Ephesians 3:14-21, A Truly God-Centered Prayer for the Church

Introduction

Good morning, beloved. I am so thankful to have another opportunity for us to gather together and open God’s Word. If you have a Bible, and I hope that you do, please open with me to Ephesians 3:14-21. We will first read the passage before us this morning. Then, we will pray and ask the LORD to bless our time together in His Word for our joy together in Christ. So, please follow along with me as I read this incredible prayer for the Church given to us in Ephesians 3:14-21.

READ Ephesians 3:14-21

PRAY

Several weeks ago our family had the privilege of making our yearly February trip to Louisville, KY for a conference. It’s an annual summit for like-minded pastors and missionaries who are partnered together in what is called the Immanuel Network. Among many great aspects of that time together with friends and ministry partners we were given a particular challenge for each of our local churches. The challenge was for us to spend time over the next year, at least monthly, praying Ephesians 3:14-21 for our life and ministry together.

Since then I have returned numerous times to this particular passage, this prayer written by the apostle Paul under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I have prayed for it for myself. I have prayed for it for all of you––our church family. As this week progressed I felt all the more strongly that this needs to not be just my prayer for our church, but our prayer together. So, here at the start, I want to make clear that this is a challenge for all of us to take up this prayer together––not just me; not just the Shepherds––but all of us.

My hope is that over the next year all of us together would make this our regular prayer and intercession for our church family in every imaginable capacity. For the early risers, during your early mornings with the LORD before your day gets started. If you have a commute, rather than turning on the radio or podcast, spend that commute praying this. Tired moms and dads, before your head hits the pillow exhausted at night. In the various gatherings we find ourselves with one another––Sunday school; worship; discipleship group; fellowship in any other settings.

Now, as you hear that challenge, in case anyone is wondering “why?”––my simple response to that is “why not?” As a born again follower of the LORD Jesus Christ, why would you not want to pray this prayer regularly for yourself and your church family? What Christian doesn’t want what this prayer is asking for? And so, if you’re recognizing any inkling in you of not wanting to make this your regular prayer and hearts desire, you might start by examining your own heart. Then, by asking God to make you desire this more.

With that said we should spend some time getting acquainted with this prayer so that we know what we’re asking. Two sources in particular have been immensely helpful for me as I’ve studied and meditated on this passage––D.A. Carson’s book Praying with Paul as well as my pastor and friend Ryan Fullerton. Their fingerprints are all over this message. So whatever is good from our time in the Word this morning is owing to those men and how the LORD has used them to shape and sharpen me. Anything unhelpful or unclear should be attributed to me alone.

As we work through the text together, I trust that we’ll be encouraged to make this our regular prayer together over the next year. A lot could be said from this text. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, widely regarded as one of the greatest preachers of the twentieth century, took seventeen sermons to expound these verses. John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress, wrote a whole book on it––All Loves Excelling. I don’t plan to attempt any of that. I only intend this one sermon. So, here’s my attempt to boil this passage, this prayer, down into one sentence.

MAIN POINT––Pray for God’s power and love that we might grow together in Christlike maturity for the glory of God.

Getting Oriented

Paul begins with these words in verse 14––“For this reason”––for what reason? Paul is returning to the original train of thought he began back in Ephesians 3:1. He started to say all of this back in verse 1. But he stopped for what I only know to describe as a Holy Spirit inspired digression, or side track, for thirteen verses. As a preacher I couldn’t help but smile a bit when I first considered this. As noted by others as well, here is Biblical proof that it’s okay for preachers to occasionally take a rabbit trail, so long as they get back to the point!

Paul, in verse 14, is getting back to the point of what he began to say back in verse 1. So, when he says here, “for this reason”, he’s referring to what he had concluded with in Ephesians 2. Namely, the glorious reality that the people of God are being made into the temple of God where God dwells among them. Writing to these Gentile Christians, having reminded them of God’s work of grace in saving them, he says beginning in Ephesians 2:19––

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the LORD. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

This is the reason for Paul’s prayer we are looking at this morning. The people of God are being made into the temple of God where God dwells among them. Beloved, do you know how significant that reality is? It’s simply astounding when you consider the instances of God dwelling among His people throughout redemptive history. As was pointed out to me, certainly Paul had these things in mind as he was writing this.

At the end of Exodus in chapter 40 once the tabernacle was completed the glory of the LORD filled it such that Moses could not enter it. In 2 Chronicles 7, after Solomon’s prayer of dedication for the temple it says that fire came down from heaven to consume the sacrifices, “and the glory of the LORD filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of the LORD, because the glory of the LORD filled the LORD’s house.”

The same glory that we find in John 1:14 concerning Jesus where it says “And the Word became flesh and dwelt [tabernacled] among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” This is what Paul is telling the Ephesians is being done to them together with all the LORD’s people by God’s grace because of their faith-union with Christ. It is for this reason that Paul bows His knee before the Father in prayer.

