I. The character of the inheritance. The teaching of the passage is that heaven is likest the selectest moments of devotion that a Christian has on earth. If you want to know most really and most truly what that "rest which remaineth for the people of God" is, think of what the fruits of God's working in your hearts have already been, and expand and glorify these into "an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection." Heaven is the perfecting of the life of the Spirit begun here, and the loftiest attainments of that life here are but the beginnings and infantile movements of immature beings.
II. We gather from the passage some thoughts with regard to the true grounds of certainty that we shall ultimately possess the fulness of the inheritance. The true ground for certainly lies in this: that you have the Spirit in your heart, operating its own likeness and moulding you, sealing you after its own stamp and image. This idea is a very grand and fruitful one. There are many grounds on which, as I think, this principle rests: that the present possession of this Holy Spirit is the true certainty of the full possession hereafter. (1) The very fact of such a relation between man and God is itself the great assurance of immortality and everlasting life. (2) The characteristics that are produced by this Holy Spirit's indwelling, both in their perfectness and their imperfection, are the great guarantee of the inheritance being ours. (3) The Holy Spirit in a man's heart makes him desire and believe in the inheritance.
A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester,p. 42.
References: Ephesians 1:13; Ephesians 1:14. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. vii., No. 358; vol. xxii., No. 1284; E. C. Hall, Sermons,1st series, p. 238; Homilist,3rd series, vol. i., p. 315; Ibid.,vol. vii., p. 163; H. W. Beecher, Sermons,vol. ii., p. 225; A. Maclaren, Sermons in Union Chapel, Manchester,p. 47. Ephesians 1:14. Ibid., A Year's Ministry,p. 233; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 202.Ephesians 1:15. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 275.