EPHESIANS 3:14-21 - Grasp The Love of Christ

Introduction

So as many of you know, a few weeks ago I finally realized my decade-long dream of owning a Jeep Wrangler. I have been inordinately excited about it (as my family will tell you). In the providence of God I brought it home the same day our cows got out, and so the very first thing I did with it was go “off-roading” through our pastures and barnyard looking for cows and getting them back in—so it got broken in on the farm real quick!

But to tell the truth, as enthusiastic as I am about my Jeep, I am really not a very good Jeep enthusiast. You know what I mean? There are people who really go all out—for example, I stumbled across something called the “Easter Jeep Safari” that is held every year out in the Moab Desert in Utah. It’s an off-roading event where people come from all over to spend a week on these extreme trails in order to win badges to put on their vehicle, such as the “Cliffhanger” badge:

Perched high above the brilliant canyon vistas of Moab, Cliff Hanger invites 4x4 aficionados to brave its narrow paths. To successfully pass across this hallowed ground, you’ll need to navigate steep drop-offs and aggressive obstacles (https://www.jeep.com/easter-jeep-safari.html, accessed 4/24/2025)

...

Yeah, deal me out. I’m not that into owning a Jeep… I’m just happy driving around town with the soft top open.

But this is the way we are as human beings, isn’t it? We can be enthusiastic and committed to something, but we want to be able to define “commitment” on our own terms. We like to sort of seek our own level when it comes to how hard we want to go after something—when it becomes too demanding, we tend to slack off.

When it comes to hobbies, it’s really not a very consequential attitude—you can decide to try to learn a new language or try fly-fishing or something like that, and if you lose interest because it turns out to be more difficult or more demanding than you expected, you can just decide that “this isn’t for me” and move on.

It’s one thing to find out that the hobby you are pursuing is harder or more demanding than you were prepared for—but in the Scripture we read earlier we saw Jesus’ description of those who come to the conclusion that following Him is more than they bargained for:

Mark 4:18–19 LSB

“And others are those being sown among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for anything else enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

Here in our study of Ephesians, we are about to move from the theological side of the letter to the practical side—Paul begins in Ephesians 4 with

Ephesians 4:1 LSB

Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called...

The days of casually tooling down Wayne Road in an open-air Jeep are over; it is time to tackle the Cliff Hanger course. Paul is going to set the next three chapters before his readers as a call to Christian unity, holiness, purity, godliness in marriage, obedience in children, steadfastness in spiritual warfare and more. Walking worthy of God’s call on your life means that the apathy, inconsistency and fitfulness of our Christian life simply won’t do.

And so what must we do? How do we avoid apathy and inconsistency in our Christian walk when we are so easily discouraged or sidetracked?

If you ask someone who is utterly dedicated to a difficult pursuit, to the point where they gladly and unhesitatingly suffer any hardship and make any sacrifice for it, they would most likely answer along the lines of how much they love doing it. The off-roader who risks life and limb driving up cliffs, the runner who punishes their body in an ultra-marathon—they are driven by their love for that pursuit.

But what the Apostle Paul shows us here in our text this morning is that when it comes to finding the strength to walk in a manner worthy of your calling as a Christian, it is not how much you love Christ that gives you the strength to walk worthy:

It is Christ’s LOVE for you that EMPOWERS your WALK with Him

Our text this morning is Paul’s prayer for his readers in the context of the power they need to walk worthy:

Ephesians 3:14–16 LSB

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that He would give you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,

Paul is praying that his readers would be “strengthened with power”—that’s the core clause in these verses. Everything else that Paul says here in verses 14-16 are modifiers of that central petition. Paul bows his knee in humility and dependence on God—the Father of both Jews and Gentiles together in Christ—asking for Him to strengthen us with power according to the riches of His glory. Another way to say it is in proportion to the riches of His glory—this isn’t just a little bit of power, just the bare minimum; Paul is asking that we receive abundant power.

This power is through His Spirit—it is spiritual power that we have through God the Holy Spirit that dwells in us. And this power is meant to strengthen us in the inner man. Paul uses that phrase “the inner man” in two other places (2 Cor. 4:1 and Romans 7:22); here he is referring to the new nature that we have received by the New Birth.

And why does Paul pray for us to have this power? Is he praying that we have some kind of supernatural, “Holy Ghost power” to perform some kind of miraculous deeds? To be “strengthened with power in the inner man” so that we can cast out demons and heal the sick and raise the dead? Why does Paul want us to have this power?

