Will you please turn to the letter to the Ephesians, chapter 3? We will read from verse 14 through verse 21. I will read it first in English, and then our brother will read it in Chinese.
For this reason I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Of whom every family in the heavens and on earth is named,
That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory,
That ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man;
That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
To the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
May be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,
That ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.
Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
Unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever. Amen.
We thank God for gathering us together this time. I suppose we all remember that the theme of this conference is spiritual seeing.
We will approach this matter through the two prayers of the apostle Paul, because out of his own heart and experience, he prayed these prayers for the saints in Ephesus.
In his first prayer, he prayed to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory. In that prayer, he prayed that God would grant us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of God.
In other words, in this first prayer he prayed for the spirit of wisdom and revelation, because he knew that the natural man does not receive the things of the Holy Spirit.
Naturally, we are blind to spiritual things. We may even consider spiritual things to be folly. Not only do we not receive them; we do not even understand or know them, because spiritual things must be spiritually discerned.
Dear brothers and sisters, at the very outset we need to remember one thing: as we face spiritual things, we are naturally blind. Do not think that by our own intellect and our own mind we will be able to know spiritual things.
Paul himself experienced this. While he was a young man by the name of Saul, he was a Pharisee. He was religious, zealous, and had the desire to serve God; but he was totally blind spiritually.
He thought that by persecuting the church, he was serving God. It was not until one day, when that heavenly light shone upon him, blinding his natural eyes but opening his spiritual eyes, that he received the spirit of wisdom and revelation.
He saw the Righteous One. He saw that Jesus of Nazareth is the Righteous One, and that the One whom he persecuted is the Son of God. There, in the spirit of wisdom and revelation, he saw the Lord. It opened up his spiritual eyes and his spiritual life.
Dear brothers and sisters, in a very real way, that is what happened to each and every one of us. We do not begin our spiritual life until we receive revelation from above.
Naturally, we may look at our Lord Jesus as the best of men. We may consider Him a great teacher or a prophet from God. But it is impossible for us to really believe in Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Even though mentally we may believe it, spiritually we do not. Because of that, our spiritual life does not begin—not until one day God opens our inner eyes. It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.
Suddenly heaven is opened, and we see things spiritual. Brothers and sisters, that is how we begin when we are first saved.
We may pray to God before, but as one brother said, when we say “Father,” we are calling our father-in-law. It is only natural, because God was far, far away from us. We may believe that He exists, but He was a distant God, an unknowable God. We had no relationship or communication with Him at all.
Dear brothers and sisters, one day this blessed thing happens: revelation comes to us. Heaven is opened to us, and we can most naturally—I would say supernaturally naturally—call out to God. A relationship with God begins.
It all begins with the spirit of wisdom and revelation. Now remember: what happens in the beginning is the principle that will be applied throughout our whole spiritual life.
In every step of our spiritual life, it always begins with the spirit of wisdom and revelation. Only after we have received the spirit of wisdom and revelation do spiritual things become real to us.
We know that all the revelation of God is already written in the Bible. We have been reading the Bible. We have even memorized the Bible. We may even think that we understand what is said in the Bible.
But what you have read is objective truth. You know it is truth; it is eternal truth. But it is something outside of you. It is not living and working in your life.
Not until one day God opens your eyes and the spirit of wisdom and revelation is given, then the written Word becomes alive. It begins to operate in your life. It has power there.
So, brothers and sisters, in every step of our spiritual life, this is a lasting principle. We cannot ever depend upon our own intelligence. We have to depend upon our God.
We thank God because He is not a God who hides Himself. He is the God who reveals Himself, and it pleases Him to reveal His Son in us.
He will not only give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation; He will also enlighten the eyes of our heart. That is to say, He will also give us a renewed mind, that we may be able to understand what is going on in our spirit, explain it to other people, and share it with our brothers and sisters for the benefit of the whole church.
Yesterday morning, we mentioned that when this happens, three things are revealed and understood.
Number one: the hope of His calling. It is not our calling; it is His calling.
God calls every one of us. When He saves us, He calls us. He calls us not so much as to what we are going to do for Him, but that we may be what He wants us to be.
He wants us, who are redeemed by the precious blood, to be the body of Christ. I cannot think of anything more blessed than this.
He has called us into a relationship with Him, and that relationship is so intimate. He calls us to be the body of Christ.
Christ becomes the Head, and we become His body. We become the fulness of Christ, and we become the testimony of Christ. Christ and the church are one. They can never be separated, and this is for eternity.
Now, brothers and sisters, can you imagine anything more blessed than this? To put it another way, what is the body? What is the relationship between the Head and the body?
You remember when Saul persecuted the followers of Jesus. Do you know what our Lord Jesus said to him?
Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?
