Deepening Our Relationship with Christ Through Faith

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Let us remind ourselves again that here we are dealing perhaps with one of the sublimest, the most glorious, and most moving statements that is to be found anywhere in the entire range of the scriptures. Certainly, we are here face to face with the highest heights of the Christian Life and what is possible for Christian people. [00:02:11]

The Apostle here was not praying for his fellow Apostles only, neither was he merely praying for the elders or the leaders of the church at Ephesus. It is a prayer that he offers for all the members of the church at Ephesus, and as he writes it to them, he obviously meant them to understand it. [00:03:18]

The gospel of Salvation, thank God, is so simple that a child can be saved by it, but you know that isn’t true of the whole gospel. We are meant to grow in Grace, as this Apostle says in his next chapter. We’re not to be children, not to remain children, and to be carried about with every wind of Doctrine. [00:03:58]

The Apostle puts them in this order: the strengthening and then that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. Well now then, what does this mean? What exactly does this tremendous statement represent? The first way to approach it, the key to the understanding, and we must walk, as I’ve said, wearily, carefully, circumspectly. [00:07:43]

The Apostle is offering this prayer for people who are already Believers. Now, he is reminded of them of that abundantly. He tells them that when they first heard the gospel, in whom also he says, after that, after he heard the word of Truth, The Gospel of your salvation, in whom ye also trusted. [00:09:13]

The Apostle in other words is not praying that these people may become Christians, and that is where you see that phrase about receiving Christ into your heart to cover the term conversion is so misleading. He is praying that Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith in whom Christ is already present. [00:10:33]

The word which is translated here as dwell is a most interesting and the most important word. It’s a compound word. It’s a word which basically means to live in as a house. That’s the fundamental word, to live in as a house, but the Apostle put a word, a prefix to that word, and the meaning of the prefix is down. [00:13:01]

There is a sense in which they know the Lord Jesus Christ, but there is another sense in which they don’t know him. They’re in relationship to him, yes, but they’re not controlled by him. They are certainly in a position in which they’re having dealings with him, but what is not true of them is this: he is not in the center of their lives. [00:17:45]

He knows what it is to experience this. You see, this is a man who is able to say, as he says in writing to the Galatians in the 2 chapter in the 20th verse, and listen to it: I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God. [00:19:29]

When Christ manifests himself to us, he becomes real to us as a person, and it therefore means to know him in a personal sense. It is in other words, you see, the Fulfillment of all that he promises there in the 14th chapter of The Gospel According to St John. [00:30:16]

Faith reveals the possibility to us. Now let me put it in the form of a question: had you realized that this was a possibility for you until this morning? You see, you can read the scriptures with a great intellect, but if you haven’t got faith, you’ll read over a thing like this without understanding what it means. [00:40:15]

Faith lays hold upon the promise personally and individually. It is faith alone that enables a man to believe God’s word and to accept it fully and to rely upon it, and then of course, believing it, he then begins to pray for it. You see, the apostle was praying without ceasing for these Ephesians. [00:42:34]

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