Look at verses 17—Paul pleads with God the Father to give us power

Ephesians 3:17–19 LSB

so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being firmly rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

The power from God that Paul is pleading for us to have is the power to grasp the greatness of Christ’s love for us. We will not walk worthy because of the great power of our love for Christ—it is Christ’s love for us that empowers our walk with Him. In order to walk worthy of our calling, we must grasp the love of Christ for us—that is what Paul is praying that we have the power to do.

There are four outcomes that Paul is praying for us in these verses—four things that he wants to be true of us as a result of this power he prays for. They are marked off in the text by the phrase “so that” or “that”—see if you can identify them as we read it again:

Ephesians 3:16–19 LSB

that He would give you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being firmly rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

So let us look at these one at a time. In order to walk worthy of our calling, we must grasp the extent of the love of Christ for us. So the first outcome of the power that Paul is praying for is power that

I. Christ may DWELL in your HEART (Ephesians 3:17)

Paul prays that we be strengthened with power through God’s Spirit in the inner man so that Christ may dwell in our hearts. Now right away we have a question, don’t we? Doesn’t being a Christian at all mean that Christ does dwell in our hearts? It’s one of the most fundamental ways that we talk about salvation, that “Christ lives in your heart”; children talk about “asking Jesus into your heart”. So why is Paul praying that Christ would dwell there?

Part of the answer lies in the specific word Paul uses for dwell in verse 17. There is a word for living somewhere that has the idea of staying somewhere temporarily—like staying in a dorm room for college; you’re staying there for the semester, but your permanent address is somewhere else.

What Paul is praying for here is that Christ live in our hearts, but

Not as a TENANT...

If you’ve lived in a rental before you know the drill, right? Don’t drive any nails into the walls, don’t paint anything, give them a security deposit so if they’re not happy with the condition of the place when you leave they can keep the money.

Beloved, far too many people want Christ to live in their hearts as a tenant. They don’t want Him to make any real changes in their lives; they don’t want to have their affections altered or the patterns of sin in their lives challenged. Jesus living “way down deep” in their heart is good, because He’s down there far enough where they can disregard Him if they please.

But the word Paul uses for Christ “dwelling” in our hearts by faith is katoikeo—the idea is of a permanent, unshifting residence. Christ aims to live in our hearts not as a tenant

… But as the OWNER

Have you ever thought about what a mess your heart was when Christ took up residence there? He walked in and saw the cracked foundation and the leaking roof and the black mold in the bathroom and the burst pipes in the laundry room and the mildewed carpet and the backed up septic tank and the exposed wiring and the crumbling drywall and broken appliances—and He said, “If I’m going to live here, I am going to start renovating!” This is the kind of dwelling Paul is describing here; Christ aims to make your heart the kind of place that is fit for the King of Kings. And this is what He does—His blood cleanses it from the filth of its sin, He washes it over and over with the pure water of His Word, He opens it up to the clean sea breezes of His Spirit and the brilliant sunshine of His Father’s delight. He turns it from a squalid, mouldering hovel and turns it into a shining palace of His royal residence. When Christ makes your heart His home, He starts from the ground up and re-makes the entire dwelling in purity, holiness and righteousness.

The power that Paul is praying for is the power of Christ to turn your heart into His dwelling place—the power for you, by faith, to truly turn the deed of your heart over to Him, to submit to every renovation He makes in your heart by His Word and His Spirit by His grace.

Strength to walk worthy of your calling as a Christian does not come from your love for Christ—it comes from His love for you. Paul’s prayer here is a plea for power that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith, and

II. That you may be ESTABLISHED in His LOVE (Ephesians 3:17b)

Ephesians 3:17 LSB

so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being firmly rooted and grounded in love,

Paul mixes two metaphors here in his prayer for us to be established in Christ’s love. First, he prays that we would be

ROOTED in His love (cp. John 15:5; Rom. 8:35)

What do the roots of a plant or a tree do for it? In the parable we read earlier about the seeds and soils, Jesus says of the seed that fell on rocky soil that the plant was scorched “because it had no root, it withered away” (Mark 4:6). Roots provide stability, but they also provide nourishment for the plant. The soil that the plant grows in gives it the sustenance it needs—the plant grows and thrives and bears fruit because of the nourishment that its roots draw from the soil it grows in.

