Introduction
Last week we noticed that Paul began in verse 1 of chapter 3 to record his prayer for his readers. But then at the end of verse 1 he interrupted himself and began a digression which continued until verse 13. And that means that virtually all of the passage which we studied last week was a digression. But in that digression, Paul wrote about how he had been called by God to make known God’s great mystery which was formerly hidden, but which God has now revealed through his apostles and prophets. And what is God’s great mystery? It’s his plan to unite all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. The world as we know it is a divided world, because sin has turned differences into divisions. But God has a plan to unite all things together under Christ.
That’s God’s great cosmic plan. And as part of that great cosmic plan, or as a sub-set of it, God has united Jews and Gentiles under Christ. Once they were separated from one another; but now they have been brought together to form one church through faith in the Lord Jesus who loved us and who gave up his life for us to bring us to God.
And God has continued to unite people who are very different from one another through faith in the Lord Jesus, so that the church of Christ on earth is a diverse body, comprising people throughout the world who are very different from one another. But we have this in common: we are all united with Christ through faith. Through faith in him, we are united to one another. And through faith in Christ, our relationship to God has been restored as well and we’ve been reunited with him.
I didn’t mention this last week, but right at the end of his digression, Paul asks his readers not to be discouraged because of his sufferings for them. When he refers to his sufferings, he means his imprisonment, which he mentioned in verse 1. So, when Paul wrote this letter, he was under house arrest in Rome, waiting for the Emperor to hear his case and to decide his fate. And it seems that Paul interrupted himself in verse 1, because he was afraid that by mentioning his imprisonment his readers would become discouraged or upset. And so, he wanted to make clear to them by his digression that the reason he was suffering imprisonment was because God had called him to make known this mystery about Christ, so that the Ephesians and people like them in other places would be saved from their sin and misery in this world and glorified in God’s presence through faith in Christ the Saviour. So, whatever he was suffering was worth it, because it resulted in their eternal salvation. In fact, even though he was under house-arrest in Rome, he was still able to make known the mystery about Christ despite his chains.
I’m reminded of old war movies and stories about the suffering and the hardships that people would endure because they had an important message to get out. Perhaps it was a spy. Perhaps it was a member of the resistance. But they had some piece of information which was vital for the war effort and for victory. And they travelled for miles and had to hide and do without food and they were in constant danger from being captured. But they endured it all because they needed to get this message through. And what more important message is there than the message of salvation for all who believe in Jesus Christ? So, Paul was saying to his readers: Don’t be discouraged. Don’t be upset by my imprisonment. It’s all been worthwhile. And still today, preachers around the world endure all kinds of hardship and suffering. But, they would say with Paul that their suffering is worth it, because the reason they’re suffering is to bring the news of salvation to sinners.
But having made that clear to his readers, Paul resumes his prayer for them in verse 14. And that’s the passage we’re studying today.
Outline
And it begins in verses 14 and 15 where Paul says that he kneels before the Father. So, he’s kneeling to pray; and he’s praying to the Father. That is, he’s praying to God the Father. We pray to God the Father in the name of the Son and with the help of the Holy Spirit.
And in the verses which follow Paul records his prayer for them. And his prayer for them contains three main requests. The first main request is in verse 16: ‘I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being….’ That’s the first main request. The second is at the end of verse 17 and it continues into verse 19: ‘And I pray that you … may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge.’ That’s the second main request. And the third is at the end of verse 19: ‘that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’
So, his prayer for his readers is in three parts: first, that they may be strengthened with power; second, that they may know; and third, that they may be filled. And between the first request and the second request there’s a ‘so that’. And a ‘so that’ signifies the result or purpose. I need to eat my lunch so that I won’t get hungry later in the day. I need to fill the car with petrol so that I won’t run out on the side of the road. And so, Paul asks God to strengthen his readers with power through his Spirit in their inner being so that Christ may dwell in their hearts through faith and they will be rooted and established in love. The NIV has changed the order of what Paul says, but being rooted and established in love is really parallel with Christ dwelling in their hearts through faith.
