The Main Thing

The Main Thing

Here is an excerpt from "Indwelt By The Triune God: An Exposition of Ephesians 3:14-19": 

Brothers and sisters, Christianity is not mainly a strategy to get people to heaven, though it succeeds in doing so; Christianity is not mainly a strategy to get people to live morally decent lives, though it succeeds in doing so; Christianity is not mainly a strategy to get people connected to one another and caring for one another, though it succeeds in doing so. I don’t mean to say that these things are unimportant, for the Bible is clear that they are important – very important. And yet, these things are secondary to the main thing: Christianity is mainly the way to get people to God – to be reconciled to God, to know God, to grasp the greatness of His grace, to carry on communion and conversation with the Lord Jesus Christ, to have His Spirit at work “in your inner being,” and to be satisfied and saturated “with all the fullness of God.”

Notice the flow of thought: we need “to be strengthened with power” in our heart so that we are enabled to have a deep and deepening relationship with Christ; the Holy Spirit is the One who transforms us in the depth of our being so that obstacles are cleared away and the heart is opened up more fully to the presence of Christ. As Christ is nearer and dearer to us, and as we are “rooted and grounded” in His love for us, we come to contemplate and comprehend more fully the full scope of His love for us; and the result of all this is that we “be filled with all the fullness of God.” Notice the Trinitarian nature of our spiritual life: the Spirit strengthens us “in [our] inner being,” Christ dwells “in [our] hearts through faith,” and as a result “the fullness of God” –– that is, the fullness of the Father who gifted His Son and Spirit to us in the first place – “the fullness of God” fills us up and shapes the entire course of our life. Ephesians 2:22 and 3:14-19 say the same thing: the church is indwelt by the Triune God. That is the main thing. That is the defining reality of true Christianity.