God is _over all_, gathering all worlds and beings under the shadow of His beneficent dominion. He is _through all_, and _in all_: an Omnipresence of love, righteousness and wisdom, actuating the powers of nature and of grace, inhabiting the Church and the heart of men. You need not go far to seek Him; if you believe in Him, you are yourself His temple.
[98] See ch. v. 14; 1 Tim. i. 17, ii. 5, 6, vi. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii. 11-13.
"But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore He saith: 'When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.' Now this, 'He ascended,' what is it but that He also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things. And He gave some _to be_ apostles; and some, prophets; and some evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints for work of ministration, for the building up of the body of Christ."--EPH. iv. 7-12.
In verse 7 the apostle passes from the unities of the Church to its diversities, from the common foundation of the Christian life to the variety presented in its superstructure. "To each single one of us was the grace given." The great gift of God in Christ is manifold in its distribution. Its manifestations are as various and fresh as the idiosyncrasies of human personality. There is no capacity of our nature, no element of human society which the gospel of Christ cannot sanctify and turn to good account.
All this the apostle keeps in view and allows for in his doctrine of the Church. He does not merge man in humanity, nor sacrifice the individual to the community. He claims for each believer direct fellowship with Christ and access to God. The earnestness with which in his earlier epistles St Paul insisted on the responsibilities of conscience and on the personal experience of salvation, leads him now to press the claims of the Church with equal vigour. He understands well that the person has no existence apart from the community, that our moral nature is essentially social and the religious life essentially fraternal. Its vital element is "the _communion_ of the Holy Spirit." Hence, to gather the real drift of this passage we must combine the first words of verse 7 with the last of verse 12: "To each single one of us was the grace given--in order to build up the body of Christ." God's grace is not bestowed upon us to diffuse and lose itself in our separate individualities; but that it may minister to one life and work towards one end and build up one great body in us all. The diversity subserves a higher unity. Through ten thousand channels, in ten thousand varied forms of personal influence and action, the stream of the grace of God flows on to the accomplishment of the eternal purpose.