which inspires the whole. When we speak of a mans intellectual life as strong or weak, we do not mean that some particular faculty is admirable or the reverse of admirable; a particular faculty may be singularly vigorous, and yet the man may give us the impression of intellectual feebleness; a particular faculty may be very deficient in vigour, and yet he may give us the impression of intellectual strength. If we say that a man is remarkable for his intellectual energy, we think of him as having in the very centre of his intellectual life a free and inexhaustible fountain of force and activity. It is the same in the spiritual life. There is a certain imperfection in many of us which I do not know how to describe except by saying that, though at times particular spiritual faculties may appear to be vigorous, the central life is weak. There are men whose zeal for the evangelization of the world is often very real and very fervent, but who give us no impression of spiritual strength. There are others who are often inspired with a passion for Christian perfection, but in them, too, there appears to be no real vigour. There are others who seem spiritually weak, though their vision of spiritual truth is very keen and penetrating. There are others who seem capable of very lofty devotion of awe, of vehement religious emotion, of rapture in the Divine love, and in the hope, of glory, honour, and immortality--and who yet give us the impression that they are wanting in those elements of life which constitute spiritual energy. In every one of these cases, to use language which suggests rather than expresses the truth, the vigour is not derived from the central fountains of life, but from springs that are more or less distant from the centre. The man himself is wanting in force, though there are spiritual forces at work in him. Those of us who are conscious that this is our condition should pray to God that we may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)
Strength of character
To those who have the misery of weakness--who never keep their better resolves, whose hearts are so divided, who are not really happy, because they have no concentration--to such it may be of immense comfort to know that real religion always gives strength--strength of character. It embraces, it unites, it consolidates, it makes real, it makes a man a man, it makes a Christian a Christian. How comforting, how apposite, how true, how deep, how full the words to those who feel their weakness--strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man. Let us look at them a little more accurately.
I. Notice, first, that it is all in the inner man. You have been trying often to change the outer man, your conduct, your way of speaking, your appearance in peoples eyes! some sin you endeavour to overcome, some outward inconsistency, some habit that you contracted. That wont do. You must go deeper, much deeper. It must be the inner man. And what is the inner man? I look first to conscience. You must take care that your conscience is a true conscience, an active conscience, and a conscience rooted. Next, motives. These must be pure. Then, thoughts--those little springs that swell into oceans, those germs of everything. Think reasonably, accurately, scripturally, thoughtfully. And affections--the likes and dislikes; those excellent servants, but horridly bad masters. And, above all, the inner working of the Holy Spirit, which goes on low down in the innermost chambers secret communion with God, intercourse with the Invisible. These make the inner man, the real essence of a mans being; and all the rest--all we do and all we say, all we suffer and all we enjoy--these are only the outsides, only the reflections of that inner man. In that inner man the strength, then, must be found--conscience, motives, thoughts, affections, silent teachings, spiritual converse, and the trafficking of the soul with God. In secret, there the strength must be found.
II. And how? By the Spirit; by the Holy Spirit. Nothing more we need, nothing less can do it. It must be a supernatural power. The Holy Ghost must enter, and He will do it. Everything will go to give strength.
III. And what will be the result? Might, true might, ever increasing might; might in prayer; commanding prayers; might in the spiritual battle, might in the battle with that wicked heart; might with the devil; might over daily self, might, might in work. Do your work, whatever your work may be, patiently, thoroughly, trustfully, effectually. Might in power, that great power, holiness; that silent witness, that most eloquent of all things, holiness. And, in union the hidden mystic union of God, which is the secret of it all; in which He is, who makes life, the essence of all which is worth the living; a real life, the life of your being. Oh that we might all know the strength that gives that might. How is it to be attained? What must I do? Begin at the centre, not at the circumference; not with outsides. Do not begin by trying to change the life outside; change the motive spring. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
The wealth of God--rich in glory
In the very title of such a subject it is already proclaimed to be inexhaustible. Other topics may be compassed and disposed of in a certain way, but who shall grasp and estimate this? It is a sea of glory, and we have no line to fathom it. It is a mountain of gold, and we have no arithmetic to compute its value. It is a domain of beauty, and we have no adequate language in which to speak of it. It is a field of truth, and the end of all our searching is to discover that it is unsearchable. Happy are they who receive a few crumbs from this rich table, or a few glimpses of this glory! The riches of His glory. The glory of God is the forthshining of His being, the necessary splendour of His revelation of Himself. The glory of an object is that bright medium in which it stands revealed. The glory of the sun is the effulgence of light which it pours forth from its golden urn, revealing itself and all the worlds around. Painters seek to represent the glory of a saint by drawing a circle of light around the head. The glory of a king is seen when he sits upon his throne, crowned and sceptred, surrounded by his nobles, and canopied with banners, that speak of his victories. God is revealed in nature, and therefore the heavens declare the glory of God. God is revealed in providence, and therefore He is said to lead His people with His glorious arm. God is revealed in redemption, and therefore Jesus Christ is the brightness of His Fathers glory, and the express image of His person. The riches of His glory. How rich the expression! Language labours to utter all that is implied here. God is not only glorious, He is rich in glory. Notwithstanding all that He has revealed of Himself in the past, there still remain in Him for evermore depths of splendour unrevealed. All that we know of God, as compares with that which lies hid, is but as the first yellow streak of dawn which breaks the darkness of night to the full brightness of noonday. We may speak of the riches of God under three aspects--first, the riches of His power; second, the riches of His wisdom: and, third, the riches of His goodness; and, as it is the blended and harmonious attributes of God that make up His highest glory, the view of His riches under these three aspects may enable us to see something of the riches of His glory.