He did not say, “Why do you persecute My followers?” He said, “Why do you persecute Me?” Because those whom Saul persecuted were Himself. The Head complains when you touch the body, because the body and the Head are one.
They are one in life, one in fulness, and one in glory. That is His calling.
And what is the hope of His calling? When the body is fully grown, then it will become the eternal bride of the Lamb. What a blessed hope that is. This is the wisdom revealed to us.
Secondly, we mentioned the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. It is not our inheritance in Christ, but His inheritance in the saints.
When we think of our inheritance in Christ, how are we going to describe it? The riches of the glory of our inheritance in Christ Jesus—there is no way to describe its riches or to fathom its glory. We can only say that it is glory; it is riches.
But what the Word tells us is this: the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. We are to be the inheritance of Christ, an inheritance full of riches of glory, just as He is full of riches of glory to us.
Thirdly, there is the surpassing greatness of God’s power toward those who believe. It is the power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead.
It is the power that placed our Lord Jesus in the heavenlies at the right hand of God. It is the power that put everything under His feet, that He is above all things.
He is Head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him who filleth all in all.
All these things are included in spiritual seeing—all that God reveals to His people. All these things ought to be accomplished in Christ Jesus in the church.
So, brothers and sisters, this is the first prayer of the apostle Paul. May His prayer be answered abundantly among His people.
Now this morning we would like to continue on, and we will consider together Paul’s second prayer in the letter to the Ephesians.
He says, “I bow my knees before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” What is he going to pray for the Ephesians? What is the difference between this prayer and the first prayer?
In the first prayer, he prayed for understanding. He prayed that we may know, that we may know the full knowledge of God. We know what is in God—His purpose, His way, His heart. These are the things revealed to us, that we may know them.
Now, in the second prayer, it is different from the first prayer. In the first prayer, he prayed to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the second prayer, he prayed to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God is the Revealer of all wisdom. Therefore, you need to pray to God, who is the source of wisdom. What you have there is objective truth, the truth that is in Christ Jesus.
Everything is accomplished in Christ Jesus, and He does all for us. This is eternal truth. He has called us with a holy calling. He has filled us with all His fulness. All the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him, and ye are complete in Him.
The power manifested in Christ Jesus is also for us. These are the truths of God: they never change; they are always true. They are not affected by us or by circumstances, because it has all been done in Christ Jesus.
These eternal truths we need to know and understand. But in the second prayer, Paul prayed to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. When it comes to the matter of the Father, it refers to experience. There is a relationship between the Father and the Son.
So, the second prayer is actually for experience.
If you read this prayer very carefully, you will find in verse 18: “In order that ye may be fully able to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height.”
There is a little problem with translation. Here, in Darby’s version, which is very close to the original, he uses the word apprehend.
This word includes the idea of knowing, but it is deeper than merely knowing. It is apprehending.
In other words, it arrests us. It captures us. Or we capture it; we grasp it. Here you find something more than merely knowing, more than merely understanding.
What you know and understand begins to grasp you and arrest you, to capture you. Or you may say that you have captured it—you have taken hold of it. This refers to our experience. It becomes our subjective experience.
What we know becomes what we apprehend. And as you read on, when you begin to apprehend it, then you will be filled with it.
Oftentimes we think that when we see, we have it. Now, this is not absolutely true.
Seeing is believing. Why do we not believe? Because we do not see it. Spiritual things are unreal to us. They are in heaven, and we are on earth. We are in different realms.
That is the reason why the natural man cannot receive the things of the Holy Spirit. They are folly to him, because they are spiritually discerned.
When you are talking about spiritual things with a natural man, he may be very brilliant. When you talk with him about all things under heaven, he knows. But when you talk about things above the earth, it is folly to him. “I cannot believe because I do not see it.”
We often say faith is blind. But faith is not blind. So far as the natural eyes are concerned, it is blind; but faith comes by seeing, and that seeing is spiritual seeing.
Your inner eyes are opened. Because your inner eyes have been opened, you have received wisdom and revelation. Therefore, you can believe. It is hard not to believe.
When Christ is revealed to you as the Saviour, it is easy to believe and hard not to believe, because you see Him with your spiritual eyes. Jesus is real—more real than the things on earth.
Brothers and sisters, when spiritual seeing happens, it is as though you are lifted up to heaven. You begin to see things that the natural eyes can never see, and even hear things that cannot be told.
When light comes into your life, your whole being seems to be enlightened. You seem to be lifted up to heaven. You see things eternal, so different from things on earth. You are in another realm, and they are all so real, so living. He gives you faith.
But does it mean that you have laid hold of all that you have seen? You can see, like Moses, the whole land of Canaan, but he was not allowed to enter into it.
You have to go in and put your foot down. Wherever your foot is put down, that is your possession.
