Intro

This blog gains its name from the book Steele's Answers published in 1912. It began as an effort to blog through that book, posting each of the Questions and Answers in the book in the order in which they appeared. I started this on Dec. 10, 2011. I completed blogging from that book on July 11, 2015. Along the way, I began to also post snippets from Dr. Steele's other writings — and from some other holiness writers of his times. Since then, I have begun adding material from his Bible commentaries. I also re-blog many of the old posts.

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Filled With All the Fulness of God

"...so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:19 NRSV)

It becomes us not to dogmatize with confidence, but to speak with modesty on a theme so high and difficult. We would suggest that the petition is that ye may be so filled with the Holy Spirit and with all his gifts and graces, as God is filled. This is expressed in a mandatory form by Christ (Matt. 5:48), "Be ye also perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." Something more than initial Christian life is here prayed for by Paul in behalf of the church in Ephesus. The new birth begins with the love of God in the heart, shed abroad by the Holy Spirit. But such a heart is narrow and needs enlargement; it has remaining defilements which need cleansing. So there are steps and intervals between spiritual infancy and manhood. The crowning act of this process of development is here denoted by the being filled with all the fullness of God. Elsewhere it is expressed by the prayer, "The God of peace himself sanctified you wholly." — 1 Thess. 5:23, (R. V.) Both the filling and the sanctifying are in grammatical forms which imply singleness of action, however long the preparation may have been.

Half-Hours with St. Paul and Other Bible Readings Chapter 4.

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