I. The riches of his power.
1. This is seen in the power to create. If a man could create in the highest sense of the word, how rich he would soon become! For his own wants he would have an immediate supply. When he was hungry he would create bread. When he wanted money he could turn everything he touched into gold. It is in the ability to produce that the source of wealth is found. The rich gift lies in the possession of the faculty to invent or make. Now, God has the power to create. He alone has that mysterious energy which called everything we see out of nothing. From all eternity God was sufficient for Himself, full of life and joy, and under no obligation, either from without or from within, to create a single world. His great and inconceivable act of creation, then, was a demonstration of His perfect freedom and His boundless power. It was the overflowing of the riches of His power.
2. But the riches of God are seen in the preservation of all things in existence as well as in their creation. The sublime act of creation did not exhaust or weary God. From day to day, from year to year, and from century to century, the whole universe is upheld in its primeval freshness and power.
3. The riches of the Divine power are seen not only in creation and preservation, but in recreation. We are taught in Scripture that a wondrous transformation must pass over the present world--that forms of being now around us will be dissolved in a deluge of fire, and that from this second deluge will emerge a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. We are also taught that the bodies of men will be raised from the dust of the ground in a new and higher form. What marvellous exhibitions, then, has the future still in store of the riches of the power of God!
II. The riches of his wisdom. Wisdom is commonly said to lie in the use of the best means in order to the best ends; and many things might be said as to the adaptation of means to ends in nature. We can scarcely look at any work of God with an intelligent eye, but we begin to discover uses and harmonies and proofs of design in it. From what we already know in this direction we may conclude that the whole of nature is one vast and intricate design manifesting the wisdom and goodness of God; and we are expressly told that all things are working together for good. How manifest the traces of His wisdom in the way in which the earth has been fitted to develop and support man, and in the manifold provision made for mans education and comfort. But what we have to notice more particularly here is, not merely the wisdom of God, but the riches of His wisdom; and these are seen, not only in the original adaptation of means to ends, but in the way by which God can bring good out of evil. The machinist would be wise who could invent and construct a machine which, by the simplest movements, could produce mighty results; but he would be rich in wisdom, who, out of that same machine, when marred and broken, could produce still mightier results. A general is wise who can conduct a great campaign to a successful issue; but he is rich in wisdom who has always in his mind a plan beyond the last stratagem of the enemy, and can therefore turn the tide of battle when all seems to be lost, and pluck from the heart of widespread disaster a glorious victory. It is from this point of view that the riches of the Divine wisdom are seen--not merely in producing good, but in bringing good out of evil; not merely in producing beauty, but in bringing beauty out of deformity; not merely in producing harmony, but in bringing harmony out of discord; not merely in producing life, but in bringing life out of death. If the power of God is seen in the creation and preservation of all things, His wisdom is seen in making all things work together for good; and what a wealth of wisdom is implied in bringing out of the most contradictory and deleterious elements a vast, harmonious, and unspeakably valuable result! In a machine, a great variety of movements and powers contribute to one result. Wheels of different sizes revolve in different directions. There are perpendicular movements and horizontal movements; zig-zag movements and elliptical movements;--a swift and bewildering involution and evolution of forces, and a warring multitude of sounds--hissing and hammering, grinding and thumping; and yet there is the utmost harmony, and the most delicate and precise balance of action throughout the whole.
