Unity through revelation

Last week we saw all the blessings that come to us in Christ, and that we are to give glory to God because of those blessings. Today, we will see that Paul will pray for the church, and specifically that they may understand the significance of these blessings that he has talked about.

We know that we are blessed, but now what we desire is that we may continue to understand these blessings and that we will use their power in our lives. It is a pairing of the praise that we should desire to give God but also the prayer that we should offer that He continues to work in our lives.

If you have ever been on any type of athletic team you know that there are the fundamentals, the things the coach wants you to remember throughout your game. The coach may show excitement when you use the fundamentals “that’s it!” “Keep it up!” but then when things start to slide they have to remind you “slide your feet!” “box out!” “hustle!”. There is a combination of praise but also encouragement. Paul is doing that here. He says “you have this power in you!” but here he is hoping to remind them of what happens if they use these spiritual blessings.

God works in our prayers

Paul says that He “remembers” them in his prayers and that he “never stops giving thanks” for them in His prayers. Paul fins it important for him to give thanks for them but also to pray for them. Why? Because in the end he knows that prayer is the most effective vehicle for heart change.

Are there important people in your life? Do you ever thank God for them?

-Prayer helps us to not take for advantage the people he has put in our life that have encouraged us. And also to thank God for those who God is using to help others.

-Prayer also helps in the spiritual battleground of the people in our lives so that they might have help in their struggles (we will talk about this more next week)

God works in us through the Trinity

God send the Son so that the Spirit may give us knowledge of Him

The Spirit provides clarity to confusing things. The Son sends the Holy Spirit to us.

The defining point of Paul’s prayer: Is that they “may know”

Paul wants these believers to know clearly and to the fullest extent what it means that they have received these blessings by God. He prays that the Holy Spirit may provide spiritual insight to believers about knowledge of God. Specifically, His wisdom and power that are now available to us.

Why is this important that they grow in knowledge? Because that is how you grow in godliness. When we think of knowledge we think of learning from a book, which is one important part of knowledge is that you learning by reading and by those who teach. But knowledge also comes from experience, the type you need a personal relationship with God in order to receive.

So Paul is praying that God may reveal to them, through personal relationship and by understanding from learning, who He is and the blessings that come in Jesus. That through the Holy Spirit we may gain a greater understanding of what it means that we are blessed.

They may know “since” (better then “and that” the eyes of their heart have been enlightened. That is, when they became believers what was originally revealed to them was the truth of the Gospel, and now Paul hopes that they might understand even more the character of God and the benefits that come through Jesus in the Spirit.

So what are these benefits?

The hope of God’s calling

Hope hear is confidence or expectation. Hope in the Bible is trust in God and patience for something better to come. It is the certainty that God will show His promises to be true.

The calling that we have hope in is the hope of the call to salvation that is given to us by God. That we have been called to adoption to God. It is a call to enjoy the benefits in Jesus, a call to “be holy as I am holy” and a hope that we can be made holy, a hope for peace among those who are believers.

The Message of Ephesians 1. The Hope of God’s Call

He called us to Christ and holiness, to freedom and peace, to suffering and glory. More simply, it was a call to an altogether new life in which we know, love, obey and serve Christ, enjoy fellowship with him and with each other, and look beyond our present suffering to the glory which will one day be revealed. This is the hope to which he has called you

Ephesians 5:1-5 “Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children, and walk in love, as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God. But sexual immorality and any impurity or greed should not even be heard of among you, as is proper for saints. Obscene and foolish talking or crude joking are not suitable, but rather giving thanks. For know and recognize this: Every sexually immoral or impure or greedy person, who is an idolater, does not have an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.”

The wealth of His inheritance

When we first read this it may seem like it is talking about is our inheritance, but notice it says “His inheritance”, that is God’s inheritance. So it is saying that we are God’s inheritance, that we are valuable to God. That is why He sent Jesus to earth to die on a cross, we were worth it to Him.

Romans 5:6–8 CSB

For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Ephesians: An Introduction and Commentary (Bock) Comment

This inheritance is his and yet its benefits for us come graciously from him as we share in it. The verse alludes to having awareness of this whole package. This is God’s inheritance because his people are his possession and they are the beneficiaries of that relationship. It is an honour to belong to God and to receive what he gives as a result. This is where the core of a stable personal identity in Christ comes from: we belong to the Creator God and are precious to him. This idea is applied to Gentiles in 2:11–22 and looks back to a degree to verse 7.

Ephesians Awareness of the Significance of the Preceding Truths (1:18)

the calling we have is not in this case what we inherit but that which God inherits in us. God considers us a treasure (riches)! That to which we are called and on which we are to set our hope is not selfish gain but God’s good, which is to the praise of his glory (vv. 6, 12, 14). When Paul tell us in 4:1 to live worthily of “the calling [we] have received,” he probably has in mind not so much the work we are called to do or the blessing we are called to receive in heaven, but the share we are to have in bringing glory to God.

