Delighting in the Knowledge of God (Part Three)
‘Access Points’ to delighting in the Knowledge of God (Eph 1:15-23)
Desire for God is founded upon assurance that we are His children—that we are securely held in His heart of love. Knowing and delighting in God requires that we stir ourselves to seek Him (Deut 4:29). It is our privilege and responsibility to cultivate that desire. God promises that in our search for Him through the scriptural means; He will let us find Him. But our seeking after God must be characterized by a passion which will not give up or settle for distance and remoteness (Jim Berg, Changed into His Likeness, pp. 119-124).
Our panting after God will incorporate the scriptural path of meditation on the Word of God. When we feed on Scripture, we are thinking upon and applying to ourselves what we know of His works, ways, and wonders (J. I. Packer). This involves displaying to the eye of faith the beauty and desirability of God. Without this step we cannot expect to find our ultimate satisfaction in unseen things (2 Cor 4:16-18).
Lest we forget, delighting in God is commanded in Scripture (Ps 37:4). I don’t believe I’m going out on a limb to say that delighting in God is a felt experience. For the Scriptures utilize such terms as taste, pant after, thirst, pleasure and enjoyment. Romans chapter five describes the love of God being shed abroad, or poured out, in the heart of the believer (v. 5).
But this experience of delight in God is not the result of passivity on our part. Maurice Roberts says that if we do not stir ourselves to have fresh encounters with God, a chill will come over the soul and our hearts will go in search of other lovers (The Thought of God, by Maurice Roberts, “Christ Lover of our Souls,” Banner of Truth, 57-66).
Your Christianity is not safe in a compartment partitioned off from the rest of your life. The saving faith granted to every true believer produces a ‘whole-souled’ response to God. In other words, every part of our soul, every faculty of our being is engaged in trusting, enjoying, obeying, and worshipping God. Our affections play a central role in our devotion to the Lord. Delight in God is therefore not an option—we were created for it; it unites the heart and keeps us from dead formalism (protecting us from a divided heart characterized by outward religion only). Our active response to gospel love drives every proper motive in our Christian life. This is the Pauline model of sanctification.
Ecstasy and delight in God are essential to the believer’s soul—they promote sanctification. We are not meant to live without spiritual exhilaration. When the heart goes for long periods of time without warmth from God’s presence, there will be the temptation to find the emotions satisfied from earthly things, not the Spirit of God (Ibid.).
The soul of man was made to worship, to adore, and to pursue happiness. Our daily duty and privilege is to seek this experience from Him until we are joyful partakers of it. To taste this once is to not be satisfied nor rest content, but to seek to have it again and again.
Consider the example of George Muller who ran a large Christian orphanage in early 19ᵗʰ Century England. Busy as he was with the needs of the orphans, George Muller believed that his number one responsibility each day was to begin by finding his highest happiness in the Lord. Muller tended to remain in his quiet time until the joy of God had swept over his soul.
The experience of biblical enjoyment of God is not abnormal or extraordinary, but part of our inheritance—“the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge our inheritance” (Eph 1:14). “Pledge,” “earnest” or initial payment is not confined to the doctrinal, or theoretical, the “down payment” of our inheritance strongly implies that the enjoyment of God is to be expected, looked for (Ibid.).
When we delight ourselves in the Lord, He makes His wonderful love real to us. This gracious communication to us in this life by the Spirit generates felt joy and exhilaration in connection with the consciousness that one is a child of God. This experience is not confined to the N.T. God is my exceeding joy (Ps 43:4). Taste the goodness of the Lord (Ps 34:4). “Tasting” is experiential; it is the ecstasy of the Spirit poured out in the heart—that we might pant after Him, thirst for Him, desire to appear before Him, and long to enjoy His lovingkindness forever.
The godly expect this ongoing “tasting;” it is not just mental understanding, but heart-warming experiences. It is felt enjoyment of the love of God (Ps 63:2-7). How different is the heartless formalized religion that so often passes for genuine holiness. Without heart affection, our religious knowledge is offensive to God. True worship is not a function of rote learning. It is through true worship that believers find this felt blessing.
Delighting in God, as any other aspect of faith, is a spiritual art learned from the Word of God. But how do we go to God for the sense of His love? It begins with an act of faith. We must believe that such a thing as a sense of His love is to be had in this life. We must expect such an experience. Stoic professors of Christianity may scoff in their imagined wisdom at such a religious experience (and condescendingly smile at our reports). But the scriptural enjoyment of Christ is not fanaticism; it is the subjective fruit of the gospel in the heart-experience of the believer (Ibid.).