III. The riches of his goodness. We use the term goodness as a general expression to embrace the mercy, the compassion, the benignity, and the love of God. All the attributes of God culminate in love. God is first and last a God of love. The whole universe and the plan of redemption is summed up in love. It is the want of love, it is the selfishness and hatred, that is the curse and woe of the world. God comes to fill up the sorrowful void with His own rich heart. Think of the love of God in creation. He needed not to create anything in order to consummate His own happiness; but, if we may so speak, the joy and love of Gods being were so great that He could not keep them to Himself. He was rich in love; and His goodness overflowed. He created other beings that He might lavish upon them the grandeurs of His mind and the felicities of His heart. He created them, too, although He foresaw their fall, rebellion, and ingratitude. He created them, because He saw beyond the dark sin of man, and knew that His love could snatch from sorrow and the grave a new creation still. It is to the riches of the love of God, therefore, that we owe our very existence. Think of Gods love in providence. God would have been rich in love had He done nothing more than created man, and after that, when man had sinned, displayed the glory of His justice in crushing him forever. But God has not only created us; He has also preserved us, even in the midst of our deep depravity and alienation. But preeminently in the work of redemption do we see the riches of His goodness. There we behold God not only working and waiting, but making a great sacrifice for the salvation of man. How little do we know of the greatness of that gift, and of the depth of that sacrifice! How little do we know of that mystery of sorrow that seems to enter into the very Godhead, and all to save such a creature as man! Rich as is the power of God, man could not be saved by mere power. Rich as is the patience of God, man could not be saved by the mere lapse of time. God might have given away everything He had made; He might have emptied the exchequer of heaven; but the price would not have purchased the redemption of a single soul. He might have waited and pleaded with man for ages, explaining to man his sin and ingratitude; and yet man might not have relented. Something more had to be given, something more had to be done, and God gave that--God did that. He delivered up His only begotten Son, the Son of His love, that eternal One in comparison with whom the universe itself is worthless. Measure, then, Gods love to man by His regard for His own Son! By all that is beautiful and holy, by all that is deep and rapturous in the relation of Father and Son, measure the sacrifice involved in the death of Christi
1. God alone is rich. He alone is absolutely self-sufficient. He alone is the true possessor of everything. He alone can create. He alone can hold forever that which He now possesses. He alone has enough and to spare.
2. Every man in himself is poor. Sin reduces the soul to utter destitution, and all have sinned. It matters not that many say, We are rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; not knowing that they are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. Let a man labour ever so hard, let him pile his earthly treasures ever so high, he can never with his own puny hand fill the dark and sad abyss within himself.
3. He who was rich became poor for us (2Co_8:9).
4. It is a blessed thing to know that we are poor (Mat_5:3). The discovery of our own poverty implies some apprehension of the wealth of God, and hence its blessedness. We have, then, an ear for the word which says, I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich. So great is the capacity of the soul, that if a man had the whole universe he would still be poor, being destitute of God. But with God he has all, and abounds; for the earth is the Lords and the fulness thereof.
5. Beware of despising the riches of God (Rom_2:5). (F. Ferguson, D. D.)
Strengthened with might
Let us consider that great thought of the Divine strength-giving power which may be bestowed upon every Christian soul.
I. First, then, I remark that God means, and wishes, that all Christians should be strong by the possession of the Spirit of might. I do not know what Christianity means, unless it means that you and I are forgiven for a purpose; that the purpose, if I may so say, is something in advance of the means towards the purpose, the purpose being that we should be filled with all the strength and righteousness and supernatural life granted to us by the Spirit of God. It is all well that we should enter into the vestibule; there is no other path unto the Throne but through the vestibule; but do not let us forget that the good news of forgiveness, though we need it day by day, and perpetually repeated, is but the introduction to, and porch of the Temple, and that beyond it there towers, if I cannot say a loftier, yet I may say a further gift, even the gift of a Divine life like His, from whom it comes, and of which it is in reality an effluence and a spark. The true characteristic gift of the gospel is the gift of a new power to a sinful weak world; a power which makes the feeble strong, and the strongest as an angel of God. I would maintain, in opposition to many modern conceptions, the actual supernatural character of the gift that is bestowed upon every Christian soul. My reading of the New Testament is that as distinctly above the order of material nature as is any miracle is the gift that flows into a believing heart. There is a direct passage between God and my spirit. It lies open to His touch; all the paths of its deep things can be trodden by Him. You and I act upon one another from without, He acts upon us within. We wish one another blessings; He gives the blessings.
II. Now notice, next, that this Divine strength has its seat in, and is intended to influence the whole of the inner life. As my text puts it, Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man. That, I suppose, does not mean the new creation through faith in Jesus Christ; what the apostle calls the new man, but it means simply what another apostle calls the hidden man of the heart, and only refers to the distinction which we all draw between the outward, visible, material frame, and the unseen self that animates and informs it. It is this inner self, then, in which the Spirit of God is to dwell, and into which He is to breathe strength. The leaven is hid deep in three measures of meal until the whole be leavened. And the point to mark is that the whole inward region which makes up the true man is the field upon which this Divine Spirit is to work. It is not a bit of your inward life that is to be hallowed. It is not any one aspect of it that is to be strengthened, but it is the whole intellect, affections, desires, tastes, powers of attention, combination, memory, will. The whole inner man in all its corners is to be filled, and to come under the influence of this power, until there be no part dark, as when the bright shining of a candle giveth thee light. So for this Divine Indweller there is no part of my life that is not patent to His tread. There are no rooms of the house of my spirit into which He is not to go. Let Him come with the master key in His hand into all the dim chambers of your feeble nature; and as life is light in the eye, and colour in the cheek, and deftness in the fingers, and strength in the arm, and pulsation in the heart, so He will come and strengthen your understandings, and make you able for loftier tasks of intellect and of reason, than you can face in your unaided strength; and He will dwell in your affections and make them vigorous to lay hold upon the holier things that are above their natural inclination, and will make it certain that their reach shall not be beyond their grasp, as alas! it so often is in the sadness and disappointments of human loves. And He will come into that feeble, vacillating, wayward will of yours, that is only obstinate in its adherence to the low and the evil, as some foul creature, that one may try to wrench away, digs its claws into corruption and holds on by that, He will lift your will and make it fix upon the good and abominate the evil, and through the whole being He will pour a great tide of strength which shall cover all the weakness. He will be like some subtle elixir which, taken into the lips, steals through a pallid and wasted frame, and brings back a glow to the cheek and a lustre to the eye and a swiftness to the brain, and power to the whole nature. Or as some plant, drooping and flagging beneath the hot rays of the sun, when it has the scent of water given to it, will, in all its parts, stiffen and erect itself, so this Divine Spirit will go searching every corner of the inner man illuminating and invigorating all.