This is what Paul is praying for here—that you be rooted in Christ’s love. That His love nourish you and strengthen you—Jesus Himself made this comparison in John 15:5 - unless we draw our nourishment from Him as a branch draws nourishment from the vine, we are helpless to bear fruit for Him.

So many times we try to draw our strength from the love of people around us—but that love will always be rocky soil. It will always be a shallow love, limited by our sin, our selfishness, our shame and brokenness. How much better to draw your strength, Christian, from the boundless, perfect and unchanging love of Christ for you! Who loved you when you were at your most unlovable, Who will never leave you or forsake you, Who will hold you and keep you through turmoil, affliction, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril and sword (Rom 8:35)! As we sing in the old hymn, “Friends may fail me, foes assail me, He my Savior, makes me whole! Hallelujah, what a Savior, Hallelujah what a friend—saving, helping, keeping, loving—He is with me to the end!”

Paul prays for us to be rooted in the love of Christ, and he uses another metaphor, drawn from architecture—be rooted in His love, and be

GROUNDED in His love (cp. Matt. 7:24)

Jesus called His disciples to ground their lives in His words like wise builders building the foundation of their homes on solid bedrock (Matt. 7:24). In the same way, Paul is calling his readers to sink the foundation of their lives on the bedrock of Christ’s immoveable love for them!

One of the most insidious lies that the world tries to pass off on people is that the most “grounded” person in the world is the person that has the greatest “self-love”. The more you “love yourself”, we are told, the more “resilient” you will be in facing uncertainty or unexpected hardship. But trying to bring stability and steadfastness into your life by focusing on how much you “love yourself” is like trying to stand on the beach during a hurricane by holding on as tight as you can to your own belt-loops!

When tragedy strikes or hardships fall or the winds of turmoil and uncertainty blow through your life, the only way to stand firm is to ground your life in the love of Christ for you! There is no disaster or sorrow that can befall a Christian that cannot be answered by the simple declaration “Jesus loves me, this I KNOW!” There is no tear that you shed, no pain that you suffer, no heartache that you bear that has not had to pass through His love to get to you! His love never fails; it will hold you “through the fiercest drought and storm—what heights of love, what depths of peace, when fears are stilled and strivings cease...”

This is Paul’s prayer—that you be established in the love of Christ for you, the only love deep enough to sustain you, the only love that can nourish and strengthen you, the only love that can empower you to walk worthy of your calling.

Paul prays for the Holy Spirit’s power to enable his readers to grasp the love of Christ for them—it is Christ’s love for you that empowers your walk with Him as he dwells within your heart, that you may be established in His love, and

III. That you may SEE the REACH of His love (Ephesians 3:18-19a)

Paul prays for spiritual power that you

Ephesians 3:18–19 LSB

may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth

of the love of Christ for you. Your entire life as a believer in this life (and for all eternity in the next!) will be a constant quest to comprehend the scope of Christ’s love for you. It is deeper than you can fall, higher than you can climb, broader than you can see, longer than you can run. He loves you no matter what.

But note carefully here that Paul says you seek to comprehend this love with all the saints. Christian, your lifelong quest to grasp the love of Christ is pursued

Not in ISOLATION

Consider—how much of the love of Christ can you comprehend when you are considering it all by yourself? You may come to great insights about Christ’s love for you; how much He delights in you, how much He has done to rescue you from your sin, how deep His delight is in you and His never-ending presence in your life. Thinking only about your own relationship to Christ’s love will certainly bear good fruit in your life, but if that is all you ever consider, you will become an insufferably self-centered person. We have far too many Christians in this present hour that only want to hear about how much God loves them, and how special they are to Him. But God’s Word here declares that your pursuit of the grasp of Christ’s love for you must be undertaken

Among the GATHERED SAINTS

Comprehend the extent of Christ’s love with all the saints! In the immediate context of Paul’s letter, he is referring to the new unity between Jew and Gentile Christian—consider the depths of the love of Christ for them as well as for you! The full facets of the extent of Christ’s love—compassion, pity, friendship, mercy, sacrifice, brotherhood—can only be really understood when you are living in fellowship with the gathered body of the saints! Once again, God’s Word confronts the selfish individualism that we are so prone to—you can only begin to grasp the real height, depth, breadth and length of the love of Christ as you see that love played out (and as you work out that love in the power of the Holy Spirit) in the life of the church.

