Ephesians 3:14-21
It’s important that we avail ourselves of the most wonderful privilege God has given us in opening the way for us to pray to Him. He stands ready to hear our requests and to answer according to His will.
The trouble for me is that I too often pray selfish and/or temporal prayers. I spend more time asking for things that matter today, than for ones that have eternal value. I think many of us do this and it is why in this series of messages we will be looking at Paul’s Powerful Prayers and learning how he prayed.
The first prayer we are studying is found in Ephesians 3:14-19. Paul has just finished speaking about how Christ brings Jews and Gentiles together into one body (the church) through Christ Jesus. All of the blessings of this new relationship we enjoy with one another is because of His magnanimous grace that redeems us from our sins and places us in Christ. “For this reason” or because of these special blessings, Paul says he prayed for the Ephesian believers that three specific things would be granted to them.
Each of the three things Paul asks of God is really a stepping stone to the next thing he asks. In other words, His third request is dependent on his second one. And, his second request is dependent on his first one. Consequently, the thing Paul wants God to grant to these believers more than anything else is that they would be “strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man.”
The “inner man” is that part of us that is alive to God (cf. Ephesians 2:1) and constitutes our new nature received when we trusted Christ for salvation. This “inner man” delights in the Law of God (Romans 7:22) and is renewed every day (2 Corinthians 4:16). This strengthening for which he prays is the result of the Holy Spirit’s work in us and it is “according to the riches of His glory.”
When followers of Christ are strengthened by God’s indwelling Holy Spirit, Christ then “dwells” in their hearts. This does not mean that He takes up residence only at that time and in response to this request (Christ takes up residence the moment we become His children). It means that He is to be “at home” in our hearts as our Lord. We should want our lives such that Christ has freedom to enter any “room” of our hearts and to make Himself always welcome to assess our motives, thoughts and deeds.
The second request is that we would grasp the immensity of the love of God for us, though it is truly beyond total comprehension. Paul uses four directional words that have one definite article governing them. He wasn’t trying to use these four directions separately, as if to use one as distinct from the others. If he had done that it would have sounded something like: God’s love is wide enough to encompass every human being, long enough to stretch from eternity to eternity, deep enough to reach to the lowest hell, and high enough to take us into the very presence of God.
However, Paul’s purpose was to gather these four words into one statement, illustrating the vastness and immensity of God’s love for all mankind. Of course, this love has its highest display in the sacrifice of His Son on Calvary for our sins.
Even though Paul had repeatedly spoken of the saints in Ephesus as being “in Christ,” this particular request of Paul assumes that they still do not have a full appreciation of God’s love for them. Consequently, as Christ makes them strong through His indwelling presence, he desires for them to grasp just how much they have been loved by the Creator of the universe.
He makes one final request before breaking into a doxology of praise to God. He asks that they would be filled with the “fullness of God.” This is a difficult expression to explain because only Jesus is capable of being filled with all the fullness of God (cf. Colossians 1:19).
What Paul means here is that God’s fullness is the level up to which we should desire to be filled. No one achieves this in this life or even in the life to come. If we possessed ALL the fullness of God, then we would be God ourselves. This is a prayer asking that these believers come to a place of greater spiritual maturity in their lives.
When you read these three requests by Paul, you realize that he is asking a lot from God on their behalf. Can God do all these things? In a definitive way that is hard to explain in writing, Paul says, “YES!”
Ephesians 1:20 could be read like this: Now to Him that is able. Now to Him that is able to do. Now to Him that is able to do above. Now to Him that is able to do above all. Now to Him that is able to do above all that we ask. Now to Him that is able to do above all that we ask or think. Now to Him that is able to do above all that we ask or think exceedingly. Now to Him that is able to do above all that we ask or think...exceedingly abundantly.
Those final two words are the translation of a unique Greek word that is a superlative meaning “immeasurably more!” In other words, there is no difficulty with God granting these requests made by Paul because He can do immeasurably more than we can even ask or think.
He closes his prayer and doxology by reminding us that praise is to be given through Christ to God by the church. It’s important to notice two things from this passage in relationship to the church: 1. “With the saints” is the way we recognize the love of God. It does not say “by the saints,” as if to say, “by each individual saint separately.” This might seem like a small point, but Paul recognizes that it is impossible to fully recognize the immensity of God’s love when you live in isolation from other believers. Participation in the church opens your understanding of the greatest of God’s love as you see its operation in other people’s lives. 2. Praise to God is to be given, “in the church,” not just by individual church members. We certainly should praise God individually when we are alone. But, the request of Paul is that both Jews and Gentiles, who have been graciously made children of God and placed into Christ, lift their voices corporately in praise to Him. Neglecting God’s church hinders your ability to see the vast immensity of God’s love, as well as quiets the collective voice of His people in praise to Him.
Use these three requests to bring your prayer life to a greater level of maturity.
1. That believers may be strengthened with God’s power on the inner man.
2. That believers may better grasp the immensity of the love of God.
3. That believers would mature to the place of Christlikeness.