Brothers and sisters, I think we often have a mistaken idea. Because we see, we think that we have it. We think that we are already filled with it, that we are already in what we have seen and what we have seen is already in us.
You need another prayer. You need a prayer of apprehending—not only knowing, but apprehending; not only seeing, but possessing; not only knowing the eternal truth, but having personal experience of it.
This is the second prayer that Paul prayed for the Ephesian believers. Brothers and sisters, do you think you need such a prayer?
Now let us look at this prayer. In verse 16, Paul says:
That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory,
That ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man.
Here you find the inner man. In some Chinese versions it is translated as the heart, but this is not the heart. This is the inner man.
Who is the inner man? The inner man is the spirit of man. It is a little different from the heart.
Of course, the heart is the center of our being. It is the passage between the soul and the spirit. Usually, the heart includes all the functions of the soul, plus the conscience of the spirit. You can find this in Scripture, though we do not have time to go into it.
But when you speak of the inner man—sometimes called the hidden man of the heart—what does it refer to?
Brothers and sisters, we who believe in the Lord Jesus have a new spirit. We have a regenerated spirit, and we have Christ dwelling in our spirit.
Where does the Holy Spirit dwell? He dwells in our spirit, just as the ark dwelt in the Holy of Holies. The Spirit of God dwells in our spirit, and Christ dwells in our spirit. He becomes the life of our spirit.
Then you have the heart. The heart means the center of your being, and the center of our being is the soul, even though it is a passage to the spirit.
When you read the context, you find in verse 17, “That Christ may dwell through faith in your hearts.” The heart here really speaks of our soul, because it represents the center of our being.
Before we are regenerated, our spirit was dead. How, then, did we live? We lived by the created life of man, and this created life is a fallen life because man has sinned.
That which dwells in our soul is the self-life. We live by that self-life, and that is the reason why we have sinned, because that is our life. We live for ourselves.
Our thinking, our feeling, and our opinion are all governed by this self-life.
But after we are saved, something happens. Our spirit is renewed into life. The Holy Spirit and Christ dwell in our spirit. So you have a double life.
In your spirit, Christ is your life. In your soul, self is your life. After you are saved, I believe you all have experienced this: you find that there is a civil war going on in your life.
Sometimes you feel that you want to do God’s will. Where does that come from? It comes from your spirit, because Christ is the life of your spirit. It is heavenly, spiritual, and has His nature and His requirements.
After you are saved, deep within yourself you want to please God. You want to do His will. But at the same time, you find something within you that is still self-centred.
It says, “If you do the will of God, you will get lost. Be careful. Love yourself. Do not be so foolish. Do what you want to do. Gratify your own desire. That will make you happy.”
You are torn between these two things. Oftentimes you find that old Adam is too strong. Philip Melanchthon, the theologian of the Reformation, said, “Old Adam is too strong for young Philip.”
Martin Luther also said, “I am not afraid of all the popes and the cardinals. I am afraid of the pope within me.”
Now, brothers and sisters, do you have such experience? For example, according to your inner man, you want to do God’s will; but according to your outward man, you want your own way.
Oftentimes these two cross each other. Oftentimes you find that your spirit is weak, but your flesh is strong.
The Bible says, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” But when you come to the will of God, the spirit is weak and the flesh is strong.
Do you think you need to cry out to God and ask Him that He will strengthen your inner man with the power of His Spirit?
Do you think you need this prayer? If you do not pray this prayer, you may already see something heavenly, something spiritual, something eternal, and you desire it. You want it, but you are too weak. Your flesh is too strong.
We need to cry out to God that, according to the riches of His glory, He will strengthen our inner man through the power of the Holy Spirit.
When that happens, do you know what really happens within you? Paul says:
That Christ may dwell through faith in your hearts.
Christ dwells in our spirit, while self dwells in our heart. But when your spirit is strengthened by the Holy Spirit, Christ will come, as it were, from your spirit into your heart.
During this process, you are bearing the cross. Our Lord Jesus said:
If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
Do you think that you can see spiritual things without paying any cost? Spiritual things are wonderful, but they are so different from earthly things.
The flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. These are two opposites. They can never be together. It is either one or the other.
So, brothers and sisters, this matter of bearing the cross and following the Lord is a daily thing.
The moment you see spiritually, the moment a cross is formed. If you do not see anything spiritual, you have no cross, because you simply go on as you wish. But the moment you see something spiritual, immediately a cross is formed in your life.
Because the spiritual and the earthly cross each other. Heaven and earth cross each other. Christ and self cross each other.
If you do not bear the cross, what you see spiritually will never become your possession. That is why people may profess that they have seen, yet what they have seen never appears in their life. They become visionaries; there is no reality.
It is because there is a price to pay. Brothers and sisters, do not be too happy simply because you see, because it challenges you.
