Two Things For a New Year (Ephesians 3:14-19)

Scripture Introduction:

It’s a new year. New goals. New hopes, new dreams. New plans. What do you want this year to look like?

If I could ask God to really grasp two things what would they be?

You can tell quite a bit about a person by how this question is answered. You can tell what we really long for by the prayers we pray and the goals we set.

Here, Paul is praying for the Ephesians. It’s not necessarily a new years prayer—but I think it might be fitting to serve as that.

It’s a prayer that’s here in the middle of the letter. Everything that goes before these verses is the unwrapping of God’s great global purpose. It is God redeeming broken people in a broken world and everything that this means.

In chapters 4-6 Paul is going to give us exhortations. 1-3 has been doctrinal, 4-6 is practical. 1-3 is telling us what God has done; 4-6 is telling us our fitting response. Now, before Paul gets into how to live lives worthy of the calling of God he wants them to know it will only happen through prayer; this prayer is essential.

So, how does he pray? The goal of 4-6 is that as a community of believers they might live lives worthy of the gospel. What will be required to do that? What will it take to create changed lives within a changed community? What are the two things that Paul prays for with the hopes of changing the world through a changed community?

Listen in and see if you can spot the two things, it’s a bit of a confusing text to put together—but I think we can do it:

Ephesians 3:14–19 ESV

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Here is how I would phrase those two requests, or how God is motivating Paul to pray these things. God is inspiring Paul to pray for them…and this is essentially what God is telling Paul to pray:

“Pray that they know how much I love them and pray that they know that I am here to stay.”

That’s it. That is what changes lives and that is what changes communities. A firm grip on the love of God and a holy confidence that Jesus is here to stay. That is life altering.

I want to show you this from Ephesians 3. Let’s look first at the content of this prayer.

I. The content of this prayer

Essentially Paul is making two petitions, or two things that he is praying for. The first petition is found in 3:16 and the first part of verse 17. That petition is that “God might strengthen us with power through his Spirit in our inner being.”

The second petition is found in the latter half of verse 17 and ends in verse 19. That petition is that, “we might have power to grasp the limitless dimensions of the love of Christ.”

We are actually going to consider this text backwards. We will look at Paul’s second petition first and then go back and look at his first petition. We will word them as if God is stirring in Paul’s heart to pray.

A. “I want you to know how much I love you”

The core of Paul’s second prayer is that we might know the limitless dimensions of the love of Christ. This knowledge that he is praying for is not merely head knowledge as if we accept it as a mere fact. It is the type of knowledge that is experiential knowledge. It is one thing to know about someone and it is quite another thing to actually know them. Paul is praying that we might know by experience the love of Christ.

If you could fly to the furthest galaxy or go to the highest heaven you could not escape this love. If you, a believer, could plummet the depths of the sea or reach to the lowest hell you could not escape this love. You will never know it fully. You will never exhaust it. It will never run out. You will never be able to ascend to the height of it. I want you to know how much I love you, is the life altering proclamation of God in this text.

Notice what Paul is asking in verse 18 he is praying that we might comprehend “the breadth, the length, the height, and depth”. To what Paul is referring to is somewhat of a mystery.

Is he talking about the perfections of God? So, that he is praying that we might know God in all of his fullness? He certainly does that later but I don’t think that is what it is here.

The church father, Augustine, thought it was a reference to the Cross: love in its breadth, hope in its height, patience in its length, and humility in its depth. That possible, but I think what fits best is to view this as simply talking about the love of God.

I appreciate how John Stott phrased this:

"the love of Christ is broad enough to encompass all mankind (especially Jews and Gentiles, the theme of these chapters), 'long' enough to last for eternity, 'deep' enough to reach the most degraded sinner, and high enough to exalt him to heaven"

Broken people in a broken world have a really hard time with this. We have been burned by love or at least what has been called love so many times. With each broken relationship we move one step further from trusting such a statement of love.

We could tell as many stories of brokenness as there are people in the world. Part of living in a broken world is living in a world that has violated love. Rape, hunger, greed, oppression, abuse, neglect, pride, anger, bitterness, slander, rejection, the list goes on. In the midst of such brokenness it is difficult to believe in the love of Christ.

This is why we must pray—God’s love is so vast that it takes God’s power for us to come to grips with it. Believing that Christ loves you—and believing this with a right definition of love—does not come naturally. There are three things surrounding this petition that help us see how this prayer will be answered.

