But the first condition for this largeness of sympathy and aim is that stated at the beginning of the verse, thrown forward there with an emphasis that almost does violence to grammar: “in love being fast rooted and grounded.” Where Christ dwells abidingly in the heart, love enters with Him and becomes the ground of our nature, the basis on which our thought and action rest, the soil in which our purposes grow. Love is the mark of the true Broad Churchman in all Churches, the man to whom Christ is all things and in all, and who, wherever he sees a Christlike man, loves him and counts him a brother.
When such love to Christ fills all our hearts and penetrates to their depths, we shall have strength to shake off our prejudices, strength to master our intellectual difficulties and limitations. We shall have the courage to adopt Christ’s simple rule of fellowship: “Whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
FOOTNOTES:
[94] See ch. i. 17, ii. 18, 22, and especially ch. iv. 4–6.
[95] See pp. 47, 83, 169.
[96] Lectures on Ephesians, pp. 235–8. No one who has read Dr. R. W. Dale’s noble Lectures on this epistle, can write upon the same subject without being deeply in his debt.
[97] Der Brief Pauli an die Epheser, p. 138. Hofmann is one of those writers from whom one constantly learns, although one must as often differ from him as agree with him.