Are you convinced that the experience of Christ’s love can be felt? Then go to God in prayer for it. Go to the throne of grace for the choice favor of tasting, so as to be made aware (subjectively conscious of) the love God has for you in Christ. We often stray at this point—our tendency may be to come to God in prayer to tell Him how much we love Him. But, to experience God’s love it is necessary to put one self as far down as possible. Start in prayer by admitting how piteously low our love to God is. Assume a lowly place in praying, “For thus says the high and exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy, I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite” (Is 57:15) (See also Is 66:1-2).
Don’t make it a habit to pray without God’s power in your heart—it is folly, and it is harmful to treat prayer merely as an exercise of mind without expecting to emerge from the presence of God without a fresh token of His love. In true prayer there is a concurrence of man’s spirit WITH God’s Spirit. The Spirit assists with groaning too deep for words (Rom 8:26).
We are to treat God with the awe His majesty deserves—lowness, contrition, self-abasement; yet not with detached politeness. He expects us to wrestle with Him as Jacob did, casting ourselves at His feet and making mighty demands—deadly earnest to get His blessing, expiring at His feet if we do not succeed. Such concentration in prayer demands undistracted focus and an unhurried, settled mind before His felt presence. The believer rises from his knees at times with joy inexpressible at the prospect of having received the unforgettable impression of Christ’s love upon his spirit (Ibid.).
Spiritual decline sets in when we lack the commitment to take hold of God and when we fail to pursue delight in Him. Without a commitment to take hold of God in the above way, there is a danger of learning to tolerate living away from the experience of the love of Christ. Our corruptions work against daring to draw near. We tend to retreat into the shadows away from Christ for months on end until we become strangers to the inward enjoyment of the love of Christ in the heart.
A spiritual chill comes over the soul—callousness insulates the spirit from intimacy with God. Worldliness, like cracked layers of paint, coats the soul and makes the believer accustomed to feeling nothing. Busy-ness for God may continue. But it is dangerous to live without the heart-warmings that are all important to spiritual well-being.
The next step of spiritual declension involves slipping into dead formalism (outward religion void of spiritual passion). Prayer becomes mere duty and routine. Bible reading is kept up for appearance, or to salve the conscience. There is an accompanying loss of joy in things spiritual—without relish for the things of God. In this condition we tend to choose companions that are cool regarding devotion to Christ, who do not challenge us spiritually. It is surprising that this condition is not more readily diagnosed—but like the church of Ephesus of Revelation 2, works, labor, patience, zeal, and orthodoxy may conceal a heart that has left its first love of Christ.
A heart that is spiritually lukewarm is often concealed in Christian workers who may be actively fighting against ecumenism, liberalism, and secularism. Countless folks are convinced that they are serving God even though they are engaged in spiritual decline.
When we stir ourselves to experience the love of God, we will have strength against temptation and we will have effectiveness in service. Without fresh encounters with Christ, the soul becomes restless for pleasure. It is unfortified against an ambush by Satan. The love of God experienced puts iron into the backbone—the believer relishing God’s love can easily say no to the world’s solicitations. But without these heart warmings of God’s love in Christ, the soul is far too ready to compromise when temporal things compete for its affection.
The Lord requires we walk close to Him. Without conscientious fellowship we will lose the opportunity for genuine service. Spiritual effectiveness comes out of the secret place with God.
Guarding time with the Lord in which we seek Him passionately births new vision and new triumphs. To pray well is to have studied well (Martin Luther). Nothing must be permitted to weaken our cultivation of fellowship with Christ. All of our outward duties need to be re-molded to be a means of fellowship with God. Fruit-bearing is a byproduct of abiding in Christ (Jn 15:4-5).
Abiding in Christ is our number one priority—we are to live unto God, upon God, and for God. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain (Phil 1:21). To be effective we must excel at fellowship with Christ. The power to influence others spiritually is a function of emerging from our prayer closets as those melted by gospel love (Maurice Roberts).
