1.19.25 Ephesians 3:14–21 (EHV)
14 For this reason I kneel before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 from whom the entire family in heaven and on earth receives its name. 16 I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he would strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner self, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Then, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 I pray that you would be able to comprehend, along with all the saints, how wide and long and high and deep his love is, 19 and that you would be able to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled to all the fullness of God. 20 Now to him, who is able, according to the power that is at work within us, to do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine, 21 to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.
Getting to Know Him
When two of our children get married this summer, their spouses will become a part of our family. Lauren will move into Tristan’s house and also receive his last name. That might not mean much as a Pankow, like it might if it were Musk or Trump or something. But nonetheless, it will still change her identity a bit, right? She won’t be living in the same town or have the same name anymore. She’ll have to change jobs and go from Nebraska to Wyoming. Eventually she’ll learn the good, bad, and ugly of the Pankow name. That’s the way it works.
So then we think about what Paul says in today’s text. I kneel before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the entire family in heaven and on earth receives its name. He’s talking about Jews and Gentiles here. No matter what race you are, when you become a Christian, you receive HIS name. It happened in our baptism, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
When you receive that name, it has implications. This isn’t meant to be a light hearted relationship where you text someone once in a while. Paul said, “I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he would strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner self, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” Paul recognized that faith has to be a supernatural thing. The Holy Spirit would have to do a lot of work in you, powerful work, of bringing Christ to live in your hearts.
Well, how does that work? Paul answered this prayer by writing this letter to the Ephesians and going on mission trips and writing letters to the churches. He called people to repentance and preached Christ crucified. It was difficult and painful work sometimes. It’s kind of like getting in shape. You don’t get in shape by just buying exercise machines. You have to use them. You don’t get to know Jesus by owning a Bible. You have to use it, listen to it, and apply it to your life. If you’ve sinned, don’t just think about changing. Take it seriously! Repent. Take the Supper! Go to Jesus! Ask for forgiveness. When you’re worried about something, pray about it! Then you give the Holy Spirit a chance to strengthen you in your faith, to believe in what God promises you. In this way you will find yourself more resistant to temptation, more relaxed in times of trouble. You’ll find yourself actually singing in church. You’ll start looking forward to coming to worship and Bible study, when you could be sleeping or doing a thousand other things. He brings us to an Epiphany of Christ!
That wasn’t enough for Paul. He wanted even MORE for the Ephesians and for us. Then, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 I pray that you would be able to comprehend, along with all the saints, how wide and long and high and deep his love is, 19 and that you would be able to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled to all the fullness of God. Paul compares the love of God to measuring something. Take for instance a box. You get the tape measure out. You measure the height, the width, and the length. But then He goes even deeper. He goes from three dimensions to four dimensions. He adds DEPTH at the end. Why does he do this? Isn’t that just a part of the height? What he’s doing is showing us that there is an extra dimension to God’s love that we wouldn’t even consider or think about from a surface view. Imagine seeing a mountain in the middle of a sea. It’s one thing to see it’s beauty from flying over the mountain. But what if got on the mountain, put on scuba gear, and dove down under water? You’d discover a much deeper beauty! So also God’s love is DEEPER than we could ever think or imagine.
Think of the very message of the Gospel. God HIMSELF took on flesh and came into our world to die an ugly death on the cross, being blamed for the sins of the world! What kind of love is that! GOD is hanging there on that cross, for me! Paul knew this from personal experience. When Ananias was told to baptize him, he said, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.” More or less said to the Lord, “How could you love THAT one?” But God said “go!” His love for Paul was deeper than Ananias could imagine.
There’s sometimes in life where you have to dig down deep. You can’t just live on the surface of love. You find that out when you get caught in a sin, right? You do something really embarrassing? Something that you are ashamed of, something you thought you’d never do? You’re convinced that you’re damned to hell. Then you need to really dig deep in the Word, and find out that Jesus died for you too, the sinful you, the dirty you, the one you never thought you’d be. Yeah that one. He really did die for dirty sinners. That’s how deep his love is. Just when you didn’t think it could go any deeper, there it is still.