III. And now, lastly, let me point you still further to the measure of this power. It is limitless with the boundlessness of God Himself. That He would grant you, is the daring petition of the apostle, according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened. There is the measure. There is no limit except the uncounted wealth of His own self-manifestation, the flashing light of a revealed Divinity. Whatsoever there is of splendour in that, whatsoever there is of power there, in these and in nothing this side of them, lies the limit of the possibilities of a Christian life. Of course there is a working limit at each moment, and that is our capacity to receive, but that capacity varies, may vary indefinitely, may become greater and greater beyond our count or measurement. Our hearts may be made more and more capable of God; and in the measure in which they are capable of Him they shall be filled by Him. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The strengthening of the inner man
We are beings of a complex nature. We testify this fact in our common talk. We speak of body, soul, and spirit belonging to us. We describe our body by its various limbs and organs. We describe our mind as possessing emotional parts, intellectual parts, volitional parts. Each of these parts we describe in various ways, according to the numerous feelings and motions our inward nature is accustomed to. So complex is our nature that it is hardly possible to give an account of it sufficiently simplified to be plain to an unobservant man.
I. The text speaks of the inner man. It gives no definition of what the term includes. Does it mean by the inner man all the parts of our being which are not bodily? Or does it mean especially the part which we call the spirit, by which, when it is made active within us, we discern hidden and eternal realities? Or are both these meanings embraced by the term? Probably, I should say, both. The thinking and feeling faculties, the marvellous soul which perceives, searches, imagines, desires, loves, hates, resolves, and so forth--is not to be omitted from the inner man, which the Spirit of God visits and renews, inhabits and ennobles. Yet the spirit has a special place in the inner man, for it is the crown and glory of our being. Having our spirit born from above, endowed by the Spirit of God with its proper life and power, and applying ourselves to its exalted exercises, we live in connection with two worlds--the world of sense, and the world of spirit. This, then, is the first care for us--not only that our body be living in health, however congenial and helpful this may be; not only that our mind be alive to all our earthly concerns, and strong to attend to them, however lofty and important they may be: but that our spirit be alive, active, and enthroned in the world within us, having some conception of, and some participation in, the share which God would give us with Himself, in His own thoughts and purposes, His own joys and griefs, His own ways and works. This is our prime concern. This ought to be our prime passion. This is, for us, the glory that excelleth. This is our way to the priesthood and princeliness which the redeeming God bids us come up to and exercise. Be it our first care that we are born of the Spirit, and living in the Spirit.
II. The life of our spirit, however, being begun, may be in the feebleness of infancy. It may be enfeebled when it ought to be maturing through disorders preying upon it from our inferior desires. Indeed, we cannot be strong in spirit if we divide the supremacy between higher, and lower interests. All wilful sin injures our spiritual life, enfeebles its conceptions of God, dulls its sense of His presence. The confusion of soul into which we may fall by having received the vivifying and enlightening of the Holy Ghost, and having afterwards overruled the spiritual life within us by the lower life it was beginning to reduce and subject, is indescribable. We say, What shall we do? We are tempted to doubt Gods power to restore us with the imagination that He has cast us off. We may even come to look down tremblingly into the horrible abyss of despair. And all this misery and confusion of soul is often aggravated by a misinterpretation of those dark words of Scripture which are written concerning backsliders who have utterly fallen away, and have eschewed the blessing of the life they once entered. And I ask anyone who has ever fallen into such misery and confusion of inward strife after he had tasted the peace of Christs salvation, whether he did not learn in it his powerlessness to recover himself, and did not perceive that the best resolve and effort he could make would be no more than the galvanising of a dead limb unless another strength should be given him, and given him by the same Divine Spirit who before quickened him into a spiritual birth, unless God would hear the prayer which is no more than a broken wail of wretchedness and a struggling desire for healing? If the apostle wrote for any hearts thus fallen he might well write that he prayed for them. The text is a prayer. What else could it be to be sufficient? It is an intercessory prayer we should pray for one another in the gloomy hours of our brothers fall. It is a prayer to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, who is the only Father who has riches enough in His glory to be able to strengthen us with might in our inner man when we have sapped its power by infidelity to His gift of the Spirit. If in any of us the spiritual power has ebbed and fallen, let this prayer be ours. And let us humbly believe that it is the prayer Christ prays with us, moved by a consistency in love, and hope, and saving energy which we so sorely lack.