Greatness of His power

Third, Paul hopes that what may be revealed to us is the “greatness of His power”.

“According to the might working of His power” is literally “according to the power of the power of his power.” With three different words relating to power. The first, is energy or “active” power as opposed to potential power. The second is like a physical strength of someone who is a soldier. The third is the strength of humans, or a general strength. You can think of it like how every person has strength, but then there is the muscle that shows the strength (and who is stronger than another) but then you have the active use of that strength like in carrying large objects.

The Message of Ephesians 3. The Greatness of God’s Power

He writes not only of God’s ‘power’, but also of ‘the energy of the might of his strength’ (a literal rendering of the working of his great might, verse 19), and he prays that we may know the greatness of it, indeed the immeasurable greatness of it in (better ‘for’ or ‘towards’) us who believe.

Essentially, it is telling us that God has given us sufficient power to all believers and that it is able to work in our lives.

We know this power is real because of the work that the Father did in Jesus. He gives us three examples:

Jesus resurrection and ascension

Death comes to everyone, we cannot escape it. There is nothing you can do that will prevent you from dying. Eve if you live for 100 years, eventually, you will pass away.

So what God did in Jesus is unique to all human existence. He prevented Jesus from doing through the decay of death, but then Jesus did not just rise from the dead, but then He ascended into greater life where there is no death. Something that has never had before and has not happened since.

Jesus resurrection and ascension serve as evidence of God’s incredible power, God accomplished something in Jesus that can’t be ignored. There is no twisting out of this truth. In fact, this is the most important truth, the power that sets up all the other power. The other two examples of God’s power we won’t be confident in unless we believe in this first one. to trust that God has such a power that He can do that.

Jesus authority over evil

Jesus has been given a title over every spiritual authority. These titles are those of spiritual forces, specifically evil spiritual forces. And the forces not just now but those in the future. Jesus will never lose His authority or title, it is permanent.

We don’t always consider the spiritual battles that occur because it happens in secret or we call it something else. Temptation, a sudden urge to do something wrong, ghosts, superstitions, astrology signs, witchcraft, and I could go on. Are all types of spiritual wars that happen. They are things that make us believe that they have more power than God, or that they can change our circumstances or teach us something that God and his word can’t do for us. The goal of demons is to confuse us, is to draw us away from God, so they will use deceptive tactics in order to convince us of things that are a lie.

But what this passage tells us is that God is over all of these authorities, that He has more power than them. That we don’t have to be afraid of evil spirits, or witches, or whatever else, because the name of Jesus is far more powerful than all of those other things. When we speak in the name of Jesus demons flee the Bible tells us. Demons in the Bible always want to run away when Jesus comes around.

That is why it says “He subjected everything under His feet”. Because all creatures in heaven on on earth have to listen to him.

Jesus headship over the church

Do you know how many institutions have lasted 2000 years without interruption and without collapsing? There is only one, it is the church. There church has not only lasted for 2000 years, but even as in America is has been declining, around the world it is actually growing. There are more Christians now on the face of the earth than there have been at any other time in human history (someone around 2.38 billion).

There is only one reason that it has existed this long. Because it isn’t a human institution, it is a godly institution, with Jesus as the head of it! Sometimes people wonder if the church will “survive” but because Jesus is at the head of that we never have to be worried that it will collapse!

It says that the body of Jesus, the church, is His fulness as He fills all things in every way. Jesus fills the church out of the fulness of what the Father gives Him. This is a constant thing, as the Father continues to fill Jesus so He fills the church.

“Paul prays that God would enrich believers with every spiritual benefit for their spiritual well-being. He prays that because will deepen their relationship with God and experience in a deeper way the spiritual benefits with which they have been enriched.”

The Message of Ephesians c. Jesus Christ’s Headship of the Church

Pointing out that the ‘body’ and the ‘fullness’ images come together in Ephesians 4:13–16 and Colossians 1:18–19 as well as here, and that medical writers of approximately Paul’s time, like Hippocrates and Galen, thought of the head or brain as controlling and coordinating the functions of the body, Dr Barth summarizes Paul’s understanding that ‘the head fills the body with powers of movement and perception, and thereby inspires the whole body with life and direction’.

Q: How does Paul use prayer to benefit the believers He is writing to? Have you ever prayed for someone you care about it?

PQ: Is there someone that you think we should be praying for?

Q: What tools do we have to help us in the knowledge of God?

Q: Which of the three things Paul asks that believers have knowledge of do you think you have the hardest time understanding? Which is most encouraging to you?

Q: How does Paul combine faith and knowledge in this passage? (That you may have “knowledge of Him”and that you may “believe”) Do you think you have a harder time with faith or with knowledge?