Excerpts from The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation (part 2)

 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe… (Eph. 1:15-19a)

In a mystery novel, the brilliant detective walks into the room and knows almost immediately that the duke slumped over in his chair did not die of natural causes. He’s certain someone else was in the room when his lordship met his untimely death. The police, of course, noted the wine glass on the tray but only he understood its significance: the dead man was a Methodist and a teetotaler.  

Those are clues for finding murderers and exoplanets but what clues would a detective (say, an apostolic detective) look for to determine whether God was in a church? St. Paul knew the signs and referred to them again and again. When you find (v. 15) the presence of faith in Jesus, combined with a love for all the saints, you can be sure God has been there. No one else leaves precisely those clues. They are as good as a fingerprint. They are God’s fingerprint.

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Notice the surprising pronoun: it’s not your inheritance or even our inheritance; it’s his inheritance—his inheritance in the saints. Paul frequently speaks about our inheritance, but here he has God’s inheritance in mind—and it is an inheritance to die for. And someone did. We often speak of Jesus dying to give us eternal life (which is wonderfully true) but he also died to give God a glorious inheritance in the saints. It’s not too much to say that Jesus was dying to have that inheritance.

But what does God need with an inheritance? Doesn’t everything already belong to him? Doesn’t he hold the intellectual property rights, since he thought of everything? Aren’t all use rights determined by him, since he made everything? Does not “every animal of the forests and the cattle on a thousand hills” belong to him (Psalm 50:10), along with every planet and sun and galaxy in the universe. Everything belongs to him by right, including every person who lives, has lived, or will live. But God is not satisfied to have us by right. He will have us also by love. He is not satisfied to leave us in our low estate, plagued by sorrow, sin, and weakness. He will have us exalted in joy, glory, and power. This is the meaning of the extravagant, inordinate, sacrificial life and death of Jesus.

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Paul also uses the word “glory” to describe the saints – “the glory of his inheritance.” When we look at the saints, we see old Mrs. Smudge, who can never manage to put her lipstick on straight. We see Mr. Contrary, who is about as much fun as a toothache. Then there’s Nancy Neurotic, who is a bundle of weirdness and John Washout, who has failed spectacularly at everything he ever put his hand to. And they – how easy it is to forget – see us. It sure doesn’t seem like glory that we are seeing.

Jon Foreman described the saints (including himself) as the “Beautiful Letdown.” He called us “the church of the dropouts, the losers, the sinners, the failures, and the fools.” Where is the glory in that?

It’s there, but it’s down deep and we only just get glimpses of it. But then our spiritual vision is monocular. We lack depth of vision, especially when we look at the saints. We see only two-dimensional, cartoon-like characters: flat, occasionally funny, often sad. But God has great depth perception.

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John of Krondstadt caught glimpses, but God sees Jesus in us with perfect acuity. Add Jesus, even to people like us, and you get glory. After coming here from Russia, comedian Yakov Smirnoff said the thing he loved most about America was its grocery stores. He’d say, “I’ll never forget walking down one of the aisles and seeing powdered milk; just add water and you get milk. Right next to it was powdered orange juice; just add water and you get orange juice. Then I saw baby powder, and I thought to myself, What a country!”[1]

When God looks at us, he sees something others overlook: Jesus Christ. Just add Jesus and you get … glory.

We are spiritually monocular – no depth perception – but we are also temporally myopic: the future is dark to us. But God sees deep and he sees far. He not only sees what we are, he sees what we will be. And it’s not that he looks into the future, like a prophet or fortune teller. He’s already there. He sees us, complete and resplendent in glory. He sees the Church, the Bride of Christ, effulgent, breathtakingly beautiful, unconquerably strong. He sees glory.

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…take a look around. What do you see? Mrs. Smudge? John Washout? Mr. Contrary? What does God see? “The riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.” Ask God to give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him so that we can see it too.

[1] From Mark Batterson, The Circle Maker, (Zondervan, 2011), pp. 134-135