A Prayer For The Church Family
Ephesians 3:14-19
One of the best ways to discover a Christian’s chief anxieties and ambitions is to study the content of their prayers and the intensity with which they pray them. We all pray about what concerns us and we are evidently not concerned about matters we do not include in our prayers. Prayer expresses desire.
As the hymn puts it, “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, unuttered or expressed.” This is certainly true of today’s text - Paul’s second prayer in Ephesians. He pours out his heart to God.
Before launching into his petitions, Paul lays the foundation for his prayer in acknowledging God as Father/Creator …‘from whom his whole family … derives its name.’ The Life Application Bible notes say of these verses,
“The family of God includes all who have believed in him in the past, all who believe in the present, and all who will believe in the future. We are all a family because we have the same Father. He is the source of all creation, the rightful owner of everything … those who isolate themselves from God’s family or try to go it alone cut themselves off …”
We are a family, and just like any other family we will have shared joys and shared tears … feelings get hurt, and relationships get healed. Bonded together by our adoption by God, we have been forged into a new family – a family that prays for one another.
Through his emphasis on the fatherhood of God and the church as family, Paul prays a prayer for the church family, both then and now. This prayer serves as a model for us in prayer, both in praying for ourselves and praying for others in the family of God. This three phase prayer builds, each phase upon the previous, culminating in a request that God’s ultimate goal be reached in us.
Klyne Snodgrass says of this prayer, “This prayer is as appropriate to pray today as it was two thousand years ago, and its theological ideas are directly as applicable to our lives.”
So what was Paul’s prayer – what should we pray. Let begin with phase one.
Prayer Phase #1 – God’s power would be renewed within us.
While the apostle urged his Christian readers not to be discouraged on account of his suffering in 3:13, his prayer is for them to be strengthened by God’s power in order to meet this need.
At the heart of Paul’s first petition is a request for power. He has already prayed that the Ephesian believers might know God’s incomparably great power (1:18-19a). Now he prays more directly and specifically for the Spirit’s power to be manifested – that God’s power would be renewed within us.
This prayer, like the counterpart of 1:15-23, is loaded with terms for power. God’s mighty activity is stressed, first, by means of the relatively rare Greek work rendered ‘strengthen’, which carries the idea of fortifying a stronghold. In employing this expression, Paul has in mind more than becoming muscular. The emphasis is upon increased vigor and vitality. From this we can deduce that perhaps Paul is addressing some members of the Ephesian church who have just become spiritually worn out … they are ready to give up. The strengthening is further intensified by the addition of the words ‘with power’.
The resources available to fulfill this confident request are limitless: they are (lit.) ‘according to the riches of his glory’, an expression similar to one used in the earlier prayer of 1:18, where the readers, who are God’s own inheritance, share in ‘the riches of his glory’. The preposition draws attention not simply to the source, translated ‘out of the wealth of his glory’ as in the NIV, but also indicates that his giving flows freely from an inexhaustible supply of riches of that glory. It is on a scale corresponding with this glory: he gives as overwhelmingly as only he can, yet it never decreases the store of what he is able to supply.
The sphere in which the strengthening is to take place is in ‘the inner person’, a uniquely Pauline phrase. This inner person is ‘the interior of our being … the seat of personal consciousness, … [and] of our moral being.’ It is the focal point at the center of a person’s life where the Spirit does his strengthening and renewing work. ‘In your hearts’, in verse 17, is equivalent to ‘your inner being’. The ‘heart’ here, as elsewhere in Ephesians, is employed in its customary Old Testament sense of the center of one’s personality, the thoughts, will, emotions, and whatever lies at the center of who we are.
Indeed, our inner selves stand in constant need of renewal given our continual struggle with sin and the need for daily spiritual revival. Rather than merely chasing after our physical needs and desires, we must attend to our interior lives. Our souls requires as much care and exercise as our physical bodies.
Paul echoes himself when he says to Timothy, “Spend your time and energy in training yourself for spiritual fitness. Physical exercise has some value, but spiritual exercise is much more important, for it promises reward in both this life and the next” (1Tim 4:7b-8).
However, some of us have gotten a bit out of balance. We place so much emphasis on the outward aspects of our lives … we spend some much time making the exterior look good, caring for the here and now, that we forget, or worse yet, neglect the strengthening of our souls.
Perhaps we need to recognize the weak, emaciated condition of our souls … souls that have become exhausted, parched, and perhaps even seared by a long overdue refreshing experience of renewal ... and personalize that prayer.
“I pray that according to his vast treasures God would regularly fortify my soul with a fresh infusion of the Holy Spirit’s power.”
Paul continues by petitioning Christ’s indwelling in our hearts. This is not something additional to the strengthening. To be empowered by the Spirit in our inner being means that Christ has taken up residence in our hearts.
At first sight it seems strange for Paul to pray that Christ may dwell in the hearts of believers. Did he not already live within them? In answer, it is noted that the focus of this request is not on the initial indwelling of Christ but on his continual presence.