1) It requires a divine power

In verse 18 you see that Paul prays that we might “have strength to comprehend”. Everything within the language and Paul’s prayer implies that in order to be able to grasp the love of God it is going to take a work of God.

God, help me to really know that you love me. Is that a prayer that you pray?

But if it it requires divine power we must know that we will not drift into an understanding of God’s love. We will not naturally experience the love of God. We will instead drift out of realizing God’s love.

This is not to say that God’s love will actually change but our experience of it will. Rather than living in a happy confidence of God’s love for us we will live with a quiet skepticism of the love of God. Therefore, we must continually pray that God might work in our hearts to open our eyes to his love and give us the grace to believe in such a love.

2) It is a community project

In the middle of verse 18 you will see the phrase “together with all the saints”, this along with the fact that the “you’s” in this text are mostly plural helps us to see that we must not read this with our typical Western individualistic lenses. I love how Paul Tripp focuses this passage,

“As Paul prays he wants the Ephesian believers to grasp the nature of God’s love for them in Christ. His prayer certainly reflects his desire for individuals to know God and understand his love, but this knowledge and ‘power through his Spirit’ come to a group of individuals living in communion with God and in community with one another.”

You want to know what it means to be loved by God? It requires being part of an active community of believers to do this. You cannot grasp this on an island.

What this means is that the love of God is so vast that it cannot be contained in one individual believer. In fact it takes the whole church to comprehend the depth of God’s love and that is to only scratch the surface.

But that doesn’t just mean the church gathered here at Calvary of Neosho. It really means that we need the testimony of every generation that will ever exist to come to an understanding of Christ’s love. And we need the testimony not only of every generation but of every believer in each generation; so that as we stand before him the church in its entirety, with all of our stories, with all of our testimonies, with all of our brokenness and redemption, we will only begin to plum the depths of Christ’s love. We need these stories.

That means that if you want to grow in this then it will happen because you are growing with other believers. You cannot grow apart from the church and this is one reason. You need the church to testify of the love of God. But this also says that you need to be one that expresses love—we need your story. Which is our third thing

You want to know more in 2023 that God loves you—spend some time with believers who get that.

3) It comes from love expressed

In the middle of verse 17 you see the statement, “that you, being rooted and grounded in love”. Now where does this little phrase belong in our text.

Is he saying something like, “I pray that you have power…and this power will result in you being rooted and grounded in love.” Power leads to being rooted and grounded.

Or is he saying, “Since you’ve been rooted and grounded in love, I pray that you might fully comprehend this love of Christ? I think it’s closer to the second one.

Love is the foundation from which love and every other grace will grow. That’s the metaphor that Paul uses here—agricultural and architectural. As one commentator has put it, “Love is the soil in which believers are rooted and will grow, the foundation upon which they are built.”

When we have been strengthened by the Spirit and when Christ makes himself more at home in our hearts we begin to love more. We learn of the love of Christ anew each day. With each experience we know more of his great love.

Now, it is one thing to begin to understand the depth of Christ’s love. It is quite another to come to grips with the fact that it is going to last. And this is the second thing we will look at but actually Paul’s first petition.

B. “I want you to know that I am here to stay”

Do you see in verse 17 where it says, “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith”? There are two words that Paul could have used there for dwell.

The first word (paroikeo) is one that means to sojourn, pass through, pitch a tent, stay for awhile but then move on down the road a bit later. It’s a passing through home. If he uses this word then it’s saying something like, “I pray that Jesus would pitch a tent in your heart”.

But there is a second word that can be used for dwell, katoikeo. This word means to take up permanent residence, to stay forever, to make this your home, it’s your settled down home.

Paul uses the second one. Paul’s prayer is that Jesus might make his home fully in us.

Now, what does that mean? Is that something that we need to pray for? Didn’t Christ come to live in our hearts when we were saved, when we came to Christ by grace through faith? Is he now saying that this is something that we are to pray for and aspire to? No, I don’t think so.

What this is saying is that Christ might truly make himself at home in our hearts. As D.A. Carson has said, “Make no mistake: when Christ first moves into our lives, he finds us in very bad repair. It takes a great deal of power to change us; and that is why Paul prays for power. He asks that God may so strengthen us by power in our inner being that Christ may genuinely take up residence within us, transforming us into a house that pervasively reflects his own character.”

