tation, no paraphrase being necessary to bring out the sense. We are to grow to the stature of Christ; to be perfect as our Father is perfect; to be filled unto the measure of the fulness of God. When we are thus filled the distance between us and God will still be infinite. This is the culminating point of the apostle’s prayer. He prays that they may be strengthened in order to comprehend the infinite love of Christ; and that they might comprehend the love of Christ, in order that they might be filled unto the measure of God’s fulness.
Vs. 20, 21. Paul’s prayer had apparently reached a height beyond which neither faith, nor hope, nor even imagination could go, and yet he is not satisfied. An immensity still lay beyond. God was able to do not only what he had asked, but infinitely more than he knew how either to ask or think. Having exhausted all the forms of prayer, he casts himself on the infini- tude of God, in full confidence that he can and will do all that omnipotence itself can effect. His power, not our prayers nor our highest conceptions, is the measure of the apostle’s anticipations and desires. This idea he weaves into a doxology, which has in it more of heaven than of earth.
There are two forms of expression here united ; Paul says, τῷ ὑπὲρ πάντα ποιῆσαι δυναμένῳ, to him who is able to do more than all things ; and as though this were not enough, he adds, ὑπὲρ ἐκπερισσοῦ ὧν αἰτούμεθα ἤ νοοῦμεν, exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think. God is not only unlimited in himself,
CHAP. Ill. vs. 20. 21. 193
but is unrestricted by our prayers or knowledge. No definite bounds, therefore, can be set to what they may expect in whom Christ dwells, and who are the objects of his infinite love.
Κατὰ τὴν δύναμιν τὴν ἐνεργουμένην ἐν ἡμῖν, accord- ing to the power that worketh in us. The infinite power of God from which so much may be expected, is the same of which we are now the subjects. It is that power which wrought in Christ when it raised him from the dead, and set him at the right hand of God, ch. 1, 19-20; and which has wrought an analogous change in the believer in raising him from the death of sin, and making him to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; and which still sustains and carries on the work of salvation in the soul. The past is a fore- taste and pledge of the future. Those who have been raised from the dead, who have been transformed by the renewing of their minds, translated from the king- dom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, and in whom God himself dwells by his Spirit, having already experienced a change which nothing but omni- potence could effect, may well join in the doxology to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think.
The glory ; ἡ δόξα is either the glory that is due, or the glory which God has. To give glory to God, is either to praise him, or to reveal his glory, i. e. cause it to be seen and acknowledged. Thus the doxology, To Him be glory—may mean either, ‘Let Him be praised ;’ or, ‘ Let His glory be acknowledged.’
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