Every time you see something heavenly, it challenges you. It demands that you take up your cross and follow the Lord. Self has to be dethroned. Christ has to be enthroned in our hearts.
When this happens, do you know what you experience?
Being rooted and grounded in love,
That ye may be strong to apprehend with all the saints
What is the breadth and length and height and depth,
And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.
When Christ comes into your heart, what is your experience? You experience love. You experience the love of Christ. You experience a love that cannot be measured.
His love so constrains you that it gives you the strength to lay down everything for Him. This is the way to possess. This is the way to be filled with the fulness of God.
This is when you experience, with all the saints, the immeasurable love of Christ. How can anyone be able to pay any cost for heavenly things, and pay that cost willingly? It is impossible with man, but possible with God.
When your heart is filled with the love of Christ, what can you do? Look at Paul. If you read Philippians 3, after he had received that heavenly vision, what was gain to him became loss.
What he put his trust in before, he now considered loss. He said, “For the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, I count all things but loss.” He laid down everything.
It is love that makes this possible. Paul himself had gone through it. He knew that there is a price to pay, and it is the love of Christ that constrains you and brings you into possession.
The same principle works in all of us. I would like to give a personal testimony.
By the grace of God, I was saved in 1930, when I was fifteen. In 1933, when I was in college, the Lord began to open my eyes.
He showed me a little bit—just a little bit—of the body of Christ. I began to see that the body of Christ is one. Christ is not divided.
At that time, I was a Methodist. My father was a Methodist pastor. I was zealous for the Lord, and I was serving the Lord.
But when I saw that the body is one and Christ is not divided, I realized that I could not continue in any organized institution.
Thank God, two of my classmates had the same vision. Sometimes we would go into an empty classroom and pray together. Sometimes, on the Lord’s Day, we would go into an empty room and break bread together.
We did not want to belong to any earthly institution. We wanted to honour Christ as our Head, and we wanted to be open to all God’s people. The Lord began to work.
During that period, I was at a crossroads. If I wanted to follow my conviction, I had to leave the denomination.
But I loved my father. I did not want to hurt him. Yet if I did not follow my conviction, what would be the future? People began gathering together, and I was leading them.
Yet my two legs were on two boats, and these two boats were gradually separating apart. I was troubled by it.
At that time, there was a servant of God in Singapore, and we had meetings in a home. In the morning, that brother gave a message from Luke 14.
He spoke of how our Lord Jesus turned away from the multitude and said that if anyone wanted to follow Him, he must forsake all and follow Him.
Before you build a tower, you need to sit down and count the cost, whether you are able to finish it. If you are going to fight another king who comes with twenty thousand soldiers, and you have only ten thousand soldiers, then you had better ask for peace, because you cannot succeed.
In other words, if you want to follow the Lord, sit down—not by impulse—and count the cost before you begin anything.
That message touched me very deeply. At lunchtime, after we had lunch, we had a rest before the second meeting in the afternoon. I was sitting by myself, shaking.
I asked myself, “Is it because I have never sat down and counted my cost that I am now in such a situation?” So I began to count my cost.
If I followed my conviction, what would happen to me? The enemy knows how to pile on all these costs. I began to see that I would be discharged from my university, that my family would cast me out, and that all my future would be finished.
The more I counted the cost, the more costly it became. I told the Lord, “I cannot pay it. I cannot do it.”
Then I saw the Lord. I do not know whether it was a vision, a dream, or what it was, but I saw Him coming to me with a bleeding head.
And He said to me, “I did it all for you. What will you do for Me?”
What could I say? I said, “Lord, I am willing. I am willing to pay anything.”
His love melted me. By that love, He carried me through. What I am today began at that time.
So, brothers and sisters, seeing is believing. But believing alone is not enough. Trust and obey—there is no other way to be happy in Jesus.
You begin to apprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and depth and height of the love of Christ.
It is not merely a personal matter. You enter into fellowship with all the saints throughout the centuries who have been constrained by the love of Christ and have come into possession, filled with the fulness of God.
Is this what you are asking for? Is it what you are expecting? Or have you never asked?
Have you never asked Him to strengthen your inner man by the power of His Spirit? Have you never asked that Christ would come through faith into your heart?
Have you never asked that He would fill your heart with His love, a love that cannot be measured?
If you ask, if you expect it, you will find a power within you that will be more than sufficient for all your needs.
That is the way the church is built. That is the way God will be glorified in the church in Christ Jesus.
Dear brothers and sisters, is it real with us? Very, very soon we shall meet our Lord. Are we ready for Him?
Spiritual things are worth losing all and gaining eternity.
Dear Lord, may Thy Spirit search our hearts. May Thy love fill our hearts, that what Thou dost desire to do in us may all be done.
May Christ be glorified in the church.