Recap
The first half of Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians serves as a theological overview of the gospel, how God raised Christ from the dead and exalted him to the highest place, where he holds the supreme authority over creation and over every created being—especially the spiritual forces that control the world.Through his grace, God has done the same for Christian believers. While, at one time, they were ‘dead’ in their sins and in their alienation from God, yet he has brought them to life, raised them up with Christ and seated them with him in the heavenly realm. Where he reigns, they reign also.
This is described as a mystery that has been concealed from the beginning of creation, that Paul is unveiling in his teaching.
The Ephesian believers, and their contemporaries in the other congregations Paul addressed in his letters may not have looked impressive—and we know from Revelation that in some respects their witness was compromised—yet we, 19 centuries later, are part of their legacy.
And of every subsequent generation of believers who have received these words.
So, what’s in this for us?
We are them. We stand in the same place in Christ before God. What is true of them theologically is true of us too. Our context is different, and our experience and expectations of life are different, but these words are for us.
Paul has used two images to describe the congregation of Christ-followers.
He calls them Christ’s body (1:23) and a holy temple (2:21), both images that he uses elsewhere in his letters. Both of these ideas need a lot of unpacking, but in short:
- As the body of Christ in their world, the Ephesian believers carried the full personhood and authority of Christ. When the Roman authorities thought they were conquering them by persecuting them, in fact the opposite was true. They triumphed. Their testimony lived on—and we are the evidence of this.
- The temple is the place where God’s holy presence lived; where heaven touched earth, so to speak. Paul refers to these people as hagioi, ‘saints’. They are holy; separate and undefiled by the world, like the priests in the Tabernacle. But unlike the old priests, they do not make sacrifices on behalf of the people, they bear witness to the Final Sacrifice that has been made by Christ for them; they intercede on their behalf and draw others into discipleship to Christ.
And this also is us. We are Christ body and his holy temple, as we seek to serve him in the Dove Valley, in Stoke or Derby, or wherever we find ourselves.
Ephesians 3: 14-21
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
v.14
For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father… We have just recapped Paul’s great picture of the Church. This world is in chaos; there is division everywhere (as we saw in our discussion of chapter 1):
- division between the nations, ethnicities, ideologies and religions.
- Division between people, and
- Division within ourselves.
God is bringing all these into one in Jesus Christ (1: 10). As we’ve just said, this can only be achieved through the witness of God’s people, demonstrating the love of Christ.
This is what Paul prays for, falling on his knees before the Father. The fact that he’s ‘falling on his knees’ indicates the earnestness of his prayer. Culturally, in those days both Jews and non-Jews would normally have prayed standing up.
v.15
from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, The Greek literally says:
I bow my knee before the Father (ton patera), from whom every family (pasa patria = ‘every paternal line’) in heaven and on earth is named.
It’s a word-play on patera and patria.
We saw last time the idea of God’s wisdom as polypoikilos (multi-coloured, richly diverse), and his people as a multi-ethnic movement. In Chapter 2, Paul talked about the dividing wall being removed and the two people, the Jews and the gentiles becoming one … and that all people are united in Christ.
Here Paul prays to God as the Father of not just the Jews but of every family (patria) both on earth and in heaven. Not only has Jesus been given the highest place ‘above every name that is named’ by merit of his total victory on the cross and his resurrection, but God is also the Father from whom they all derive their identity.
This also loops back to God’s original promise to Abram in
Genesis 12: 3in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
v.16
… that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being…Again—we’ve seen this before—when Paul is praying for the people, they know they’ve been prayed for!
The prayer in Chapter 1 looks as much like a lesson in prayer as it does an actual prayer. ‘Pray for each other like this…’
This prayer seems more personal. Paul is praying to the Father—not ‘God the Father’ in some heavenly office, but God who is actually the source of everyone’s life—that they would ‘get’ this, all the powerful and amazing stuff he’s told them so far, and be filled to their very core with his glorious strength.
- Specifically, what is Paul praying to the Father for?
That, according to the riches of his glory, God would strengthen them with power through his Spirit in their inner being.
Once again, Paul uses big words. Strong phrases.
Riches, glory. Strengthen, power. Inner being (or inner humanity).
The Ephesian Christians will need this as they face persecution. If the testimony of Christ is to continue into following generations, they will need some resilience.