And Paul is making these requests to God because God is the one who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us. There’s no point asking one of us to do these things for the rest of us, because none of us is able to do these things. But God is able to do it. In fact, he’s able to do more than we can ask. In fact, he’s able to do more than we can even imagine. And so, he’s the one we should talk to. He’s the one we should pray to. We should bring our requests to him, because nothing is too hard for him.
Request 1
And so, let’s look at Paul’s prayer in more detail. And the first main request is in verse 16 where Paul prays that ‘out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being.’
Do you remember years ago when you went to the supermarket, how the person at the check out would give you a load of those light-weight plastic bags for your groceries? And sometimes you put so many cans in the one bag that you’d have to double-up the bag, because you realised that the weight of all those cans would be too much for one flimsy bag. So, you’d use two or maybe even three bags, one inside the other, to carry the cans safely home.
Well, we’ve like those bags. We’re light-weight. We’re weak. We’re flimsy. In 2 Corinthians, Paul was describing what preachers are like and he said they are jars of clay. He means preachers are weak and fragile. They’re like a cardboard container for a hamburger, which you can flatten easily before you throw it in the bin. Paul was referring to preachers in 2 Corinthians, but we’re all like that. We’re all weak. And so, we need to be strengthened.
And, of course, Paul is referring, not to physical strength, but to inner strength. He writes about our inner being. Later on he refers to the heart. Paul says elsewhere that outwardly we’re perishing, but inwardly we’re being renewed. And so, Christianity is about what’s inside us. It’s about our heart and our inner being. It’s about our thoughts and our attitudes and our inclinations and our desires. Of course, what we are in the inside will affect what we say and do. But the focus of Christianity is about what’s inside us. God works in us from the inside out. He changes our heart; he changes what we think about; he changes our desires and inclinations.
And he works in us by his Spirit. By his Spirit, he renews us inwardly. And by his Spirit, he gives us the strength we need. We need the Spirit’s strength, his help, his ability to live for Christ and to do God’s will here on earth. By ourselves, we are too weak. We give in to our own sinful desires too easily. We given in to temptation from outside too easily. But the Holy Spirit is able to strengthen us in our inner being. He’s able to help us.
And before moving on, notice that Paul refers to God’s glorious riches. A millionaire is able to help us by taking from his riches and giving us what we need. And God is able to help us by taking from his glorious riches and giving us what we need. He’s able to draw on his own immense power to give us the strength we need in our inner being.
And since God is able to help us — since he’s the one who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine — then we should pray to him, as Paul prayed to him, and ask him to give us the strength we need in our inner being by his Spirit.
Result/Purpose
That’s Paul’s first request for his readers. But before we move on to his second request, we need to pay attention to the ‘so that’ in verse 17. Paul writes: ‘so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith’. And then he goes on to write about being rooted and established in love. As I said earlier, the NIV has changed the order of what Paul says, but being rooted and established in love is in parallel to Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith. And the ‘so that’ at the beginning of verse 17 signifies that this is the result or the purpose of Paul’s prayer. So, he prays for them to be strengthened in their inner being by the Spirit, so that Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith and that they will be rooted and established in love.
Now, do you know your creeds? There’s the Apostles’ Creed and there’s the Nicene Creed. There are others, but those two are the most well known. And the creeds are useful for summarising for us the main things we need to know about God and our salvation. In only a few lines, they summarise the work of God the Father who made the world; and the work of God the Son who died for us and was raised; and the work of the Holy Spirit who unites us together in the church. And they tell us of the hope we receive from God of the resurrection of our bodies and everlasting life in his presence.
And if you know your creeds, then you’ll know what to say if anyone asks you where the Lord Jesus is now. Where is he now? Answer: he’s seated at the right hand of God the Father. He’s with the Father in heaven in the same body with which he was crucified.