The SECOND truth on delighting in the knowledge of God to be revealed from our passage is, “what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints?” (v. 18b). This truth continues the “glory” theme. At the consummation of the age our sonship will become instantly visible to the watching universe (see 1:14; Rom 8:19, 23; 1 Jn 3:1). Now concerning God’s glory in the Church, the Bride of Christ, the Apostle John tells us in his gospel that the saints are a gift from the Father to the Son (see Jn 6 and 17). In essence the Father selected out a “Bride” for His Son—the redeemed make up this celestial Bride. God’s valuation of us His people is established by His valuation of the Son (Jn 17:22-23).
It is precisely at this point where we need the Spirit’s help. Our slumbering spiritual eyes must be opened to take in this glorious spiritual light. We need to know who we are and what our destiny is as God sees it. We must move from doubt to certainty in the matter of these spiritual realities if we are to grow to maturity. When we are preoccupied with basing our intrinsic worth on temporal things it inhibits our ability to reason spiritually—the issue is not net worth in the world, but our identity in Christ! Paul prays that his readers would grasp the riches of God’s inheritance in the saints.
God’s inheritance is not the holy angels, nor is it the nearly infinite rainbow of beautiful galaxies, it is a company of redeemed sinners who are conformed to their Savior and Head; the society of the redeemed that make up God’s eternal companions. This is precisely why Paul prays for a spirit of wisdom and revelation, and for enlightened eyes of the heart—this will not grip you so as to captivate and ravish your heart unless the Holy Spirit reveals it to you. When He does reveal it to you, it will prove to be an incentive to live in light of the glory of God and in view of heaven and the riches of glory to be lavished upon you (see Eph 1:8; 2:7). Is it any wonder Paul that wants us to grasp who we are in Christ, for God has made us to be His inheritance in Christ.
We who make up the company of the redeemed are Christ’s inheritance, His Bride—that the Lord Jesus Christ might be the First-born among many brethren (Rom 8:29). Wonder of wonders— He inherits us and we inherit Him!
Not only do we form Christ’s inheritance, the riches of God in Christ comprise our inheritance (including the physical creation)! Abraham, a type of every believer lived in tents his whole life even though he was heir of the world—Rom 4:13. Yes, the meek shall inherit the earth. Abraham is the prototypical heir of the world. He was willing to live in a tent, owning no land except for his wife’s grave plot. He could hold things loosely in his mortal life because he knew that in the age to come he would inherit it all as ‘God’s country, God’s city’ (Heb 11:14-16). It’s reminiscent of ‘Pilgrim’ leaving the city of destruction in order to enter the celestial city (in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress).
The subject of the saints as Christ’s inheritance opens up for us the mutual love typified in the marriage covenant. Heaven is about mutuality—I am my Beloved’s and He is mine (Song of Songs 6:3). In heaven mutual ownership will take our joy over the top. This is to be a source of delight to us —the marriage metaphor is a figure of speech filled with incredible promises of mutuality and intimate love. “And I have made Thy Name known to them and will make it known; that the love where with Thou didst love Me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn 17:26). Concerning this ‘other worldly love,’ C. S. Lewis offered the following contrast: compared to the Lord dwelling with the redeemed in glory, the most ideal romance among mortals is like a glass of milk mixed with water—it’s insipid by comparison.
Mutuality means that we give ourselves to God and He to us in a covenant of co-ownership. As Spurgeon said, “I’ll be able to say on that day, God on yonder throne is mine!” This is where God is taking us—glory is moving closer and closer to us. In glory our fellowship with the Lord will be one of perfect intimacy. “Our communion with God lies in his giving himself to us and our giving ourselves and all that he requires to him” (John Owen, Communion with God, abridged version, Banner of Truth, p. 3). Heaven will be the consummation of the great mystery, Christ in you and you in Christ (Col 1:27.)
To be in God’s presence is to behold God. The pure pleasure involved in beholding God has begun in the saints (2 Cor 3:18). But for the present in our beholding we see in a mirror dimly—then it will be face to face. “And it will be said on that day, ‘Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us” (Is 25:9).
Mutuality is alluded to in a number of Scripture passages on heaven. “And there shall no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His bondservants shall serve Him; and they shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads” (Rev 22:3-4).
Regarding the bliss of seeing the glory of Christ, the Reformers referred to “The beatific vision.” To beatify is to bring a person to a state of exalted joy above anything possible on earth. It means the vision that makes us blessed, or happy. ‘Beatific’ is from two Latin words, “beatus”, blessed, and “facere,” to make. To look at God will change us and make us like Him, “We shall be with Him and see Him as He is (1 Jn 3:2).