III. Having dwelt thus far on the supreme importance of spiritual life, and of the extreme need of its Divine strengthening which is occasioned and evinced by falls, let us in the next place seize a truth which we have barely touched yet. Let it be certain to us that this gift of strength to our spirits by the Spirit of God is our perpetual need. It is our need not only in that extremity of which we have spoken, but it is a need inherent in our nature, which was in us at birth, which will abide with us through death. Our inner man, our innermost man, wants a life and a strength which is not human but Divine. It wants a strength which is not ethereal but real. It wants a strength which will not lie idle, but will be diffused through our whole man, and be available for our whole life. It wants power of spiritual thought, spiritual perception, spiritual emotion, spiritual control, spiritual activity, spiritual endurance, spiritual influence, such as we see pervading and flowing from the whole character and conduct of Christ. The prayer of the text must be our prayer, because it asks for the power which is our perpetual need, which is the perpetual need of our children and brethren.
IV. Let our attention dwell next on this--the apostles prayer for his fellow Christians at Ephesus is a prayer for a gift of power from the Spirit of God to the spirit of man. It supposes a communication with us when we are spiritual which is no less than Gods own communion with us. There is a spiritual Divine touch, which is such as Christs touch that healed leprosy and raised the dead. There is a supernatural influence, and energy of the Divine Spirit in our spirits, which may become so real and manifest within us that the physical miracles of Christ rank beneath it. (J. E. Gibbert.)
The inner man
Everyone has an inner man, a better self, a potential perfection within him, which will awake and begin to flower when he feels in his soul the touch of God. There is laid down in the being of each man, or deposited there in germ, an ideal, a Divine ideal, which ought to become, under the nourishing powers of redemption and providence, the real. But there are so many outer men put on by some--one, another, and another yet--that the real inner man might seem to be hopelessly buried.
I. Let us look, now, at some of these outer men put on, worn from year to year, so as effectually to enclose, imprison, bury out of sight, the inner man which God and angels wait for, and would bring to the light with rejoicing.
1. Dress. The first thing one human being sees of another, when they are approaching each other, is the dress. A man is known--a woman is known--by the dress. But the sad thing is that in some instances that is all that you will see, even when you meet, nothing but the dress. All the active powers of the man, the woman, are concerned chiefly about that--the dress of life--what to wear on the person, in the house as furniture, in the garden as adornment, on the road as equipage. Exterior show is with them life, and they are always dressing. They are never away from the glass. The whole surrounding world is to them a mirror in which they see only themselves.
2. Manners. The manners are beneath the dress, come through the dress, make the dress more or less expressive, impressive, and beautiful. Nothing of an exterior nature can be more charming than graceful, polished, easy manners. Now, the Christian teaching nowhere leads us to despise manners. Quite the contrary. But we are regarding manners just now not as an expression of the Christian principle of feeling, but as a substitute for it. Not as a beautiful clothing by which the inner man speaks and makes itself known, but as one complete outer man, which muffles, hides, and sometimes buries out of sight, the glorious inner man of God. Just as life is to some all dress, so it is to some all manners.
3. Mind. Go deeper still, and you will find another outer man, which may go by this denomination--mind; indicating strong intellectual life, love of truth, i.e., natural truth; which presents itself to us in the form of fact and law--the scientific spirit. All this may be with a slumbering inner man. Knowledge is power. But it is not in the deepest sense life.
4. Morals. We are still going inwards in search of that great something of which our text is the name. Now we come into the great ethical region of human nature. Now we look at a moral man--a man who distinctly recognizes the great moral law of God, that stretches over the world and runs through and through it. He recognizes it distinctly, but of course very imperfectly, if yet the inner man, under all this moral action going on above it, lies in the main asleep. Asleep; by fits and starts perhaps awaking, and then falling into slumber again. This, too, as in the other cases, is the sad possibility.
II. The inner man. How is this to be discovered? How does a man reach the centre and fountain of his own being? find himself? recover himself? bring himself home again to God? There are great varieties of experience. But perhaps these things, or something like them, will be found in all.
1. First--what may be called a soul consciousness--a consciousness of having, or being, a soul. Not merely an animated something, to be covered with dress and beautified with manners. Not merely a thinking something, to be informed by knowledge and guided by morals. But a something spiritual, vast, deep, related to eternity, related to God.
2. The next thing is, the conscious relation to God. In that beautiful parable of the prodigal, touching as it does at so many points the actual experience of sinful men, we find that the wandering son no sooner comes to himself than he begins to think of his Father, and to talk of Him there, in those barren fields among the swine; and of His house, the beautiful home of his youth, and of His hired servants, and of the bread loading His tables--until his soul and his eyes are so full of the beauty and the peacefulness of other days, that the wilderness becomes more dark and dreary and horrible, and he says, I will arise, and leave all this, and go home again to my Father.
3. The next thing, or the thing which goes along with this very often, is the consciousness of sin. When the inner man is found, sin is found in it, or cleaving to it very closely.
