Ephesians 3:17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, Two cognate conceptions — one borrowed from the processes of nature, and the other from human art — are employed to indicate at once the life, the growth, the strength, and the stability of a Christian's hope. A tree and a tower are the material objects which are used here as alphabetic letters to express a spiritual thought. More particularly, as a tree depends for life and growth upon its roots being embedded in a genial soil, and a tower depends for strength and stability upon its foundation, the apostle desires, by aid of these conceptions, to express and illustrate the corresponding features of the Christian life. If disciples are compared to living trees, love is the soil they grow in; if they ate compared to a building, love is the foundation on which it stands secure. Let us, at present, confine our attention to the first of these associated conceptions. I. THE SOIL IN WHICH THE LIVING TREE IS PLANTED: IT IS LOVE. A question rises here at the outset which must be settled ere we can advance a step with the exposition — What is the love in which the trees of righteousness are rooted? Whether is it God's love to man, or man's love to God and to his brother? The question admits of an answer at once easily intelligible and demonstrably true. The love in which the roots of faith strike down for nourishment is not human but Divine. It is not even that grace which is sovereign and Divine in its origin, but residing and acting in a renewed human heart: it is the attribute, and even the nature, of Deity, for "God is love." The soil which bears and nourishes the new life of man is the love of God in the gift of His Son. Having determined the first point — that the soil in which faith's roots can freely grow is found in God, not in man — we must now weigh well what attribute or manifestation of God it is that permits and invites the confidence of the fallen. The justice of God does not afford a soil on which the hope of sinners can thrive. As well might you expect the tender roots of a living plant to strike kindly down into hot ashes, as expect the trust of a guilty soul to go into the righteousness of God for support. No; there is nothing on this side but a fearful looking for of judgment to devour. Neither can human hopes grow in a mixture of mercy and justice such as men, in ignorance of the gospel, when conscience is uneasy, may mingle for themselves. There is only one place in which righteousness and peace can meet without mutually destroying each other, and that is in the Cross of Christ the Substitute. In Christ, but not elsewhere, God is at once just, and the justifier of the sinful who believe. II. THE PLANT THAT IS ROOTED IN THE GROUND REPRESENTS A BELIEVER GETTING ALL HIS SUPPORT AND ALL HIS SUSTENANCE FROM THE LOVE OF GOD WHICH IS IN CHRIST JESUS OUR LORD. Under this head, the first point that occurs is the very obvious one, that before any measure of growth can be obtained there must be life. Of what avail would richness of soil be to rows of dead branches? A withered branch draws no sap from the most fertile ground. Faith fastens on God's revealed love in the covenant, and satisfies itself from this inexhaustible treasury; but who and what first creates faith? The living will, by the instincts of nature, seek convenient food; but how shall the dead be restored to life? Let it be granted that faith, appropriating God's love, sustains the living, the question remains, Who quickens the dead? In the last resource, an answer to this question must be sought in the sovereignty of God and the ministry of the Spirit; but we must beware of so regarding God's part in it as to miss or neglect our own. "Live" is the first thing in the Spirit's ministry but "believe" is the first thing in the duty of man. To God's eye, looking downward from His own eternity, the order of events is, Live, that you may believe; but to our eye, as we stand on earth and look upwards, the order of events is, Believe, that you may live. Our part is not to produce life, but to exercise trust. Honour God by referring the origin of life to His sovereign grace and power; but obey God by believing in Jesus Christ whom He has sent. Let us neither intrude into His province nor neglect our own. But even when the plant is living, many obstacles may intervene to prevent it from freely pushing down its roots and drinking up the richness of the soil. Stones of stumbling lie in the way of the living root, and hinder its growth. Sometimes the history of vegetable life, concealed for generations, is afterwards thrown open. When a forest tree, that has outlived several generations of its owners, is at last thrown down by a tempest, and its roots all exposed to the inspection of the passer-by, many secret passages of its early history are at length revealed. Each bend of those gnarled roots has a tale to tell — of various offers and disappointments, and conflicts and victories. Here, in the centre of the circular mass, the main stem was pointing perpendicularly downward when the tree was young, perhaps a century ago; but ere it had gone far in that direction, it had struck against a stone. The fibre, then young and pliable, had sensitively turned as soon as it felt the obstacle, and grew for a little upward, as if retracing its steps. Then it had bent to one side and crept along the surface of the stone, intending, so to speak, to turn its flank and plunge into the deep earth beyond its outmost edge. Once or twice in its horizontal course it came to hollows in the stone, and ever instinctively seeking downward, penetrated to the bottom of each; but finding no opening, it came always up again, and pursued its course on the horizontal line. But, long ere it reached the margin of the great rock, it found a rent, narrow, indeed, but thorough. Into this minute opening it thrust a needle-like point. It succeeded in pushing that pioneer through. Tasting thereby of the rich soil below, it thence drew new strength for itself. Strong now in that acquired strength, it increased its bulk and rent the rock asunder. You may now see the two halves of the cleaved rock hanging on the mighty root that rent them. Now the victor has overcome its adversaries, and makes a show of them openly. It holds the remnants of its ancient enemy aloft as trophies of its victory. It is thus that a living soul struggles against all obstructions, and either round them or through them, penetrates into the unlimited love of God as it is in Christ. There the life satisfies itself and becomes strong. This man is more than conqueror through Him that loved him. When the saved are drawn at length from the ground in which the new life secretly grew, and all the history of their redemption revealed in the better land, themselves and others will read with interest the record of the struggle, and the final victory. It will then be seen that every hindrance which the tempter threw in faith's way only exercised and so strengthened faith. They who have had the hardest conflict in throwing obstacles aside that they might freely draw from redeeming love in Christ, draw most freely from that love when they reach it: as that woman who had pined many years in disease, and spent all her means on other physicians, drew proportionally a larger draught from the fountain when she touched its lip at last. (W. Arnot, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, |
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