The beatific vision which will bring us endless exalted joy will be our beholding of Christ in His glory (this is what our Lord prayed for in John 17:24—that the saints would behold His glory.) The sight of Christ glorified will ravish our souls (2 Thess 1:10). We will never cease to marvel at the sight of God looking out at us through eyes of flesh—our amazement will never cease as we behold our glorified Savior with the marks of our atonement on His glorified body. The slain Lamb is the center of heaven; the Light of heaven. The invalid Puritan Isaac Ambrose, who from his convalescent bed meditated on the glory of Christ for thirty years, said, God’s desire is to converse with us after our [human] form (Isaac Ambrose, Looking Unto Jesus, p. 210). In other words, our communion with the Godhead is through Christ—God in our human nature.
This vision of God in Christ will be the consummation of our knowing God and will give us full delight and joy for all eternity. “In your presence is fullness of joy, in your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps 16:11) (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, pp. 189-190).
Your present ability to behold the Lord, albeit in a mirror dimly, is what differentiates you from the unsaved around you. Scripture describes the redeemed in 2 Corinthians 3:14-18 as the unveiled ones. Beholding the glory of the Lord is a gift of sovereign grace that has begun for the redeemed (2 Cor 4:4-6). Our present beholding is preparing us for eternal beholding.
Though you behold in a mirror dimly now, you are being fitted to behold face to face. In order to behold face to face, you must be a partaker of God’s holiness so that you can look upon Him without fear, shame, and covering your face. This will happen the moment the true believer sees Christ—when we see Him we will be like Him for we shall see Him as He is (1 Jn 3:2; Phil 3:20-21).
Your eternal vocation will involve beholding—it will be your source of ravishment and bliss. We would ask by way of application: is beholding so as to delight in the Lord a part of your vocation now? If so, then you are experiencing the answer to the prayer in our text—the petition for a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of the Lord with the eyes of the heart being enlightened.
Our blessed privilege of beholding the glory of the Lord now by faith in His Word requires a brief clarification: this beholding does not mean attempting to picture Christ’s glorified appearance. What it does mean is thinking upon Christ’s humiliation; character; majesty; vastness; and sufficiency. Christ’s glory is revealed in His character and in His work of redemption. His redemptive work purchased the grace for us described in the gospel promises—dwelling upon Christ as He is offered in the gospel promises is inseparable from beholding.
I find myself agreeing with Maurice Roberts and other divines who caution us about studying God’s attributes in a cold, sterile, philosophic manner. Our study of God ought to be in a doxological mindset (or worshipful mindset) – that is for the purpose of delight and enjoyment and adoration and relational knowledge of Him. This exhortation is a logical bridge to our third access point in Paul’s prayer.
Vv. 19-20 – Now referring back to our passage in Paul’s prayer, the THIRD truth to be revealed in order to increase our knowledge of God is, “what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe?” (v. 19, 20 ff.) What comes to mind when you think of a demonstration of God’s power? Perhaps the parting of the Red Sea? Or the very act of creation when by the Word of the Lord trillions of plants and animals sprang to life from dust. Or maybe the explosion of a supernova creating a glowing cloud scores of light years in diameter.
Well, Paul’s choice for our knowledge of God’s power is in keeping with the acts of God that concern you directly—that is His sovereign grace revealed in the gospel. Paul highlights the power of God exerted when Christ was raised from the dead. The resurrection of Christ is the vindication of Christ. It is the destruction of sin; it is the conquest of death. It is the guarantee of our justification. It is the proof positive and pledge of your eternal glory. No wonder Paul regarded God’s power in the resurrection to be an avenue for a growing knowledge of the Lord. Paul wanted to know Christ and the power of His resurrection (Phil 3:10).
Beloved, the death and resurrection of Christ is the cause of your new birth. God can make a sinner a new creature by means of the new birth because Christ has dealt decisively with sin and spiritual deadness by means of the cross and the empty tomb. To be made alive spiritually at the moment of regeneration is described in Ephesians 2 and Colossians 2 as “being raised with Christ.”
But in these verses (19, 20 ff.) the Apostle tells us something amazing about our new birth. “The same superhuman power was needed to make us believe, as was needed and exerted to raise Christ from the dead (vs. 20)” (JFB Commentary, 1 vol. p. 1282). Paul is stating concerning the greatness of God’s power toward us who believe—that these acts of God are “in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places” (1:19-20).
