“STRENGTHENED WITH POWER”
E. C. Burr
I suppose that these verses are among the most familiar in the Scriptures to us. They are perhaps among those the most quoted, the most used, in the service of God, indicating the high level of the truth which has been recovered to us. I believe the Lord would speak to us on a high level this afternoon. He would desire to do that. It is not that He does not come down to the level of our circumstances and feelings—how blessed it is that He does that—but He would use an occasion like this in order to strengthen us at a high level. It has been remarked that occasions like this are special in that they are not occasions that we have arranged. They come in time not of our arranging—in a sense we would rather they had not had to be arranged—but the Lord has arranged for them and we come together to hear His voice in regard to what He has arranged.
While most of the verses I have read are frequently quoted, they are rarely read in the context of verse 13, that is, “I beseech you not to faint through my tribulations for you, which is your glory”. It is in that connection that Paul speaks about being strengthened with power by the Father’s Spirit. Paul here feels he needs to comfort and establish the beloved saints at Ephesus, because he has spoken to them of being prisoner of Christ Jesus for the nations and it seems that, lest they should be cast down on his account, he says, “I beseech you not to faint through my tribulations for you, which is your glory”. I believe that if Paul would not have us faint on account of his tribulations, he would not have us faint on account of our own. What tribulation is there like death?—the tribulation which, unless the Lord comes, all of us have to face, and which some of us, many of us, have had to face already. But Paul would have us not faint through tribulation. Indeed he says here,
“my tribulations ... which is your glory”; elsewhere he says, “We … boast in tribulations”, Romans 5: 3.
Now Paul goes on to say, “For this reason ...”, that is to say, ‘Because you might faint’. I know there is another reason, a reason on the level of “Who is sufficient for these things?”, but “for this reason”, lest we should faint, Paul bows his knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. How many knees have been bowed to the Father on account of our brethren, our beloved brother in particular, and the rest of our beloved brethren directly affected today? But what Paul seeks, lest they faint, is that they might be strengthened by the Father’s Spirit in the inner man, and, beloved brethren, one would say to our beloved brother and his family, and to us all, that what the Father would do when there is a danger of our fainting is to strengthen us by His Spirit in the inner man. And He would do this, as Paul goes on to say, “according to the riches of his glory”; not on any level of paucity or weakness, but according to the riches of the Father’s glory. How great, how vast they are! The strengthening is according to them.
Then, “that the Christ may dwell, through faith, in your hearts”. Beloved, may it be so. May it be so for our beloved brethren and sisters, and indeed with us all, that there is a fresh experience of the Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith, and our freshly experiencing what it is to be rooted and founded in love.
Where are our foundations if they are not in love? We may say that our foundations are in Christ
and in His work and known in the Spirit, but we have a foundation together in love. We are knit together in love and we are rooted and founded in love and then we are “able to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height”, lifting us out of the dimensions of the sphere in which we are, which is characterized by death and, we might say, by its narrowness—the narrowness of death—but lifting us into the sphere of breadth and length and depth and height. And then, to crown it, “to know the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge”. Could you help being strengthened if you were feeling faint? Even the reading of the scripture would make you feel that the Father was strengthening you by His Spirit in the inner man. Beloved, let us not faint!
Paul, I think, knew what it was to faint. You can tell that by 2 Corinthians 4 because he says,
“We faint not” (verse 1), as if he had known what it was to faint; but the Father strengthens us in order that we might not faint. Beloved, may our beloved brethren and our sisters find this strengthening of the Father’s Spirit today, so that the heart goes up to God, “to him that is able to do far exceedingly above all which we ask or think”. How much there is to think about when one is bereaved; how much there is to ask about—direction, comfort, consolation, support. But there is One who is able to do far exceedingly above what our minds may reach to, even in relation to our own need.
Paul then brings them into the sphere of “glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages”. Well, our generation may not be here for very much longer, but the Father is able to strengthen every generation. One says this to the beloved young brethren, to the beloved children; the Father’s, Spirit
is able to strengthen even you. But “to him be glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages”.
Beloved, what a system it is! what an undying, system! a system where there is no mortality, no corruptibility, where nothing perishes. The Father’s Spirit strengthens us in relation to that sphere. If I may encourage our beloved brother and his family, an occasion like this is a time of resource and not of fainting—not that one thinks our beloved brethren faint—but there is a tendency to faint. The Father’s Spirit is a great resource above it all and there is the love of Christ and the love of the saints and the God who will be served eternally. Well, beloved, may we be strengthened today, for His name’s sake.