II.
Strong to Apprehend.
1. It requires strength, says Paul, to lay hold of the love of God. Some of us might, perhaps, fancy that it would have been more
1 Thomas Guthrie. 2 e, Grubb, The Personality of God, 124.
8 Pean Hole, Then and Now, 93.
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EPHESIANS III. 17-19 169
appropriate had he said, " weak enough to lay hold." For faith, we have come to imagine, is a characteristic of weak rather than of strong souls — a quality by which we forgo the strength of our reason, and passively accept that which mere authority lays upon us. But we shall look in vain for any sanction in St. Paul's thoughts for the opposition we fancy to exist between faith and reason. Their operation he never brings into contrast. What he does contrast is faith and sight. The spiritual realities, he tells us, are those that " eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man " (1 Cor. ii. 9). The exercise of faith is for him of similar quality to the vigorous use of the mind, when we are striving with all our force to master some difficult problem that confronts us. He recognizes that the love of God is hidden and elusive, that it can be " laid hold of " only by strenuous effort.
2. The word translated " ye may be strong " is found scarcely anywhere else ; Paul found it hard to discover a word to express his meaning ; it implies the putting forth of our best powers to do something that is extremely difficult, or almost impossible, — and doing it successfully. But, while Paul is as far as possible from suggesting that the love of God can be " laid hold of " by weak and passive acceptance of a dogma, he does, it is clear, maintain that the faith which " lays hold " is not simply identical with the use of our reasoning faculty. What is the condition of its effective exercise ? He does not say, " that ye, being furnished with complete knowledge," or " that ye, having your intelligence sharpened to the utmost," may be strong enough to apprehend ; but " that ye, leing rooted and grounded in love." The condition of the vigorous exercise of faith is, for him, not intellectual mainly, but ethical. He knew, like his Master before him, that it is the pure in heart who see ; the eye that is single that is full of light ; the doing of the will of God that yields knowledge about the teaching. If we are to know the love that is above us, it will be through the experience of love within us.
3. Thus there are certain conditions to be observed that we may be strong to apprehend the love of Christ in its vastness.
(1) There must he the reception of Christ into the heart hy faith. —He that is rooted and grounded in love because Christ dwells
I70 THE LOVE OF CHRIST
in his heart will be strengthened to know the love in which he is rooted. The Christ within us will know the love of Christ. We must first " taste," and then we shall " see " that the Lord is good, as the Psalmist puts it with deep truth. First the appropriation and feeding upon God, then the clear perception by the mind of the sweetness in the taste. First the enjoyment; then the re- flection on the enjoyment. First the love ; then the consciousness of the love of Christ possessed and the love to Christ experienced. The heart must be grounded in love that the man may know the love which passeth knowledge.
^ What is the beginning of everything ? " That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." There is the gate through which you and I may come, and by which we must come, if we are to come at all, into the possession and perception of Christ's great love. Here is the path of knowledge. First of all there must be the simple historical knowledge of the facts of Christ's life and death for us, with the Scripture teaching of their meaning and power. And then we must turn these truths from mere notions into life. It is not enough to know the love that God has to us, in that lower sense of the word " knowledge." Many of you know that, who never got any blessing out of it all your days, and never will unless you change. Besides the " knowing " there must be the " believing " of the love. You must translate the notion into a living fact in your experience. You must pass from the simple work of understanding the Gospel to the higher act of faith. You must not be contented with knowing, you must trust. And if you have done that all the rest will follow, and the little, narrow, low doorway of humble self-distrusting faith, through which a man creeps on his knees, leaving outside all his sin and his burden, opens out into the temple palace : the large place in which Christ's love is imparted to the soul.^
(2) There must he meditation on the love of Christ. — We have the same knowledge that St. Paul had of the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. And yet what a different thing was this love to him and to us. Is it possible for us ever to realize it as he did ; ever to have the feelings towards it which in him stirred up the depths of his soul, and burst out as naturally from his lips as water does from a spring ? And if it is possible — and who can doubt it ? — why is it that St. Paul's strong words seem to us so strange, so hopelessly above us ? One reason is that we think so ^ A. Maclaren, Christ in the ffeart, 32.