Think of it, the magnitude of power necessary to raise Christ from the dead was also exerted by God when He reached down and saved you! This is tied to your knowledge of the Lord; it must sink in deeply; it must be perceived by the “eyes of your heart” that a miracle of Almighty God was necessary to produce spiritual life and saving faith in you (prior to your new birth, spiritually you were as dead as stinking Lazarus in his tomb).
Not only is the resurrection of Christ the cause for the new birth, resurrection is an analogy for the new birth (see Eph 2 and Col 2 a continuation of the same line or argument. Salvation analogies include: creation, resurrection, and birth). In each case there is not cooperation, but divine (unilateral) action upon dead matter, a dead creature, or an utterly dependent fetus.
The new birth is a spiritual resurrection which joins us to Christ and seats us in the heavenlies (Eph 2:6). That is our destination—because of union with Christ heaven is the proper place we belong. But our right to be there, our qualification to be there, our fitness to be there is all due to our union with a Perfect Savior who is able to save to the uttermost (Heb 7:25).
What a deep mystery, for our sakes, the only begotten Son of God lay in a dark stone tomb as a human corpse—the Creator of the universe a cadaver. Then He was raised with power (Rom 1:4) and seated above all authority. God, by means of the wounds of Christ, was conquering His enemies and ours. And our enemies were: sin, death, hell, the world, the flesh, the devil, and the condemnation of God’s law.
After His death on the cross, He went from a corpse to Ruler of the universe. He did all this to resurrect His eternal Bride, the Church. He had to span the chasm that lay between dust and glory by taking on a body of dust; He had to span the chasm that lay between death and the throne of heaven so that we could go from dying to glorified. He had to span the gap between depravity and burning holiness so that we could go from rebels to worshippers.
This is why it says He is the Alpha and Omega: because He has first place in everything—as He says of Himself in Revelation 1:18, “I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.” He has first place in everything; that is the Father’s purpose (Col 1:18). Christ completely spans the infinite gap between self-existent holy God and the defiled creature of dust. By the sacrifice of Himself, Christ has dealt decisively with everything that separates us from God, and He has dealt decisively with everything that disqualifies us from eternal life and blessedness. How we need to ‘feed’ upon Christ as our qualification for divine favor and acceptance.
God’s attributes were not put on display all at once until the work of Christ. Understanding this fact is an important access point to your growth in the knowledge of God. Here’s why, consider that God has literally harnessed His attributes and put them to work in your salvation.
Think of it—He is exercising His infinite love, wisdom, and power (which are all resident in Christ) in order to bring you to glory. God is exerting His attributes for His own glory; but also for your eternal welfare and glory. This is so important to our topic—God wants you to grow in the knowledge of Him by seeing His attributes at work, harnessed in order to save you.
God can only be known in covenant because He dwells in burning holiness—the cherubim cover their faces as they call out holy, holy, holy. God says who would dare to risk his life by approaching me—I dwell in unapproachable light (Jer 30:21; 1 Tim 6:16).
God cannot be known and enjoyed apart from a place of safety—creating a place of safety is what He has done in placing us in Christ, our ‘City of Refuge” (Heb 6:13-20). By His wisdom, power, and love, God has carved out a place of protection for us in the wounds, blood, and body of Christ. Christ is given to us as our covenant with God (Is 42:6; 49:8).
Let’s go even deeper—the unsearchable riches of the Godhead are put on display in Christ— which means that HOW God is taking the Church from dust to glory has become the primary revealer of the Godhead to the holy angels (Eph 3:8-10).
It says in 2 Peter 1:3-4 that the precious and magnificent promises of the Gospel are given to us out of (or by means of) God’s own glory and excellence. Thus the Gospel promises to forgive you and to adopt you in Christ are promises cast in the foundry of God’s attributes. God took His own attributes and poured them into the mould of the Gospel promises. God wants you to know Him better and better as you take delight in all that He is toward you in Christ. We are to dwell upon Him as the God of all grace who is exercising His mighty attributes on our behalf. This makes us an owner, not merely a spectator or observer.
God exports His life, love, blessedness, and righteousness across time and eternity and gives Himself to us in Christ. This is why at the moment of salvation (2 Cor 4:4-6) the believing sinner beholds God Almighty’s glory in the face of Christ. The sinner sees for the very first time WHO God is—that God plucks out His own heart (so to speak) in the giving of His Son in order to reconcile hostile sinners to Himself. It’s God’s attributes harnessed in the Person and work of Christ in order to bring us to God.