That’s who this prayer is directed at. Paul is petitioning God the FATHER. Don’t gloss over that, beloved. When you pray, do you know who you are talking to? Do you know whose ear you have? He is the sovereign Ruler and Creator of all the universe. At the same time, He has given us the Spirit of adoption that cries “Abba! Father!” If you are in Christ, God is your Father. He is a good and perfect Father who gives good things to His children. Always and in every way, acting for the good of His children.

This should lead us to great confidence when, like Paul, we come before the LORD––our good good Father––to pray this prayer.

Two Petitions

So, what is it that Paul prays for? What is it that I am asking us to pray for together over the next year? We can boil it down to two petitions. He asks that God might strengthen us with power AND he asks that we might have power to grasp the limitless dimensions of Christ’s love for us. That we might be strengthened with God’s power and that we would know more of Christ’s love. That’s what we’re going to unpack together with the remainder of our time.

First, is the request that God, according to the riches of His glory, might strengthen us with power through His Spirit in our inner being so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith (3:16-17a). Notice the Trinitarian nature and purpose of this prayer. That God the Father, according to the riches of His glory, might strengthen us with power through His Spirit, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. According to the riches of His glory––all of His infinite perfections in His being and all that He has done and is doing.

Do you ever think about the abundant richness of God’s glory? How infinite and beyond comprehension that is? It’s infinite and unending. This isn’t a perfect illustration, but I think you’ll get the picture. Imagine if you were to stand on the coast, looking out at the vast ocean expanse before you and you decided to see if you could empty the ocean by taking a cup full of water from it. Impossible! Beloved you can no more deplete the riches of God’s glory than you could drain the ocean dry. It’s boundless and without limit.

It is according to those riches that Paul is making this request that God might strengthen us with power through His Spirit. The Spirit being the means through whom all of God’s blessings are mediated to His people. The Spirit who makes us alive together with Christ. The Spirit who is the seal and guarantee of our inheritance with Christ. The Spirit who, according to this prayer, will strengthen us with power––why? So we can have supernatural experiences and do things that draw attention to ourselves? By no means! No, look at what he says.

Paul asks that God will strengthen us with power why? So that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. Now, perhaps you hear that part about Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith and you’re a little confused, like I was at first. After all, Paul is writing to Christians here. Isn’t Christ already dwelling in their hearts through faith? Absolutely. This is where D.A. Carson was so helpful for me in my study. Carson writes, “Paul’s hope is that Christ will truly take up residence in the hearts of believers, as they trust him…so as to make their hearts his home.”

Again, Carson was super helpful with an illustration that I cannot improve on. Many of us here have experienced this so you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s sort of like buying your home, particularly if you bought a bit of a fixer upper. At the beginning of your ownership you were dwelling in it, but maybe it wasn’t in the best condition. A leaky roof or a dip in the floor. A layout or design that you didn’t like. So, over time, you put some sweat equity into it. And after some years, perhaps many years, it eventually became what you wanted it to be. It became home.

Every Christian here has Christ dwelling in their hearts through faith from the moment we first believed. But, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’re all a work in progress. He didn’t come and dwell in a turn key perfect property. But over time, through His Spirit, He is increasingly taking up residence and making us His home so that He might have all of us. That His character would be increasingly displayed in and through us as we become more and more like Him and controlled by Him. That’s what the power of God at work in us accomplishes. I think the rest of what Paul prays will help us see that all the more.

That brings us to the second petition that Paul makes in these verses––that we, being rooted and grounded in love, might have strength to grasp the limitless dimensions of the love of Christ, that we might be filled with all the fullness of God (3:17b-19). Beloved, do you know how much you are loved by God? Being rooted, have you sunk your roots all the more deeply into the rich soil of God’s love for you in Christ? Are you aware of the firm foundation of God’s love for you in Christ upon which your faith is grounded?

I don’t mean just intellectually. I’m sure many of us here could intellectually speak about Christ’s love for us. Any of our AWANA kids could come up and quote John 3:16 and how God loved us by sending His only Son that whoever believes in Him might have eternal life. Or Romans 5:8 where Paul says, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” But I think Paul is after far more than that. He’s praying not only for an intellectual knowledge, but an experiential knowledge of the love of Christ.

When our family moved here several years ago, I knew intellectually that northern Minnesota was a cold place to live during the winter. I knew where we were going geographically. I could look up the climate and historical weather patterns. It was cemented firmly in my mind intellectually that we would be cold in the winter. It was a whole different level of knowledge that hit us the first time we experienced the feeling of -30. Taking my first breath in that frigid air and gasping and feeling the inside of my nose freeze near instantly, then I really knew MN was cold!

