Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

(2) He prays "that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the
Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him: the eyes of your understanding being
enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of
His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who
believe, according to the working of His mighty power," etc. The end of this prayer looks very much
like that gift of the Spirit promised and prayed for by our Lord in John xiv. - xvii. -- the Spirit who
should illuminate their minds, purify their hearts, and empower their souls as he did at Pentecost.
It is "the Spirit of wisdom," "revelation," "knowledge," "enlightenment," "hope," and "power" -- the
Spirit who would "take the things of Christ and show them" unto His disciples, and indue them with
"power from on high." Paul evidently refers here to a glorious "revelation" to consciousness of "the
riches" of our "inheritance," a foretaste of future glory, "the earnest of our" inheritance of which he
had just written, and the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe.
(3) The aorists indicate that this blessing was to come instantaneously, like a baptism, and not by
a continuous process or a series of acts of faith.
Let us examine that wonderful prayer and doxology in Ephesians iii. 14-21, frequently referred
to before.
1. We note the nature, thoroughness, and holiness of the work for which Paul prays:
(1) It was the impartation of strength to their faith and the life that springs from it -- "strengthened
with might by His Spirit in the inner man."
(2) The perfecting and establishing of them in love by the enthronement of Christ in their hearts
-- "that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be
able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know
the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God."
If Christ takes full possession of the heart and dwells therein, to the end that we may be "rooted and
grounded" --fully established -- "in love," and if we are "filled with all the fullness of God," certainly
all selfishness, sin, and spiritual depravity would be excluded from our hearts. This looks very much
like the baptism of love and power that came to the one hundred and twenty at Pentecost, when they
were "filled with the Holy Ghost" -- "all the fullness of God."
2. We note the time when this prayer was or may have been answered -- before death. The chief
reason for, or of, prayer, which he gives in the thirteenth verse, indicates it: "that ye faint not at my
tribulations for you." It was that they might be so established in the faith that they would not
backslide and renounce Christianity because of the persecution that came to him, the founder of their
Church and their leader, as Peter did because of the apparently fallen fortunes of his Leader and
Lord. The danger of such apostasy came to them in this life.