4. Then, further, he becomes conscious of goodness as well as of sin. Not the old formal goodness; but goodness that is fresh and new and living: with love in the heart of it, gratitude lending it a glow and a lustre, faith building it up. This new life of goodness begins just with the other things we have named. Not after them, but with and in them. We are too apt to conceive the religious life as consisting in a series of consecutive exercises, the beginning of the one waiting for the completion of the other. First repentance, then cleansing and forgiveness, then gratitude, then filial love, then active goodness. Not so. The moment a man comes to himself, all these things begin together, and go on together. Some trees in early spring are yet covered with last years leaves; all withered now and begrimed. What says the new vegetation to these? I must wait until God sends winds strong enough to sweep them away; rains heavy enough to wash the tree clean in every branch? Not at all. That new vegetation, that fresh leafage, comes out and pushes them off, and clothes the tree with virgin green, drawing food and beauty from the mould of the earth, from the wandering wind, from the passing cloud. So goodness throws off sin, and dresses and adorns the soul in the beauties of Gods holiness. Then what becomes of all the outer men, such as those we named? They all fall in, and, so to speak, become parts of the found and ransomed inner man, which now needs them, which now uses them, for its own development, outcome, manifestation. They cease to have a separate and independent existence. They are controlled, in a measure absorbed, by that central grand something which now becomes the ruling power. It is as when a number of substances lie together in a chemists vessel, each separate from the others, each refusing to enter into combination with the rest, until some final element--with affinities for them all, with a power to blend them all into something else--is added. Then each yields, is altered, combines, and makes the one grand product that is sought. So a regenerate inner man will not throw aside these outer men altogether, but transform them, mould them to its own uses, make them speak its meanings and flash out all its lights. (A. Raleigh, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 16–19. That he would grant you. Paul now states…
16–19. That he would grant you. Paul now states the things for which he so earnestly prays in behalf of those to whom he writes. According to the riches of his glory. In a degree which would correspond. To be strengthened. That their spirits might be strengthened by God's spirit and endowed with the might of spiritual gifts.
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.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
EPHESIANS
STRENGTHENED WITH MIGHT
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Eph 3:16
In no part of Paul’s letters does he rise to a higher level than in his prayers, and none of his prayers are fuller of fervour than this wonderful series of petitions. They open out one into the other like some majestic suite of apartments in a great palace-temple, each leading into a loftier and more spacious hall, each drawing nearer the presence-chamber, until at last we stand there.
Roughly speaking, the prayer is divided into four petitions, of which each is the cause of the following and the result of the preceding-’That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man’-that is the first. ‘In order that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith,’ ‘ye being rooted and grounded in love’-such is the second, the result of the first, and the preparation for the third. ‘That ye may be able to comprehend with all saints ... and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,’ such is the third, and all lead up at last to that wonderful desire beyond which nothing is possible-’that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.’
I venture to contemplate dealing with these four petitions in successive sermons, in order, God helping me, that I may bring before you a fairer vision of the possibilities of your Christian life than you ordinarily entertain. For Paul’s prayer is God’s purpose, and what He means with all who profess His name is that these exuberant desires may be fulfilled in them. So let us now listen to that petition which is the foundation of all, and consider that great thought of the divine strength-giving power which may be bestowed upon every Christian soul.
I. First, then, I remark that God means, and wishes, that all Christians should be strong by the possession of the Spirit of might.
It is a miserably inadequate conception of Christianity, and of the gifts which it bestows, and the blessings which it intends for men, when it is limited, as it practically is, by a large number-I might almost say the majority-of professing Christians to a simple means of altering their relation to the past, and to the broken law of God and of righteousness. Thanks be to His name! His great gift to the world begins in each individual case with the assurance that all the past is cancelled. He gives that blessed sense of forgiveness, which can never be too highly estimated unless it is forced out of its true place as the introduction, and made to be the climax and the end, of His gifts. I do not know what Christianity means, unless it means that you and I are forgiven for a purpose; that the purpose, if I may so say, is something in advance of the means towards the purpose, the purpose being that we should be filled with all the strength and righteousness and supernatural life granted to us by the Spirit of God.
It is well that we should enter into the vestibule. There is no other path to the throne but through the vestibule. But do not let us forget that the good news of forgiveness, though we need it day by day, and need it perpetually repeated, is but the introduction to and porch of the Temple, and that beyond it there towers, if I cannot say a loftier, yet I may say a further gift, even the gift of a divine life like His, from whom it comes, and of which it is in reality an effluence and a spark. The true characteristic blessing of the Gospel is the gift of a new power to a sinful weak world; a power which makes the feeble strong, and the strongest as an angel of God.
Oh, brethren! we who know how, ‘if any power we have, it is to ill’; we who understand the weakness, the unaptness of our spirits to any good, and our strength for every vagrant evil that comes upon them to tempt them, should surely recognise as a Gospel in very deed that which proclaims to us that the ‘everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth,’ who Himself ‘fainteth not, neither is weary.’ hath yet a loftier display of His strength-giving power than that which is visible in the heavens above, where, ‘because He is strong in might not one faileth.’ That heaven, the region of calm completeness, of law unbroken and therefore of power undiminished, affords a lesser and dimmer manifestation of His strength than the work that is done in the hell of a human heart that has wandered and is brought back, that is stricken with the weakness of the fever of sin, and is healed into the strength of obedience and the omnipotence of dependence. It is much to say ‘for that He is strong in might, not one of these faileth;’ it is more to say ‘He giveth power to them that have failed; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.’ The Gospel is the gift of pardon for holiness, and its inmost and most characteristic bestowment is the bestowment of a new power for obedience and service.
