This passage gives to God’s Fatherhood the same extension that chapter i. 21 has given to Christ’s Lordship. Every order of creaturely intelligence acknowledges God for the Author of its being, and bows to Christ as its sovereign Lord. In God’s name of Father the entire wealth of love that streams forth from Him through endless ages and unmeasured worlds is hidden; and in the name of sons of God there is contained the blessedness of all creatures that can bear His image.
I. What, therefore, shall the universal Father be asked to give to His needy children upon earth? They have newly learnt His name; they are barely recovered from the malady of their sin, fearful of trial, weak to meet temptation. Strength is their first necessity: “I bow my knees to the Father of heaven and earth, praying that He may grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened by the entering of the Spirit into your inward man.” The apostle asked them in verse 13, in view of the greatness of his own calling, to be of good courage on his account; now he entreats God so to reveal to them His glory and to pour into their hearts His Spirit, that no weakness and fear may remain in them. The strengthening of which he speaks is the opposite of the faintness of heart, the failure of courage deprecated in verse 13. Using the same word, the apostle bids the Corinthians “Quit themselves like men, be strong” (1 Ep. xvi. 13). He desires for the Asian believers a manful heart, the strength that meets battle and danger without quailing.
The source of this strength is not in ourselves. We are to be “strengthened with [or by] power,”—by “the power” of God “working in us” (ver. 20), the very same “power, exceeding great,” that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead (i. 19). This superhuman might of God operating in men is always referred to the Holy Spirit: “by power made strong,” he says, “through the Spirit.” Nothing is more familiar in Scripture than the conception of the indwelling Spirit of God as the source of moral strength. The special power that belongs to the gospel Christ ascribes altogether to this cause. “Ye shall receive power,” He said to His disciples, “after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you.” Hence is derived the vigour of a strong faith, the valour of the good soldier of Christ Jesus, the courage of the martyrs, the cheerful and indomitable patience of multitudes of obscure sufferers for righteousness’ sake. There is a great truth expressed when we describe a brave and enterprising man as a man of spirit. All high and commanding qualities of soul come from this invisible source. They are inspirations. In the human will, with its vis vivida, its elasticity and buoyancy, its steadfastness and resolved purpose, is the highest type of force and the image of the almighty Will. When that will is animated and filled with “the Spirit,” the man so possessed is the embodiment of an inconceivable power. Firm principle, hope and constancy, self-mastery, superiority to pleasure and pain,—all the elements of a noble courage are proper to the man of the Spirit. Such power is not neutralized by our infirmities; it asserts itself under their limiting conditions and makes them its contributories. “My grace is sufficient for thee,” said Christ to His disabled servant; “for power is perfected in weakness.” In privation and loneliness, in old age and bodily decay, the strength of God in the human spirit shines with its purest lustre. Never did St Paul rise to such a height of moral ascendency as at the time when he was “smitten down” and all but destroyed by persecution and affliction. “That the excellency of the power,” he says, “may be of God, and not from ourselves” (2 Cor. iv. 7–11).
The apostle points to “the inner man” as the seat of this invigoration, thinking perhaps of its secrecy. While the world buffets and dismays the Christian, new vigour and joy are infused into his soul. The surface waters and summer brooks of comfort fail; but there opens in the heart a spring fed by the river of life proceeding from the throne of God. Beneath the toil-worn frame, the mean attire and friendless condition of the prisoner Paul—a mark for the world’s scorn—there lives a strength of thought and will mightier than the empire of the Cæsars, a power of the Spirit that is to dominate the centuries to come. Of this omnipotent power dwelling in the Church of God, the apostle prays that every one of his readers may partake.
II. Parallel to the first petition, and in substance identical with it, is the second: “that the Christ may make His dwelling through faith in your hearts.” Such, it seems to us, is the relation of verses 16 and 17. Christ’s residence in the heart is to be viewed neither as the result, nor the antecedent of the strength given by the Spirit to the inward man: the two are simultaneous; they are the same things seen in a varying light.
We observe in this prayer the same vein of Trinitarian thought which marks the doxology of chapter i., and other leading passages in this epistle.[94] The Father, the Spirit, and the Christ are unitedly the object of the apostle’s devout supplication.
As in the previous clause, the verb of verse 17 bears emphasis and conveys the point of St Paul’s entreaty; he asks that “the Christ may take up His abode,—may settle in your hearts.” The word signifies to set up one’s house or make one’s home in a place, by way of contrast with a temporary and uncertain sojourn (comp. ii. 19). The same verb in Colossians ii. 9 asserts that in Christ “dwells all the fulness of the Godhead”; and in Colossians i. 19 it declares, used in the same tense as here, how it was God’s “pleasure that all the fulness should make its dwelling in Him” now raised from the dead, who had emptied and humbled Himself to fulfil the purpose of the Father’s love. So it is desired that Christ should take His seat within us. He is never again to stand at the door and knock, nor to have a doubtful and disputed footing in the house. Let the Master come in, and claim His own. Let Him become the heart’s fixed tenant and full occupier. Let Him, if He will thus condescend, make Himself at home within us and there rest in His love. For He promised: “If any man love me, my Father will love him; and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”
And “the Christ,” not Christ alone. Why does the apostle say this? There is a reason for the definite article, as we have found elsewhere.[95] The apostle is asking for his Asian brethren something beyond that possession of Christ which belongs to every true Christian,—more even than the permanence and certainty of this indwelling indicated by the verb. “The Christ” is Christ in the significance of His name. It is Christ not only possessed, but understood,—Christ realized in the import of His work, in the light of His relationship to the Father and the Spirit, and to men. It is the Christ of the Church and the ages—known and accepted for all this—that St Paul would fain have dwelling in the heart of each of his Gentile disciples. He is endeavouring to raise them to an adequate comprehension of the greatness of the Redeemer’s person and offices; he longs to have their minds possessed by his own views of Christ Jesus the Lord.
The heart, in the language of the Bible, never denotes the emotional nature by itself. The antithesis of “heart and head,” the divorce of feeling and understanding in our modern speech is foreign to Scripture. The heart is our interior, conscious self—thought, feeling, will in their personal unity. It needs the whole Christ to fill and rule the whole heart,—a Christ who is the Lord of the intellect, the Light of the reason, no less than the Master of the feelings and desires.