HE MEASURE OF GRACE'

'But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the
measure of the gift of Christ.'--Eph. iv. 7 (R.V.).

The Apostle here makes a swift transition from the thought of the unity
of the Church to the variety of gifts to the individual. 'Each' is
contrasted with 'all.' The Father who stands in so blessed and gracious
a relationship to the united whole also sustains an equally gracious and
blessed relationship to each individual in that whole. It is because
each receives His individual gift that God works in all. The Christian
community is the perfection of individualism and of collectivism, and
this rich variety of the gifts of grace is here urged as a reason
additional to the unity of the one body, for the exhortation to the
endeavour to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

I. Each Christian soul receives grace through Christ.

The more accurate rendering of the Revised Version reads '_the_ grace,'
and the definite article points to it as a definite and familiar fact in
the Ephesian believers to which the Apostle could point with the
certainty that their own consciousness would confirm his statement. The
wording of the Greek further implies that the grace was given at a
definite point in the past, which is most naturally taken to have been
the moment in which each believer laid hold on Jesus by faith. It is
further to be noted that the content of the gift is the grace itself and
not the graces which are its product and manifestation in the Christian
life. And this distinction, which is in accordance with Paul's habitual
teaching, leads us to the conclusion, that the essential character of
the grace given through the act of our individual faith is that of a new
vital force, flowing into and transforming the individual life. From
that unspeakable gift which Paul supposed to be verifiable by the
individual experience of every Christian, there would follow the graces
of Christian character in which would be included the deepening and
purifying of all the natural capacities of the individual self, and the
casting out from thence of all that was contrary to the transforming
power of the new life.

Such an utterance as this, so quietly and confidently taking for granted
that the experience of every believer verifies it in his own case, may
well drive us all to look more earnestly into our own hearts, to see
whether in them are any traces of a similar experience.