Is this not what Paul has already said in Ephesians 2:22, “In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit”? God is making his home in our hearts and in order to do this he has to root out a lot of junk. So, this is really what Paul’s prayer is that God might strengthen us with power through His Spirit in our inner being”. It is a prayer for holiness, that God might give us the strength to say no to sin and yes to Jesus.

And we see also what Paul is praying here will touch the core of our being. That’s what he means by “in our inner being”. It’s not that Jesus comes in an puts on new siding and makes the exterior look amazing. No, he comes in and brings order to the chaos of your junk drawers. He strengthens the interior. He goes to the core of our being—the very center of our structure and changes us.

So that things flow out of the core of our being. It changes us in such a way that our faith keeps growing. As one preacher once said, “in some Christ is just present, in others He is prominent, and in others again, He is pre-eminent.” May Christ be pre-eminent, first place, in our hearts.

And it’s like a circle. The more we know the love of Christ the more we love others—the more we love others the more we begin to see the love of Christ…it’s like a giant snowball that you just keep rolling.

What would it mean for your 2023 to truly know and believe that God, in Christ, loves you? What would it mean for you to be confident that he is here to stay?

That is what I am praying over us in 2023. But before we close I want to show you one more thing. Paul prayed this with confidence that it would be answered.

I have said before that we must hold in balance the idea that Our Father is the King, and that Our King is our Father. It means that we believe he is both good and powerful. He is for us. And he is able to do what He sets out to accomplish.

This truth undergirds Paul’s prayer.

Look at verse 14. Paul begins by saying “for this reason” which takes us back to where he left off before his parenthesis in verse 1 of chapter 3. This looks back upon Ephesians 1-3. This means that because of what God has already done in the life of these believers Paul now earnestly prays. “Bowing my knees” is a more earnest type of pray. It is when your soul is gripped and you drop to your knees and passionately cry out to God. But notice who Paul prays to, “the Father”. And then in verse 15 he refers to him as the Father of all fathers. The King of Dads.

The one that names everyone—the sovereign who has that right—does so as a Father. He doesn’t name you like a bully, he names you like a dad.

And in verse 16 you will notice the Paul asks that God might give according to the riches of his glory. Now, this does not mean that he give out of the riches of his glory but in proportion to his glory. What this means is that God might give these things as a King would give these things. You’ve got it all Lord and we pray that in proportion to your amazing nature you help us to grasp your love and live in your holiness.

If you skip down to verse 20 you will notice that the one that we are praying to “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think”.

This means that even as you are praying and dreaming about grasping the depth of his love or living a life of dedicated passionate holiness you cannot dream big enough. He is able to do more than you can ask or think. He always stays eons ahead of your dreams. As soon as you ask it this verse cries out—I’ve still got more. This is the King that you are requesting. And this is not some mere desire this is saying that He has the ability to do these things, match this with His fatherly love and it is mind blowing. Yes God has the ability and the desire to change us. There is no limit to what God can do.

It’s a new year. Today is also my spiritual birthday, or at least a day in which something profoundly impactful took place in my life. December 31st, 1999. Remember how everyone was afraid of Y2K? So we stocked up on toilet paper, beans, and Prince albums?

God had been working in my heart for some time. That’s why, I said earlier that even though I mark January 1st, 2000 as my spiritual birthday—I really think I might have been saved at a younger age but just not discipled.

I did quite a few dumb and rebellious things in high school. But the fall of 1999, God really began chasing me down. I lost my drivers license, was stuck at home, all my friends were gone. And I was wrestling with whether or not God existed, if Jesus mattered, etc. etc.

Then on December 31st, 1999 many of my friends were back and they were throwing a New Year’s Eve party. I remember saying, “Forget all this God-stuff, I’m going to just go have some fun.”

And I did. Or well, I tried to. It just wasn’t that fun anymore. I tried to fake it, tried to make it fun, but I just couldn’t do it. I was miserable.

And so the next morning, I believe I was taking a shower, I just cried out to the Lord. I said, I’m done. I don’t want this stuff anymore, don’t want this lifestyle. I’m yours. Period.

I didn’t know anything about Ephesians 3 at the time. But somehow I had picked up that God loved me, and that if I cried out to God and asked forgiveness, he’d forgive me and welcome me. Eventually I came to learn that he is here to stay.

So, from that moment in January 1, 2000 I’ve been on on this journey of trying to understand that God loves me and that He’s here to stay.