The verb used here is a strong one, signifying a permanent indwelling … that Christ has moved in and settled down, rather than come by for some short-term visit.
If Christ has taken up residence in our hearts, he is at the center of our lives and exercises his rule over all that we are and do. Rather than a small Jesus tucked away somewhere in our souls, the text assumes the presence of one who gives shape and strength at the core of our being, who takes up residence in and redefines us.
If we are permeated with Christ, such cherished American ideas as independence, self-determination, and self-fulfillment must be abandoned. Christ’s indwelling means we are not our own. W. Wink correctly described worship and prayers as reminders of ‘who owns the house.’ Christians are to live as if they know Christ owns the house. Regarding independence, we are independent of everything but Jesus Christ, and on him we are totally dependent. Regarding self-determination, what we desire determines nothing about ourselves. We, in our life and livelihood, are determined by him. Regarding self-fulfillment, we realize that fulfillment is only found as we seek to fulfill God’s will. (O’Brien)
The Spirit will not empower unwilling, inattentive spirits. Never will God force his designs and desires on people who have no desire for his designs. He cannot renew the heart that is constantly trying to evict him from his place of residence.
Some of us are guilty of serving Jesus with an eviction notice. Oh, we haven’t made an open declaration that we don’t love Jesus and we want him thrown out of our lives. We simply have forgotten that the house is his, and we have attempted to move him ever closer to the door. We do that by letting our hearts chase after the material things of this world, by allowing our hearts to be seduced with the lusts of this worlds appetites for pleasure, by letting seeds of bitterness grow in our hearts, by not guarding our hearts from a creeping spiritual neglect.
However, if we allow God to renew us with his overwhelming Spirit, we will find ourselves ‘being rooted and established in love.’
Prayer Phase #2 – God’s love would be realized among us.
‘…you, being rooted and established in love’ expresses the contemplated result of the previous prayer. Through the strengthening of the inner person by God’s Spirit and Christ’s dwelling in their hearts, we are established in love. Those who are strengthened by the Spirit and in whom Christ dwells will have their lives rooted and grounded in love.
In order to underscore the foundational nature of this love, two metaphors, one botanical and the other architectural, are closely linked; ‘rooted and established in love’. The order of the words in Greek stresses love, while the two perfect passive participles depict the notions of progress and the resulting state. Love is the soil in which believers roots become fixed. It is the foundation upon which we are built (O’Brien).
The thread of being rooted and grounded in love turn knits together the condition for the next request: the readers’ being empowered to grasp the vastness of that love … or that God’s love would be realized among us.
The second petition is essentially a request to grasp the vast expanse of Christ’s love. The four dimensions, ‘width, length, height, and depth’, are not important in what each implies, but as a unity they establish the incomprehensible limitlessness of God’s love.
That love without limits is further described as a ‘love that surpasses knowledge.’ To speak of Christ’s love as ‘surpassing knowledge’ means that it is so great that no one can ever know it fully. We can never fathom its depths or comprehend its magnitude. No matter how much we know of the love of Christ, how fully we enter into his love for us, there is always more to know and experience (O’Brien).
Our inability to comprehend God’s love on our own is the reason that Paul calls once again for God’s power. His almighty power is needed for us to realize its dimensions; so he prays for power to enable us to understand how immense it is.
This petition is remarkable, for although the apostle has said much in chapters 1-3 about his readers being in Christ, he assumes that they do not adequately appreciate Christ’s love.
His is not a petition that we might love Christ more, however important this might be. It is a petition that we would realize the implications of Christ’s love for us. Our comprehension of this cannot be simply a mental exercise. Clearly, it is a personal knowledge, and although it undoubtedly includes insight into the significance of God’s love in the plan of redemption, it cannot be reduced simply to intellectual reflection. This is understanding that is perceived, claimed, owned, cherished and treasures.
Furthermore, this understanding of God’s love without limits is something shared with other believers, hence the phrase ‘together with all the saints,’ It takes all the people of God in tandem with one another to begin to comprehend all the love of God, all the saints together – Jews and Gentiles, men and women, young and old, rich and poor, the educated and the ignorant, white-collar, blue-collar, black, white and brown – with all their varied backgrounds and experiences.
So often the church demonstrates more evidence of human depravity than a common understanding and appreciation for God’s immense love. A common problem for Christians is finding a suitable church, a place they can call a family. So many people become disillusioned in their search that they retreat to a controllable, privatistic faith.
No quick fix exists for the failure of a church to own and exhibit God’s loving family. Yet, failure to explore and experience God’s love with other Christians in worship and instruction is not a legitimate option. Individualistic Christianity does not exist. We need each other to help us plunge the depths of God’s love.
Love can only be love in the midst of relationships. Love can only be love when you engage in the difficult dialogue. Love can only be love when you move past the glossy veneer of a shake and howdy, and rehab the soul through the sharing of broken hearts.