So, that’s where he is now. But wonderfully, though he’s seated in heaven, he comes to his believing people by his Spirit; and by his Spirit he dwells in our hearts. And the word Paul uses for ‘dwell’ in verse 17 means something like ‘settle down’. He makes our hearts his permanent home.
And, of course, he takes up residence in our hearts by his Spirit as soon as we believe in him. The moment we believe, he comes to us by his Spirit and never leaves us. Christ dwells in all of his believing people by his Spirit. But Paul is not referring to the beginning of the Christian’s life in verse 17. He’s not referring to the time when Christ first came and took up residence in our hearts by his Spirit. After all, Paul is writing to believers and Christ was already dwelling in their hearts by his Spirit.
And so, when Paul prays for Christ to dwell in their hearts, he means that he wants the presence of Christ in their hearts to become more and more apparent. Yesterday I was picking blackberries which are growing in the hedge which separates the manse garden from the neighbouring garden. And, of course, there were lots of thorns. And one of the thorns took up residence in my jeans. How do I know it took up residence in my jeans? Because it made its presence obvious to me. Every time I moved, it stuck into me. And Paul wants the presence of Christ in the hearts of his readers to become more and more obvious by the way Christ changes them and influences them and in the way he makes a difference in their lives. Christ had taken up residence in their hearts by his Spirit whenever they first believed. And Paul wants Christ’s presence in their hearts to change their lives more and more.
And since Christ lived a life of love when he was on the earth, then his presence in our hearts enables us to live a life of love. In other words, he enables us to be rooted and established in love. When Paul uses the word ‘rooted’ in verse 17, he’s got the image of a plant in mind. And when he uses the word ‘established’, he’s got the image of a buiding in mind, because the word really means ‘grounded’ or ‘founded’. And our lives are to be embedded in love; and our lives are to founded in love. In other words, our whole life should be characterised and marked and shaped by love.
So, Paul wants his readers to be strengthened in their inner being by the Spirit so that Christ’s presence in their hearts will become more obvious in their lives and that they will live a life of love.
And that’s what we should be praying for as well. By ourselves we are weak and flimsy. And so, we should be praying for God to strengthen all of us in our inner being by his Spirit. And we should be praying for that, so that Christ’s presence will become more and more apparent in our lives; and we’ll all be able to live a life of love: loving God more and more; loving our fellow believers more and more; loving the people around us more and more; even loving our enemies more and more. This is God’s will for us. We know it’s God’s will for us, because in the next half of his letter — from chapter 4 onwards — Paul teaches us about loving one another. But we can’t love one another without God’s help. We need God’s Spirit to strengthen us inwardly. And we need Christ inside us to make his presence more and more obvious in our lives. And he makes his presence obvious in our lives by enabling us to live a life of love. And so, this is what we should be praying for, trusting that our God, who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, will work in us for his glory.
Request 2
That’s Paul’s first main request. Let’s move on to the second request which begins at the end of verse 17, where Paul writes: ‘And I pray that you … may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge.’
Paul once again asks for power. He wants his readers to have power to grasp something. Why do we need power to grasp this thing? Because look what he wants us to grasp: he wants us to grasp Christ’s love for us. He wants us to know it. He wants us to grasp and to know the extent of Christ’s love for us, the immensity of his love, the grandeur of his love. Have you ever gone into an art gallery where they have these massive paintings on the wall? Some of the paintings are as big as a house and when they’re that big, how do you take it all in? You perhaps focus on one part and then you focus on another part and then another and another. You see a little of it at a time, but not all of it all at once. And Paul is referring here to the immensity of Christ’s love. And we need power from God to take it in and to grasp it. We need God to help us. God must enable us to take in Christ’s love: it’s width; and it’s length; and it’s height; and it’s depth. And Paul wants us to grasp it: to wrap our arms around it and to embrace Christ’s love for us so that we know it as thoroughly and as fully as we can.
