Several years ago the Los Angeles Times reported the story of an elderly man and wife who were found dead in their apartment. Autopsies revealed that both had died of severe malnutrition, although investigators found a total of $40,000 stored in paper bags in a closet.
For many years Hetty Green was called America’s greatest miser. When she died in 1916, she left an estate valued at $100 million, an especially vast fortune for that day.
But she was so miserly that she ate cold oatmeal in order to save the expense of heating the water. When her son had a severe leg injury, she took so long trying to find a free clinic to treat him that his leg had to be amputated because of advanced infection.
It has been said that she hastened her own death by bringing on a fit of apoplexy while arguing the merits of skim milk because it was cheaper than whole milk.
The book of Ephesians is written to Christians who might be prone to treat their spiritual resources much like that miserly couple and Hetty Green treated their financial resources.
Such believers are in danger of suffering from spiritual malnutrition, because they do not take advantage of the great storehouse of spiritual nourishment and resources that is at their disposal.
Ephesians has been given such titles as the believer’s bank, the Christian’s checkbook, and the treasure house of the Bible.
This beautiful letter tells Christians of their great riches, inheritances, and fullness's in Jesus Christ and in His church.
It tells them what they possess and how they can claim and enjoy their possessions. During the great depression of the 1930s, many banks would allow their customers to withdraw no more than 10 percent of their accounts during a given period of time, because the banks did not have enough reserves to cover all deposits. But God’s heavenly bank has no such limitations or restrictions.
No Christian, therefore, has reason to be spiritually deprived, undernourished, or impoverished. In fact, he has no reason not to be completely healthy and immeasurably rich in the things of God.
The Lord’s heavenly resources are more than adequate to cover all our past debts, all our present liabilities, and all our future needs and still not reduce the heavenly assets.
That is the marvel of God’s gracious provision for His children. In this epistle Paul speaks of “the riches of His [God’s] grace” (1:7), “the unfathomable riches of Christ” (3:8), and “the riches of His glory” (3:16).
He calls the believer to “attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ” (4:13), to “be filled with the Spirit” (5:18), and to “be filled up to all the fulness of God” (3:19). In this book the word riches is used five times; grace twelve times; glory eight times; fulness, filled up, or fills six times; and the key phrase in Christ (or in Him) fifteen times.
Christ is the source, the sphere, and the guarantee of every spiritual blessing and of all spiritual riches, and those who are in Him have access to all that He is and has. In our union with Jesus Christ, God makes us “fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17) and to be of “one spirit with Him” (1 Cor. 6:17).
When we are “in Christ,” He is not ashamed to call us brothers (Heb. 2:11) and will share with us all that He possesses, “an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven” for us (1 Pet. 1:4).
Our riches are based on Christ’s grace (1:2, 6-7; 2:7), His peace (1:2), His will (1:5), His kind intention (1:9), His purpose (1:9, 11), His glory (1:12, 14), His calling (1:18), His inheritance (1:18), His power (1:19), His love (2:4), His workmanship (2:10), His Spirit (3:16), His gifts (4:11), His sacrifice (5:2), His strength (6:10), and His armor (6:11, 13)
