Filled With All The Fullness Of God

Ephesians 3:14-21.....

Paul here is praying for these Christians in Ephesus.........This is a prayer for all......It would be the essence of the Christian life........Ch. 2 tells us of the new identity in Jesus Christ.....That we have become spiritually alive in Ephesians 2:5 “Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)” .............then the work in us begins.... Ephesians 2:10 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”

Paul ask for the granting of all the riches of God’s glory!

That the inward person would be strengthened by God’s power through His Holy Spirit.

That Jesus Christ may dwell in your hearts (inner man) through faith......we must believe, we must trust, our lives rest/depend on the Person and Work of Jesus Christ!

One preacher spoke of this: Jesus making Himself at home in our lives! That all the doors of our lives are open.........

Sure enough we cannot hide from God and Christ, They know the most secret of details about us......but until we open those doors and make Him at home in those places, then Christ is not welcome there.

The preacher used the “secret sin” as an issue........Those places where we say “we have to work on that”............When you open yourself up to and our willing to have that gone, then Christ is at home!

If you are holding on to some worldly/fleshly thing and not willing to let it go, you haven’t trusted Christ with that, you are saying you can’t live without it!

It might be something that I have been fooling myself and saying it was OK and wasn’t really wanting to hear that it is not!

Rooted and Grounded in His Love........Self-giving and serving love for God and His people.

Our lives have set root and home in His love, that is where the Christian lives!

These next 2 verses are dealing with God’s love, with which those that have to come to faith in Jesus Christ will house the Holy Spirit of God and would be as Ephesians 2:21–22 “In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”

A believer might not be able to understand how, but they know of the Love of God through Christ!

They know the parameters of His love, because they are living that!

That is what vs. 19 is expressing to “know” is meant as a relational word, to experience the Love of God...........

That passes our knowledge.......God’s love cannot be reasoned out in the human mind!

John Brine wrote in 1743: “No tongue can fully express the limitlessness of God’s love or any mind can comprehend it: it truly passes knowledge.”

This is where faith comes in and then the experience of God’s love through Christ becomes alive in us!

There is so much to be said here, but the last part of vs. 19 Paul’s prayer is that we are filled up with the fullness of God.

How? Through Christ....Colossians 2:9 “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” ........John 1:16 “And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.”

Allowing Jesus to be at home in our lives........Just open all the doors, don’t make excuses about those rooms, just allow the very essence of Jesus go through your rooms and have His way! Big and little........The act of adultery to looking on folks in lust.......Murdering someone to just hating them......big to little........You know when that happens you can truly experience the True Love Of God Through Jesus Christ..........

Some might ask the question, these would be unbelievers, “How can we believe that God is love, when the Bible speaks of God’s wrath?’

In the truth of God’s wrath, I see the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth of the Love of God through Christ Jesus!!

I would then pose the question, when I understand the wrath of God upon sinful flesh, “How can this God love me?”

Let’s approach that for just a moment.........There is a couple things that we need to point out here......the reality of life is that God is our Creator...........With that the nature of our Creator is that John says in 1 John 1:5 “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

Darkness represents sin, evil, and death.

Light represents holiness, purity, goodness, and life.

There is no darkness at all, God is pure light.........With those characteristics, we find also that God is love 1 John 4:8 “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

God is love itself!

The very fact that our Creator has no darkness within Him and that His creation has fell from His light and the wages of that are death.........the fact that the very death due to the earners of it, God placed on His Son, which is the same as His Father is in essence/nature (sinless, no darkness at all), is evidence to me of the love of God!

It is a love that is uninfluenced!

This one gets me, I have not motivated God to love, He just did....Romans 5:8 “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

It is a love that is eternal......Jeremiah 31:3 “The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: Therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.”

It is a love that is infinite.......God has no limits, therefore love has no limits.....Ephesians 2:4 “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,”

In a sense, when God’s love is realized then we see that the breadth, length, height, and depth is limitless!

It is immutable.....cannot be changed........James 1:17 “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”

Romans 8:35–39 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

It is Holy.........God is holy, His essence is love and holiness......He calls us to this holiness.....Hebrews 12:6 “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”

It is gracious.....Romans 8:32–34 “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.”

Jesus didn’t die to make God loves, but it was because God loves us!

Open up all the doors of your life............You can hold on to those things and not deal with them, however God already knows, open them up and experience the Love of God that passes all knowledge, but you will experience the fullness of God.

Now, in closing as Paul closed out this prayer......Let us praise the One that has been made at home in our lives and all we have seen is holiness, goodness, purity, perfectness, and most especially love!

To Him Be Glory Forever and Ever!!!