But how can we know a love that surpasses knowledge? That’s how Paul describes Christ’s love in verse 19. How can we know something that surpasses knowledge? I think he means that while we can grasp part of it, there’s always more of it to know. We’ll never know it completely. His love is wide and we’ll never get to the edge of it. His love is long and we’ll never get to the end of it. His love is high and we’ll never get to the top of it. His love is deep and we’ll never get to the bottom of it. We’ll never know it completely, but we can still know it and grasp it with the help of God.
And, of course, knowing Christ’s love means feeling Christ’s love. It means experiencing it. One person hears about the love of Christ and how he came down to earth as one of us to give up his life on the cross to pay for our sins and shortcomings and to make peace for us with God. He hears about that love of Christ, but it doesn’t move him. It leaves him cold. But another person hears about the love of Christ and he’s moved by it. The message of Christ’s love grips him. He feels Christ’s love in his heart and he’s moved to love Christ in return.
We all need the help of God to feel Christ’s love. Because we’re sinners, and our hearts are naturally hard, we need God’s power, his enabling, to experience Christ’s love in our hearts. And that, of course, is why Paul prayed for it and that’s why we should pray for it too. We should be praying to our Father in heaven that he will enable us all to grasp Christ’s love for us, and to know it, and to feel it, and to experience it in our hearts and to be overwhelmed by it.
And this experiential knowledge of Christ’s love is not for some of us only. It’s for all of us. According to verse 18, Paul wants all the saints together to grasp Christ’s love. And so, we should pray that all of us will know Christ’s love and be overwhelmed by it. And the one we pray to is the one who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.
Request 3
We pray to be strengthened in our inner being by the Spirit. And we pray to know Christ’s love for us more and more. Now we come to Paul’s third main request which is at the end of verse 19 where he says: ‘that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’
Back at the end of chapter 2, Paul likened the church to a temple. And it’s possible that Paul still has a temple in mind when he writes about us being filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. When King Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem, he built it as a dwelling place for God. Now, Solomon knew that God is immense and he is omnipresent. That is to say, he is present everywhere all at once. And so, a temple cannot contain God. In fact, the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain God. God is above and beyond the universe. Nevertheless, God was prepared to fill the temple with his presence. And so, we read in 1 Kings 8 how the glory-cloud, which signified God’s presence, came and filled the temple with God’s glory.
And so, God filled the temple in Jerusalem with his presence and everyone saw his glory. And here’s Paul praying that God will fill the church with his fullness. That is to say, he’s praying that God will fill the church with a sense of his presence. Just as a temple cannot contain God, so the church cannot contain God. His presence is above and beyond us. Nevertheless he is able to fill the church. He’s able to fill us up with his presence. He’s able to fill us to the brim with his presence.
And you think to yourself: ‘How is that possible? I can’t imagine how this can be?’ And that’s why Paul went on in verses 20 and 21 to praise God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us. And so, we should be praying to God the Father — who is able to do more than all we can ask or imagine — to fill his church around the world and here in Immanuel with a sense of his presence. Only God can do it. We can’t do it ourselves. We can’t fill ourselves with his presence. But he’s able to fill us with his presence whenever we gather here on Sundays for worship and he’s able to reveal his glory to us when we gather to worship him and to hear the wonders of what he has done for us by his Son our Saviour. And when he fills us, he changes us so that we will live more and more for him and for his glory in the world.
Conclusion
And so, here’s something for us to pray for and to keep praying for. We should ask God to strengthen us in our inner being by his Spirit, so that Christ’s presence will become more and more obvious in our hearts by enabling us to live a life of love. And we should be praying for God to help us to grasp Christ’s love for us and to feel it. And we should be praying for God to fill our church with his presence and for him to reveal his glory to us whenever we gather for worship.
Is it too much to ask for? Is it too hard for God? No, it’s not too much for God and it’s not too hard for him, because he’s able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or even imagine according to his power that is at work within us.
Sermons and Stuff 