Paul still wasn’t happy yet, even with all these prayers. He goes on to pray for something that is completely contradictory. That you would be able to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled to all the fullness of God. Did you catch the contradiction? That you would be able to know something that surpasses knowledge - know something that is unknowable. What does that mean? God’s love isn’t something you can measure with a tape. It’s not something that can be found by scientific measurements. You don’t get it just by answering trivia questions on the Bible or knowing your catechism.
In the Bible there’s different words for knowledge. Some of it is brain knowledge, but the other is experiential. That second one is sometimes used to describe a sexual relationship in the Bible. It’s different from reading a book. You can read about it, but all the words in the world can’t actually describe what it feels like. It’s intensely physical, permeating throughout your entire being. There are some things that can’t really be known without experiencing it. So that’s how Paul wanted us to know the love of Christ, not in a sexual way but in a very experiential way.
When you go to the Supper with a heavy burden of sin, and the body and blood of Christ enter into you. You hear those words, “Given for you. Shed for you.” It can be a very emotional thing. God Himself has entered me. God himself has forgiven me. I am clean. You sing a song at a funeral. The music and the words wash over your soul like never before. You can’t hold back the tears of the moment. “Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes. Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.” Suddenly that song means more to you than ever before. Yes, there’s Jesus, who died for my spouse. He gives me hope. I know that my Redeemer lives. I’ll see him or her again, in heaven. You can’t explain it. It has given you comfort and strength like nothing else could. That’s what Paul wanted for the Ephesians. That’s what Paul wants for us.
The difficult thing is that to discover this love, it often has to come through heartache, pain, and death. If you live an easy life, a comfortable life, you probably won’t know that love as deeply as someone who’s been through the ringer. I have a childhood friend that grew up with me in high school. Even though we now live hundreds of miles apart and live very different lives, we still have a bond that goes on no matter how long we take to reconnect because of our history together. It’s because we went through high school together and stood together through some difficult times. So you think about how that can happen with Jesus. It comes through prayer, struggling with Him in the midst of pain. It comes through talking with fellow Christians, going to the Word and sacrament, being led to Jesus in the good, bad, and ugly of life. It isn’t an easy thing. It’s a painful thing. But in the end, it’s a beautifully deep thing, this love of God in Christ.
And if all this weren’t enough, Paul has an even more seemingly impossible goal for you, that you would “be filled to all the fullness of God.” I’m not sure what all this involves. How could we sinful and finite humans be FILLED with the FULLNESS of God? Maybe it’s kind of like this. When I see my children and my grandchildren, I see gifts of God. When I see a sunset, I see God’s nature. When I have good health, I thank God. When I have bad health, I turn to God. In the past, in the present, and in the future, I know that GOD is in charge. Through my sins and my fears, I see a gracious and forgiving God. Even in the bad and the ugly, I can ask, “How is God going to work this out for good? How is this going to drive me to God’s love all the more?” The more I’m in the Word, the more the Holy Spirit puts God in everything. Is God in everything for you?
Benjamin Franklin once said, “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.” It’s not bad advice actually. You should try to know who you’re binding yourself to in a lifelong relationship beforehand, bu there are always things you will learn about your spouse over time. Some of them are great, but other things that aren’t always very attractive, that are kind of ugly. If you dwell on it and keep looking at it, it could tear you apart with anger or regret. You have to shut your eyes a little bit.
Paul prayed for us to have a better relationship with God, to really know Him. Getting to know someone can be a difficult thing. Some people are pretty quiet. They don’t like to open up. They aren’t open or trusting. When I first got to know my wife’s family, they took me out to the farm to work cows. I thought it meant just moving them from one place to another. Little did I know that my brother in law would be tackling cows and I would be holding their legs while they put rubber bands around their testicles. Needless to say, I was freaking out a bit. Welcome to the family!
What does it mean to be part of God’s family? He’s open and honest about who He is in many ways. Now, there are still plenty of things that we don’t know about God and we’ll never know, because we just couldn’t get it. If there’s one thing He wants us to know, it’s that you are loved, loved like none other. It might take some pain to get there, a trip out to the cow yard, to really know it and see the light like you’ve never seen before. But in the end, it’s worth it. Knowing the love of God in Christ gives you a comfort and peace and hope that you’ll find nowhere else in the world. . . having a family like none other. Amen.
