Ephesians 1:18

At verse 15 the apostle stops being a teacher and becomes someone praying for others. You will find that he never pulls down in prayer what he had built up as a teacher. You will sometimes hear people asking God to love them. I could never make such a prayer... To ask God to love me, to make me a co-heir with Christ, to appoint me to heavenly places in Him! I will make a prayer much more humbling than that. I am so blessed in my calling, so poor in my enjoyment! If God has lit a candle, I will not ask Him to light it, but to take the film from my eyes, that I may see what He has done.

The knowledge of Christ that the apostle prays for is not just intellectual knowledge. It is a heart acquaintance with a Person. That is why he says (as the text should read), "being enlightened in the eyes of your heart." Again and again we see in Scripture, and learn by experience, that God teaches through the affections.

There is no point in making anatomical distinctions between head and heart... All knowledge must in fact involve the brain — head knowledge, as people say. So what does "the eyes of your heart" mean? The verse has just insisted that this knowledge comes from God by the revelation of His Spirit. It can only mean that this knowledge is also tied in a special way to the affections.

What then is the hope He has called us to? In Ephesians it is not the Lord's coming, and this is because of the height of the position we are set in, seated in the heavenly places in Christ. His coming would, as it were, disturb the seated ones. The hope of it is the full realisation, in the eternal glory, of all that God has called us into in Christ. It is the fruit of what He planned from a past eternity. If only we were more struck by how completely heavenly and eternal such a calling is! God planned it for us in Christ before the world was founded. We have it in Him in the heavenly places. And we will know it in full when we are made completely like Him in the glory of God for ever. No link with time or the course of this world: the Christian belongs to eternity.

With remarkable clearness the apostle distinguishes the hope from the inheritance of glory... The earlier verses of the chapter detail the calling of God. The central verses develop the riches of the glory of God's inheritance. He does not take that inheritance directly and personally, so to speak — not in Christ alone. He takes it in the saints too. The saints are not the inheritance. They are the heirs — heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.

Just as a king might occupy conquered territory by putting his troops and officials in possession, so it will be then. We shall get our inheritance when Christ gets His. This is what the apostle means when he prays that we may know "what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints." It is not that the saints are His inheritance, but that He takes up His inheritance in His saints, by putting His saints in possession.

We must first grasp the mind of God about the wonderful position the believer and the church have before God and the Father. Only then can we intelligently value a walk that matches it here on earth.