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For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you . . . (v.14-16a)”
Who do you pray for? I keep asking myself this question and am stunned every time with my own answer. Try it. Ask yourself: who do you pray for? Do you pray for yourself? For others? What about God? Do you pray for God?
Ephesians 3:14-21 catches Paul in the middle of a thought, having already described the unity of believers in Christ Jesus and now because of that unity Paul reveals his prayer. At first glance it seems that Paul is praying for his readers. Looking again to his prayer we hear Paul praying for God, “
that He would grant you. . .” Paul is praying for God to act on behalf of his audience. Inter-Varsity’s Charles Troutman is noted as saying: “The criterion for our intercessory prayer is not our earnestness, nor our faithfulness, nor even our faith in God, but simply God Himself. He has taken the initiative from the beginning, and has built our prayers into the structure of the universe. He then asks us to present these requests to Him that He may show His gracious hand.” This is precisely what Paul is doing.
The Father to whom Paul bows the knee is the same Father to whom Jesus instructed the disciples to pray: “
Our Father.” This is Paul carrying out that prayer: “Father who art in heaven with the hallowed name and the coming kingdom and fulfilling will, YOU give . . .”
What is Paul trying to connect his readers to? Already we agree that God is our Father by virtue of his creative activity. Now Paul is bringing us closer to “home” in the believer’s position of being rooted in faith and love. Paul’s desire is that his readers be granted a gold-mine:
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The riches of His glory.” The glory of God is the subject about which the heavens themselves pontificate. Just listen to the expanse, to the day and the night as they pour forth speech and knowledge. Certainly they don’t actually talk, but what they have to say runs like a laser-beam through everything. I think
String Theory is onto something. This idea says that (basically) every particle in the Universe resonates with a submicroscopic sound, a tone. I believe it the sound of the word of the one who upholds all things by the word of His power.
What are these things saying? What is being heard in that place where the sun runs it’s course? What is being said are the very things that the conscience already knows, the glory of God. That perfect law, that sure testimony, those right precepts, those pure commandments, that clean fear, those true judgments. That’s what they are saying. It is by the light of these things that nothing stays in the dark. It is by the light of these things that nothing stays hidden. It is by the light of these things that the standard is set for all things good. It is by these things that the servant of the Lord is warned and rewarded. After all, who can really tell what goes on in a man than that which runs throughout the entire Universe and points to God as perfection? What else is there in the Universe that keeps a man back from high-handed sin?
The riches of God’s glory are found in the Lordship of Christ, making a man clean. The riches of God’s glory are without limit in Him. This is what Paul would love for His readers to grasp of the gold-mine of God.
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to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man.” Let’s face it. We need strength to be Christians. Don’t believe me? Just look around at the so-called “Christians” who make life difficult for other believers—and non-believers. We need strength and Paul wants his readers to be strong, so he prays not that those believers would find strength, but that God would grant them strength! Strength with POWER! Power does not just sit by and exist, taking up space and time, breathing air and clocking out at the end of the day. Rather, power moves. Power makes unity occur. Power carries out “spiritual abilities for discharging duty, resisting temptations, enduring persecutions, etc.
[1]” And how does it happen? Through His Spirit. God through His Spirit makes the Christian BE and makes the Christian DO.
These things Paul is asking God to do, to move on His behalf to the praise of His glory through these readers, is to be accomplished with Spirit power! For some reason, we like to have the inner man strengthened and powered up for ourselves, so we work at it out of ourselves. This is just another proof that man does the impossible. He cannot be powered apart from the power-source! The inner man must be plugged in, rooted, grounded.
Why? “
So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” That’s why. “Every believer is indwelt by Christ at the moment of salvation (Rom. 8:9; 1 Cor. 12:13), but He is “at home,” finding comfort and satisfaction, only where hearts are cleansed of sin and filled with His Spirit (cf. John 14:23).”
[2] A.B. Simpson relates this insight: “There is a very singular shrub which grows abundantly in the west and is to be found in all parts of Texas. The mesquite, sometimes called the "mosquito tree," is a very slim and willowy looking shrub and would seem to be of little use for any industrial purposes; but it has extraordinary roots growing like great timbers underground and possessing such qualities of endurance in all situations that it was once valued as pavement material. It is said that the city of San Antonio was once paved with these roots. The mosquito tree reminds us of those Christians who make little show externally, but their growth is chiefly underground-out of sight in the depth of God. These are the men and women that God uses for the foundations of things, and for the pavements of that city of God which will stand when all earthly things have crumbled into ruin and dissolved into oblivion.”
Dwell in your hearts! The indwelling of Jesus and the power of the Spirit are ever-connected! Listen to Spurgeon:
“But to have Jesus ever near, the heart must be full of him, welling up with his love, even to overrunning; hence the apostle prays “that Christ may dwell in your hearts.” See how near he would have Jesus to be! You cannot get a subject closer to you than to have it in the heart itself. “That he may dwell”; not that he may call upon you sometimes, as a casual visitor enters into a house and tarries for a night, but that he may dwell; that Jesus may become the Lord and Tenant of your inmost being, never more to go out. Observe the words—that he may dwell in your heart, that best room of the house of manhood; not in your thoughts alone, but in your affections; not merely in the mind’s meditations, but in the heart’s emotions. We should pant after love to Christ of a most abiding character, not a love that flames up and then dies out into the darkness of a few embers, but a constant flame, fed by sacred fuel, like the fire upon the altar which never went out. This cannot be accomplished except by faith. Faith must be strong, or love will not be fervent; the root of the flower must be healthy, or we cannot expect the bloom to be sweet. Faith is the lily’s root, and love is the lily’s bloom.”
[3] *************
[1]Matthew Henry,
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible : Complete and Unabridged in One Volume (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1996, c1991), Eph 3:14.
[2]John Jr MacArthur,
The MacArthur Study Bible, electronic ed. (Nashville: Word Pub., 1997, c1997), Eph 3:17.
[3]C. H. Spurgeon,
Morning and Evening : Daily Readings (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1995), August 23 PM.
