CHAPTER XIV.
THE COMPREHENSION OF CHRIST.
“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family in heaven and upon earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man; that the Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.”—Eph. iii. 14–18.
In verse 14 the prayer is resumed which the apostle was about to offer at the beginning of the chapter, when the current of his thoughts carried him away. The supplication is offered “for this cause” (vv. 1, 14),—it arises out of the teaching of the preceding pages. Thinking of all that God has wrought in the Christ, and has accomplished by means of His gospel in multitudes of Gentiles as well as Jews, reconciling them to Himself in one body and forming them together into a temple for His Spirit, the apostle bows his knees before God on their behalf. So much he had in mind, when at the end of the second chapter he was in act to pray for the Asian Christians that they might be enabled to enter into this far-reaching purpose. Other aspects of the great design of God rose upon the writer’s mind before his prayer could find expression. He has told us of his own part in disclosing it to the world, and of the interest it excites amongst the dwellers in heavenly places,—thoughts full of comfort for the Gentile believers troubled by his imprisonment and continued sufferings. These further reflections add new meaning to the “For this cause” repeated from verse 1.
The prayer which he offers here is no less remarkable and unique in his epistles than the act of praise in chapter i. Addressing himself to God as the Father of angels and of men, the apostle asks that He will endow the readers in a manner corresponding to the wealth of His glory—in other words, that the gifts He bestows may be worthy of the universal Father, worthy of the august character in which God has now revealed Himself to mankind. According to this measure, St Paul beseeches for the Church, in the first instance, two gifts, which after all are one,—viz., the inward strength of the Holy Spirit (ver. 16), and the permanent indwelling of Christ (ver. 17). These gifts he asks on his readers’ behalf with a view to their gaining two further blessings, which are also one,—viz., the power to understand the Divine plan (ver. 18) as it has been expounded in this letter, and so to know the love of Christ (ver. 19). Still, beyond these there rises in the distance a further end for man and the Church: the reception of the entire fulness of God. Human desire and thought thus reach their limit; they grasp at the infinite.
In this Chapter we will strive to follow the apostle’s prayer to the end of the eighteenth verse, where it arrives at its chief aim and touches the main thought of the epistle, expressing the desire that all believers may have power to realize the full scope of the salvation of Christ in which they participate.
Let us pause for a moment to join in St Paul’s invocation: “I bow my knees to the Father, of whom [not the whole family, but] every family in heaven and upon earth is named.” The point of St Paul’s original phrase is somewhat lost in translation. The Greek word for family (patria) is based on that for father (pater). A distinguished father anciently gave his name to his descendants; and this paternal name became the bond of family or tribal union, and the title which ennobled the race. So we have “the sons of Israel,” the “sons of Aaron” or “of Korah”; and in Greek history, the Atridæ, the Alcmæonidæ, who form a family of many kindred households—a clan, or gens, designated by their ancestral head. Thus Joseph (in Luke ii. 4) is described as “being of the house and family [patria] of David”; and Jesus is “the Son of David.” Now Scripture speaks also of sons of God; and these of two chief orders. There are those “in heaven,” who form a race distinct from ourselves in origin—divided, it may be, amongst themselves into various orders and dwelling in their several homes in the heavenly places.
Of these are “the sons of God” whom the Book of Job pictures appearing in the Divine court and forming a “family in heaven.” When Christ promises (Luke xx. 36) that His disciples in their immortal state will be “equal to the angels,” because they are “sons of God,” it is implied that the angels are already and by birthright sons of God. Hence in Hebrews xii. 22, 23 the angels are described as “the festal gathering and assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven.” We, the sons of Adam, with our many tribes and kindreds, through Jesus Christ our Elder Brother constitute a new family of God. God becomes our Name-father, and permits us also to call ourselves His sons through faith. Thus the Church of believers in the Son of God constitutes the “family on earth named” from the same Father who gave His name to the holy angels, our wise and strong and brilliant elder brothers. They and we are alike God’s offspring. Heaven and earth are kindred spheres.