But even without persecution, in their mundane and humdrum world, they will need the power of the Holy Spirit if they are to stand out as distinctive and shine as lights in the world (Phil 2: 15).
- How will the Holy Spirit help strengthen their inner being?
They are the body of Christ and his holy temple, in spite of appearances.
vv.17-19
17 …so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.
Paul prays to the Father that they would be inwardly empowered and strengthened:
that Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith…
If they are believers, if the Holy Spirit lives in them, then Christ is in them. So, what is Paul asking?
That they would believe. That their faith would define them in the world. That it would not fail and that they would not become weary—because Christ (through the Holy Spirit) is in their hearts.
In Colossians 1: 27, Paul recasts this mystery he has been describing in Ephesians as ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory.’
Everyone has a ‘hope of glory’ of some sort. We want better things for ourselves or our children. It might take many forms, maybe that one day, things will turn out better than this, or that, we will achieve our goals. Or maybe just that we’ll go to heaven when we die.
But scripture makes it plain that these hopes are not well founded unless they are built on Christ and his promise of eternal life. He is our hope of glory—and there isn’t another.
This is why the gospel is good news to the poor. It empowers, not only in the life to come but in this life too.
- How does having a better understanding of God’s love bring us fulfilment?
So, when Paul prays that Christ will dwell in their hearts by faith, he is declaring a similar thing. He prays that their lives would declare the reality of Christ’s presence, not as a passive thing, but actively and tangibly.
Then he elaborates:
They are to be rooted and grounded in love. Anchored in love—in the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge—and that they might begin to understand its height, depth, length and breadth, the magnitude and enormity of it.
And that as the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily in Christ (Colossians 2: 9), it will also dwell in them.
What does this mean?
The Jews in the Old Testament had God dwelling with them in the Temple. He was separated from the people by walls of holiness. Rite and ritual.
But they profaned it. Right from the outset, the sons of Aaron died because they disrespected God’s presence. Having the temple didn’t make them holy, in fact, in the years before the Babylonian exile they went out of their way to desecrate it.
It seems that, as humans, we are apt to disregard the presence of God, remarkable as that sounds. Think of how the religious people misunderstood and mistreated Jesus. And when he raised Lazarus from the dead, they wanted to kill both him and Lazarus.
We are the body of Christ; his holy temple.
We are.
- Practically, what does it mean to be ‘the body of Christ’ and his ‘holy temple’?
In that case, we might expect something extraordinary to happen. We feel we ought to be transported by visions of glory and angels, or something. (Sometimes these things happen, but it isn’t the norm.)
The norm is that ordinary working people, leather workers, traders in cloth, carpenters, scribes, physicians, soldiers, accountants, sailors, slaves—and a Jailer in Philippi—would be the holiness of God in the world, so that God would be encountered by … the ordinary people.
Good news to the poor.
Isaiah 40: 29
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
God has invested his glory in places where the world wouldn’t think to look.
God’s promise to his people through Ezekiel:
Ezekiel 36: 25-27
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
Glory in the Church
vv.20,21Paul finishes his prayer with a doxology—a short hymn of praise.
20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Paul’s vision is that all divided things are united in Christ, and the means of this reconciliation is Christ at work in the congregation of the church.
He is glorified right here.
We read these mighty words—and they are mighty words—and we think that we need to be extraordinary, somehow. We forget that Paul is writing them from a prison cell, from which he will later be taken and executed. We think that, if we only had enough faith, that the Holy Spirit would turn us into the X-Men with superpowers.
We could transform the world!
But you don’t reach the Philippian Jailer by being Superman. You reach him by being locked up and singing anyway.
We like the idea of superheroes who can defeat evil. Sometimes ‘saints’ have been portrayed in that way.
- Why doesn’t God give us superpowers?
I’ll say this again.
These believers in Ephesus were not special. In fact, we know that their witness became compromised over the next couple of decades. We know that they faced persecution. Many of them will have suffered, and some will have died.
The evil powers will have rejoiced in their victory.
Yet 1900 years later, we don’t remember much of who their persecutors were. They are lost to time and history. But these words are in every home. The testimony of these mighty men and women of God lives on. We would not be here except for them.
- What will our legacy be?
Next time we’ll begin Chapter 4 and start to see some of the practical application that Paul gives to this theological groundwork.
Let’s pray Paul’s words.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
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