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Pondering Pascal’s Wager 177
In other words, God does not ordain that his illumining work in the
human mind triumph without warfare. God could, if he willed, make
himself so consistently clear and compelling that such experiences of
clouded sight would never happen. But we know from Scripture, as
well as from our own experience, that this is not the way he works.
Paul would not pray for the Ephesians the way he does if God sustained
unbroken the clearest views of his glory in all the saints. He prays
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 the
glory of his inheritance in the saints. (Eph. 1:17–18)
Paul is asking that God would cause the believers to see, with the “eyes
of your hearts,” the compelling glory that God has promised them in
his word—the hope of their calling and the glory of his inheritance.
The spiritual sight of these things is real, but it is embattled. We fight
by prayer, and by a steady gaze at the word of God, for the sight of his
glory that sustains our well-grounded hope.
Again Paul prays that the Ephesians
may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the
breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of
Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the
fullness of God. (Eph. 3:18–19)
There is a kind of “strength” that is not muscular but spiritual. It is
strength “to comprehend . . . and to know the love of Christ” revealed
in the word of God. The love of Christ has a “breadth and length and
height and depth” that makes it an inimitable, self-authenticating reality.
This can be seen by the eyes of the heart when God’s “strength” of
sight is given. And when it is seen for what it is, we know it is real. No
mere human can produce it. But this conviction is an embattled conviction.
That’s why Paul is praying for them.
Suppose someone should ask, “Well, if the sight of God’s divine reality
in the Scriptures can be bright one day and clouded the next, how
are we to know which day is to be believed?” My answer is this: If you