And that power, as I need not remind you, is given to us through the gift of the Divine Spirit. The very name of that Spirit is the ‘Spirit of Might.’ Christ spoke to us about being ‘endued with power from on high.’ The last of His promises that dropped from His lips upon earth was the promise that His followers should receive the power of the Spirit coming upon them. Wheresoever in the early histories we read of a man who was full of the Holy Ghost, we read that he was ‘full of power.’ According to the teaching of this Apostle, God hath given us the ‘Spirit of power,’ which is also the Spirit ‘of love and of a sound mind.’ So the strength that we must have, if we have strength at all, is the strength of a Divine Spirit, not our own, that dwells in us, and works through us.
And there is nothing in that which need startle or surprise any man who believes in a living God at all, and in the possibility, therefore, of a connection between the Great Spirit and all the human spirits which are His children. I would maintain, in opposition to many modern conceptions, the actual supernatural character of the gift that is bestowed upon every Christian soul. My reading of the New Testament is that as distinctly above the order of material nature as is any miracle, is the gift that flows into a believing heart. There is a direct passage between God and my spirit. It lies open to His touch; all the paths of its deep things can be trodden by Him. You and I act upon one another from without, He acts upon us within. We wish one another blessings; He gives the blessings. We try to train, to educate, to incline, and dispose, by the presentation of motives and the urging of reasons; He can plant in a heart by His own divine husbandry the seed that shall blossom into immortal life. And so the Christian Church is a great, continuous, supernatural community in the midst of the material world; and every believing soul, because it possesses something of the life of Jesus Christ, has been the seat of a miracle as real and true as when He said ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ Precisely this teaching does our Lord Himself present for our acceptance when He sets side by side, as mutually illustrative, as belonging to the same order of supernatural phenomena, ‘the hour is coming when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live,’ which is the supernatural resurrection of souls dead in sin,-and ‘the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth,’ which is the future resurrection of the body, in obedience to His will.
So, Christian men and women, do you set clearly before you this: that God’s purpose with you is but begun when He has forgiven you, that He forgives you for a design, that it is a means to an end, and that you have not reached the conception of the large things which He intends for you unless you have risen to this great thought-He means and wishes that you should be strong with the strength of His own Divine Spirit.
II. Now notice, next, that this Divine Power has its seat in, and is intended to influence the whole of, the inner life.
As my text puts it, we may be ‘strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.’ By the ‘inner man’ I suppose, is not meant the new creation through faith in Jesus Christ which this Apostle calls ‘the new man,’ but simply what Peter calls the ‘hidden man of the heart’ the ‘soul,’ or unseen self as distinguished from the visible material body which it animates and informs. It is this inner self, then, in which the Spirit of God is to dwell, and into which it is to breathe strength. The leaven is hid deep in three measures of meal until the whole be leavened. And the point to mark is that the whole inward region which makes up the true man is the field upon which this Divine Spirit is to work. It is not a bit of your inward life that is to be hallowed. It is not any one aspect of it that is to be strengthened, but it is the whole intellect, affections, desires, tastes, powers of attention, conscience, imagination, memory, will. The whole inner man in all its corners is to be filled, and to come under the influence of this power, ‘until there be no part dark, as when the bright shining of a candle giveth thee light.’
There is no part of my being that is not patent to the tread of this Divine Guest. There are no rooms of the house of my spirit into which He may not go. Let Him come with the master key in His hand into all the dim chambers of your feeble nature; and as the one life is light in the eye, and colour in the cheek, and deftness in the fingers, and strength in the arm, and pulsation in the heart, so He will come with the manifold results of the one gift to you. He will strengthen your understandings, and make you able for loftier tasks of intellect and of reason than you can face in your unaided power; He will dwell in your affections and make them vigorous to lay hold upon the holy things that are above their natural inclination, and will make it certain that their reach shall not be beyond their grasp, as, alas! it so often is in the sadness and disappointments of human love. He will come into that feeble, vacillating, wayward will of yours, that is only obstinate in its adherence to the low and the evil, as some foul creature, that one may try to wrench away, digs its claws into corruption and holds on by that. He will lift your will and make it fix upon the good and abominate the evil, and through the whole being He will pour a great tide of strength which shall cover all the weakness. He will be like some subtle elixir which, taken into the lips, steals through a pallid and wasted frame, and brings back a glow to the cheek and a lustre to the eye, and swiftness to the brain, and power to the whole nature. Or as some plant, drooping and flagging beneath the hot rays of the sun, when it has the scent of water given to it, will, in all its parts, stiffen and erect itself, so, when the Spirit is poured out on men, their whole nature is invigorated and helped.