It’s when we move past talking about God’s love to living out God’s love that we really begin to understand that love. It is only then that this petition is answered.
Perhaps we need to pause at this point to invite God’s love to be realized among us:
“Father, with lives that are firmly anchored in your love, help us, as your family, to catch a glimpse of that love, which otherwise would be beyond our ability to understand, so that we can apply your love to all of the relationships you have graced us with."
Prayer Phase #3 – God’s character would be recreated in us.
Paul wants us to be empowered so as to realize the inexhaustible dimensions of God’s love in our own experience. In light of this prayer, we realize that we cannot be as spiritually mature as we should be unless we are empowered by God to ‘grasp the limitless dimensions of the love of Christ.’
As believers are strengthened inwardly through God’s Spirit when Christ dwells in their hearts through faith and they experience in a personal way more of the immeasurable love of Christ, they will be ‘filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’ Paul’s prayer reaches its climax in this final phrase of verse 19. His prayer is that God’s character would be recreated in us.
As God’s love in Christ provides the motivating power that enables believers to love one another, this final prayer serves to launch us into the exhortations of the final three chapters.
The phrase ‘of God’ is subjective and thus refers to God in all his perfection, including his presence, life, and power. That fullness or perfection is the standard or level to which they are to be filled, and thus it may also imply that they are filled with this fullness.
A similar phrase occurs in chapter 4, where it says;
“… so the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith an in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, [here it is] attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (4:12b-13)
This is the language of discipleship. To be permeated by Christ is to be stamped by his character, to be clothed with him, to live in such a way that you show you are God’s child. Such imagery underscores the way Christ shapes our lives. The thought that we can believe in Christ without being like him is absurd. If Christ’s indwelling does not transform, we must questions strenuously whether Christ is present.
Paul’s readers have already been united with Christ in his death, resurrection, and exaltation. Yet they are still to walk in newness of life, and need to attain to this fullness. They are to become what they already are.
He is praying that they may ‘be all that God want them to be’, that is spiritually mature. Since God himself, Christ himself, is the standard, then this means being perfect as he is perfect, being holy as he is holy.
In the booklet, “My Heart Christ’s Home”, the author tells the story of Jesus moving into a man’s home. At first, Jesus was treated as a guest, only entertained and given access to the formal dining room and living room.
But as Jesus stayed on, he was gradually allowed admission into other areas of his home. When Jesus was escorted into the game room, he was confronted with the illicit and the immoral that had made themselves at home. When taken to the study, Jesus observed the things that we allow he allowed to take up residence in his mind. When taken to the family room, he observed the filth that was allowed to entertain.
Gradually, Jesus moved throughout his house clearing out the vestiges of a sick soul … scrubbing down the sin soaked corners of every room.
The climax of the story is reached when Jesus smells the stench of something dead in the hallway closet. The closet is locked … safely secured. Jesus approaches the person and tells him of the horrendous odor that is wafting from the closet. But the owner does want to give up access to the closet. “I have given you access to every other room in the house. I have allowed you to move in and rearrange, and redesign every other place. I want to keep this closet for myself. I want to have this one place that is mine.”
Jesus’ reply needs to be heard. We need to let it pass through our ears and soak into our hearts. “Unless you give me access to the closet, I cannot live here. It is all or nothing.”
Being a Christian means surrendering the last vestiges of sin our lives, gradually being transformed in the remarkable likeness of Christ. Nothing short of Christlikeness is acceptable. Everything less is a poorly disguised imitation of the original work of art that God has designed for you to be.
That is why Paul begins chapter 5 with these words:
Follow God’s example in everything you do, because you are his dear children. Live a life filled with love for others, following the example of Christ, who loved you and gave himself as a sacrifice to take away your sins. And God was pleased, because that sacrifice was like sweet perfume to him. Let there no hint (no hint) of sexual immorality, impurity, or greed among you.
Is that the standard that you are striving to live? Are you giving God every opportunity to transform you into the likeness of Christ, or are you settling for something spiritually second rate?
“Father, as we glimpse your love, stir within us lives that will forever be transformed into your image.”
Conclusion
Paul intercedes with the Father that they might be strengthened by his power in order to know and experience Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge. By this they will come to full spiritual maturity.
The first half of the letter culminates with this petition for an establishment in the love of Christ and an awareness of the magnitude of this love, so that they might become spiritually mature.
God our Father,
We acknowledge that we and every other person have his or her origin in you.
We owe you our lives.
Forgive us for the arrogance of thinking we are better or more important than other people.
Let your Spirit work in us to strengthen us. We want your Spirit to merge with ours.
Make the presence of Christ so real that we sense your love and live from your love.
Help us understand how deep your love is so that it changes us into your very image.
Resources: Snodgrass, Klyne. Ephesians. NIV Application Commentary.
O’Brien, Peter, T. The Letter To the Ephesians.