It is not enough for Paul that these Ephesian Christians, or us for that matter, would merely know intellectually the love of Christ. He certainly wants at least that. He doesn’t want less than that. You have to have the intellectual knowledge to get to the experiential knowledge. But we dare not let it simply stay in our heads. Our intellectual knowledge of God’s love for us in Christ must make its way from our head, to our hearts, and to our hands in our dealings with others. Sound, biblical doctrine should warm our hearts and direct our hands and feet in action.

Just an example, last week as we finished Genesis we considered the goodness and sovereignty of God. It’s good that we open our Bibles and see that God is good and sovereign. Those things are true about Him. We must know those things in our mind. But that should do more than fill up our brain cells with knowledge about God and His nature. It should have an experiential effect on us, like it did Joseph. It should lead us to trust Him and even praise Him with joy in the midst of all of life’s circumstances––both good and bad.

Do you know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge like that, beloved? Do you read about God’s love for you in Christ and feel warmed by it as you sit close to the fire of meditation? Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the love of Christ in such a way that it just bursts out of you in the way that you live your life and the way you interact with others, especially your church family? Or is it just merely in the storehouses of your memory never moving you even an inch closer to a greater love for Christ and others as evidenced in your life?

Why does Paul pray for this? He’s not after just some mere emotional experience. He prays this “That you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” What does that mean? Certainly it does not mean all of God taking up residence in us. He is infinite and we are not, so that is not possible. What I think Paul is desiring is for us to grow up in Christ-like maturity. To put it the way my pastor friend put it––“the fullness of the life and the character of Christ controlling us.”

I think that becomes clear simply by reading the rest of Ephesians from chapter 4 through 6. Here in the first half of the letter he has detailed all the glory of what God has done and is doing for His people in Christ. Then he prays this prayer and from there goes on to provide three chapters of commands instructing us on how all of that will shape our life and ministry together. What it will look like day after day as Christ takes up residence in us and makes Himself at home in us over the course of our lives.

So what might an answer to this prayer for the church produce in us as the LORD answers it in our life and ministry together? It will look a whole lot like what we see in Ephesians 4-6 increasingly being manifested in our life and ministry together. It’s so practical. The answer to this prayer will increasingly produce:

A people characterized by humility, gentleness, and patience as we bear with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. (Eph. 4:1-3)

A people who are zealous to use the gifts that God has given them for building up the body of Christ in love. (Eph. 4:7-16)

A people who increasingly put off the old-self, our former manner of life, to be renewed in the spirit of our minds and put on the new-self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Eph. 4:22-24)

A people who are self-controlled in our desires and in the use of our tongue––not tearing one another down, but building one another up. (Eph. 4:25-32; 5:3-21)

A people walking in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. (Eph. 5:2)

Marriages that gloriously display Christ and the Church and households where children are loved and brought up in the discipline and instruction of the LORD. (Ephesians 5:22-6:4)

A people who are known in their workplaces as sincere, hardworking, and honest in all that they do. (Ephesians 6:5-9)

A people who put on the full armor of God and wage war against the schemes of the devil, fighting sin and temptation, putting it to death day after day, all the while proclaiming Christ as King in every sphere of influence the LORD has given us. (Eph. 6:10-20)

Do you want this for us, beloved? This is my earnest hope for our church family here at New Journey Church in Fosston, MN. I hope it will be ours collectively as we pray this together regularly over the coming year.

To The Praise and Glory of God

Let me finish with this, beloved. Do you believe that God is able to do this? Paul did. Do you see that there in Ephesians 3:20-21? Life as a Christian this side of eternity is a challenge for sure. Such that it can be hard to believe that God might do such a thing among us. Here’s the thing, we would do well to remember that Paul is writing to Christians who were just like us. Who had the same weaknesses and imperfections we do today.

Again just surveying Ephesians 4-6 as we just did, you get a sense of the things they struggled with and were plaguing them. That’s why Paul gives the instructions that he gives them. People struggling with anger and self-control and their speech. Difficult and broken marriages. Apathy in using their gifts for the good of the church and building it up in love and maturity in Christ. Apathy and exhaustion in their fight against sin, the flesh, and the devil. All the same things we struggle with today. But Paul believes resoundingly that God can do what he is asking.

That’s why he concludes his prayer with this doxology (or praise) in verses 20-21––“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, amen.”

This same God who is so powerful He spoke all the universe into existence. This same God who is so powerful that He raised Jesus from the dead. He made you alive together with Christ, by His grace. He has given you His Spirit. Christ is dwelling in your hearts through faith. Therefore, He can do far more abundantly than all that we ask as we pray this prayer together. It is a prayer that He will delight to answer if we will simply come to Him and ask. And in answering it, He will receive all the glory in the church, now and forever.

Conclusion

So, beloved, over the next year let us pray this way regularly for our church family. Pray for God’s power and love that we might grow together in Christlike maturity for the glory of God.