That indwelling Spirit will be a power for suffering. The parallel passage to this in the twin epistle to the Colossians is-’strengthened with all might unto all patience and long-suffering with gentleness.’ Ah, brethren! unless this Divine Spirit were a power for patience and endurance it were no power suited to us poor men. So dark at times is every life; so full at times of discouragements, of dreariness, of sadness, of loneliness, of bitter memories, and of fading hopes does the human heart become, that if we are to be strong we must have a strength that will manifest itself most chiefly in this, that it teaches us how to bear, how to weep, how to submit.
And it will be a power for conflict. We have all of us, in the discharge of duty and in the meeting of temptation, to face such tremendous antagonisms that unless we have grace given to us which will enable us to resist, we shall be overcome and swept away. God’s power given by the Divine Spirit does not absolve us from the fight, but it fits us for the fight. It is not given in order that, holiness may be won without a struggle, as some people seem to think, but it is given to us in order that in the struggle for holiness we may never lose ‘one jot of heart or hope,’ but may be ‘able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand.’
It is a power for service. ‘Tarry ye in Jerusalem till ye be endued with power from on high.’ There is no such force for the spreading of Christ’s Kingdom, and the witness-bearing work of His Church, as the possession of this Divine Spirit. Plunged into that fiery baptism, the selfishness and the sloth, which stand in the way of so many of us, are all consumed and annihilated, and we are set free for service because the bonds that bound us are burnt up in the merciful furnace of His fiery power.
‘Ye shall be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man’-a power that will fill and flood all your nature if you will let it, and will make you strong to suffer, strong to combat, strong to serve, and to witness for your Lord.
III. And now, lastly, let me point you still further to the measure of this power. It is limitless with the boundlessness of God Himself. ‘That he would grant you’ is the daring petition of the Apostle, ‘according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened.’
There is the measure. There is no limit except the uncounted wealth of His own self-manifestation, the flashing light of revealed divinity. Whatsoever there is of splendour in that, whatsoever there is of power there, in these and in nothing on this side of them, lies the limit of the possibilities of a Christian life. Of course there is a working limit at each moment, and that is our capacity to receive; but that capacity varies, may vary indefinitely, may become greater and greater beyond our count or measurement. Our hearts may be more and more capable of God; and in the measure in which they are capable of Him they shall be filled by Him. A limit which is always shifting is no limit at all. A kingdom, the boundaries of which are not the same from one year to another, by reason of its own inherent expansive power, may be said to have no fixed limit. And so we appropriate and enclose, as it were, within our own little fence, a tiny portion of the great prairie that rolls boundlessly to the horizon. But to-morrow we may enclose more, if we will, and more and more; and so ever onwards, for all that is God’s is ours, and He has given us His whole self to use and to possess through our faith in His Son. A thimble can only take up a thimbleful of the ocean, but what if the thimble be endowed with a power of expansion which has no term known to men? May it not, then, be that some time or other it shall be able to hold so much of the infinite depth as now seems a dream too audacious to be realised?
So it is with us and God. He lets us come into the vaults, as it were, where in piles and masses the ingots of uncoined and uncounted gold are stored and stacked; and He says, ‘Take as much as you like to carry.’ There is no limit except the riches of His glory.
And now, dear friends, remember that this great gift, offered to each of us, is offered on conditions. To you professing Christians especially I speak. You will never get it unless you want it, and some of you do not want it. There are plenty of people who call themselves Christian men that would not for the life of them know what to do with this great gift if they had it. You will get it if you desire it. ‘Ye have not because ye ask not.’
Oh! when one contrasts the largeness of God’s promises and the miserable contradiction to them which the average Christian life of this generation presents, what can we say? ‘Hath His mercy clean gone for ever? Doth His promise fail for evermore?’ Ye weak Christian people, born weakling and weak ever since, as so many of you are, open your mouths wide. Rise to the height of the expectations and the desires which it is our sin not to cherish; and be sure of this, as we ask so shall we receive. ‘Ye are not straitened in God.’ Alas! alas! ‘ye are straitened in yourselves.’
And mind, there must be self-suppression if there is to be the triumph of a divine power in you. You cannot fight with both classes of weapons. The human must die if the divine is to live. The life of nature, dependence on self, must be weakened and subdued if the life of God is to overcome and to fill you. You must be able to say ‘Not I!’ or you will never be able to say ‘Christ liveth in me.’ The patriarch who overcame halted on his thigh; and all the life of nature was lamed and made impotent that the life of grace might prevail. So crush self by the power and for the sake of the Christ, if you would that the Spirit should bear rule over you.
See to it, too, that you use what you have of that Divine Spirit. ‘To him that hath shall be given.’ What is the use of more water being sent down the mill lade, if the water that does come in it all runs away at the bottom, and none of it goes over the wheel? Use the power you have, and power will come to the faithful steward of what he possesses. He that is faithful in a little shall get much to be faithful over. Ask and use, and the ancient thanksgiving may still come from your lips. ‘In the day when I cried, Thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.