When the sinner sees by faith that his own eternal welfare and God’s glory are forever joined and bound up together in the Person of Christ—hostility toward God is purged from the sinner’s heart; it’s impossible for the former enmity to remain there. When by faith the believing sinner beholds this display of divine love; it casts enmity out of his heart—it makes a friend of a former enemy (it reconciles – Col 1:21-22). The exercise of God’s immutable and glorious attributes (in the redemptive work of Christ) accomplishes not only our highest good (eternal salvation)—but it also is the highest form of God’s self-revelation; this revelation of God in our behalf will redound to the eternal glory to God.
We will experience delight when we meditate upon who God is (it is always who God is toward you in Christ. It is always Christ’s perfect suitability for our every need. It is always Christ who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor 1:30). Christ is the wisdom and power of God; He holds His offices of Prophet, Priest, and King in order to bring you all the way to God.
This is the truth of the Gospel which dispels lies about God; lies that kept the soul in its dark dungeon. Now that we are sons of light; we find that we have communion with God when we take Christ for the reasons God gave Him (acceptance, forgiveness, righteousness, access). God is exalted when you keep taking Christ for the reasons the Father gave Him.
Consider what Owen says in his book, Communion with God, “We must assure ourselves that there is nothing more acceptable to God than to keep our hearts filled with him as the eternal source of all that rich grace which flows out to sinners in the blood of Jesus. Our resistance to walking close with God stems from the fact that we do not behold and receive his love. The more we see God’s love by faith, the more will we delight in him” (Owen, p. 32).
God’s giving of himself as an all-sufficient God, to be enjoyed by his creatures, to provide for all their needs out of himself, is only revealed in Christ. In Christ, God is in covenant with his people to be a Father to them. In this covenant he has promised to lay out himself as the one who alone can meet the needs of his creatures. In Christ, God has promised to give himself to them for their eternal good and to be their exceedingly great reward (Ibid, p. 87).
We must be convinced that God will use all his glorious attributes for our good. He has set forth Christ to be the Lord our Righteousness (Isaiah 45:24,25; 1 Cor. 1:30; 2 Cor. 5:18). We must be convinced that His attributes are powerful and able to bring us into eternal glory. To assure us of this, God wraps up the whole covenant of grace in one promise: “I will be your God.” Now we know that this Gospel covenant is confirmed in the blood of Christ. To be in Christ by faith is to know the wonder, excellence, wisdom and knowledge of God exercised in the salvation of sinners (Ibid, pp. 88-89).
Going to Christ as one’s sin bearer is the believer’s daily work. Christ calls the believer to daily lay the burden of their sins upon him. By faith the saints are to see God laying their sins upon Christ. This is what it means to know Christ crucified. Believers draw near and take from Him that righteousness which he has wrought for them, so fulfilling what Paul taught (2 Cor. 5:21). Christ is delighted that his saints should always hold communion with him by giving him their sins and receiving his righteousness. We commune with Christ when we keep taking Him to be our righteousness (Ibid, p. 144).
Vv. 21-23 – In these verses Paul declares the power of Christ over everything for the sake of the church. The living, ruling Christ pervaded the consciousness of the early church. The saints who made up the early church exhibited a fearless trust that nothing could stand in the way of their inheriting of the promises; for Christ, our Mediator and Priest is our Mediatorial King—He orders all things from His sovereign throne. This enabled them to witness with boldness and to face a martyr’s death.
CONCLUSION: When we come to the place where we attempt to comprehend God and worship Him, our meditation must focus upon HOW God has revealed Himself—we must return to our passage—that God has revealed Himself in guaranteed hope, in promised inheritance, and in matchless saving power—these three are access points to delight in God.
God wants you to learn to pray personally for spiritual understanding; for it is God’s way of furthering disclosures of Himself. It is God’s way of moving us from beholding to delight to worship. The benefits are so great; to have a proper estimate of your riches in Christ; to have a well-founded hope of salvation is the support and stability for the soul. A full Christ-centered assurance that the promises will be realized by you is a living sanctifying force! This is the joy for which we were created anew. Christ has purchased this for us; it is our birthright in Him. The more we believe this to be true; the more we will find happiness in the Lord accessible to us.