And as we follow through the end of Verse 19, we come across what seems like an impossibility for us:

Ephesians 3:19 LSB

and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Paul is praying for the power of the Holy Spirit in the inner man

IV. That you may be FILLED with the INFINITE (Ephesians 3:19)

“To know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge...” How can our finite minds grasp the infinite knowledge of Christ’s love for us? How do we begin to grasp

KNOWLEDGE that never ends

How can a finite mind grasp unending love? Our pea-brains will never be able to grasp more than a single droplet of the ocean of Christ’s love for us; so the only way to grasp it is one droplet at a time! Consider, beloved—you will never run out of ways to be astonished at the love of Christ for you! You will never come to the end of fresh joy over His compassion for you, you will never scrape the bottom of His kindness, you will never come to the headwaters of His torrent of delight in you! And that means that you will never run out of that love for your brothers and sisters in Christ—it means that you will never run out of that love for the world around you!

Paul’s prayer is that you have power to grasp knowledge that never ends, and that you be filled with

FULLNESS that has no limit

Ephesians 3:19 LSB

and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Once again—how does a finite being contain the fullness of God Himself? One way to think of this is to consider what it means to be so full of God’s love, so compelled by His divine nature that there is nothing left of yourself. To have no room for your own frail and faulty attempts at love, but to be so occupied with His power, majesty, wisdom, love, mercy, patience, kindness and everything else that He is and does that everything you do and say and think and feel and know is infused with His love. This is Paul’s prayer for us, just as Jesus Himself said in Matthew 5:48

Matthew 5:48 LSB

“Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

But as much as we seek to be filled with all the fullness of God in this life, surely we have an even greater hope. That when we gain His everlasting hall in glory, we will need all of eternity to scale the heights of the fullness of God’s love for us in Christ! The great 19th Century theologian Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon “Heaven is A World of Love” described the glory of God as an infinitely high mountain; one that finite creatures could never come to the summit of. And we will spend all eternity racing up the sides of that mountain, going faster and higher every day— “further up and further in” to the heights of His love and glorious fullness, each day better than the last, each revelation of His kindnesses to us in Christ more exciting and wonderful than before, being delighted more and more with greater and greater capacity for joy as new heights of His love are revealed to us throughout all eternity!

Paul’s prayer in this passage is that God may give us power to grasp the love of Christ for us—His love is what empowers us to walk in a manner worthy of our calling as Christians. In verses 20-21, Paul declares that that power at work within us—the power of the immeasurable love of Christ—will do far more abundantly beyond what we can possibly imagine. His love for you—His perfect, unchanging, steadfast, unyielding love for you that bled on that Cross and tore the bars away from Death and will shake the Heavens and the Earth on the Day He returns for you—grasping this love that He has for you is your greatest strength as you seek to walk in obedience to Him.

To know that Christ is dwelling in your heart, renovating and re-building and re-creating His residence there as He clears out the remaining corruption and replaces it with His righteousness is your greatest weapon in your battle for holiness every day. When you are faced with a decision to indulge your sin or seek His purity, to give in to anger or respond with blessing, to fudge the numbers or act with integrity—knowing the love of Christ for you will be your strength in that moment. Consider the love that drove Him to suffer that agony on the Cross for you and remember that it was the same sort of sin that is dogging you now that put Him there. Knowing the love of Christ that shed His blood for your holiness is a powerful weapon in your battle with sin.

To know the love of Christ is to be established in a love that is your nourishment and protection and strength in the middle of a world that is being shaken to pieces. No matter what kind of love you do or don’t receive from the world around you—no matter if you are filled with the good and wholesome love of family and friends or if you are abandoned and reviled by everyone you know—you have the love of your Savior Who will never leave you nor forsake you.

And how do you know that love? How does the love of Christ appear to you? Together with all the saints. Christian, the love of Christ to you is found in the love you receive in the midst of this congregation. The love that you show to others—your compassion, your mercy, your friendship, your delight, your kindness—the love that you have received from Christ is what you pass on to them so that they experience Christ’s love through you! So love these people with the love you have received in Christ, so that together you may walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called.

And see here what a powerful way we have to pray for one another—here is a prayer you can always pray for a brother or sister in Christ no matter what their need. Pray that they will be strengthened with power by God’s Spirit to grasp the height and depth and breadth of how much Christ loves them! Pray that they will be rooted and grounded in the love of Christ, pray that they will be filled with all the fullness of God’s love for them in Christ, pray that their going out and coming in and lying down and rising up would be flooded by the awareness of the undying love of their Risen Savior, and that they would be utterly and completely and gloriously at rest in His love!

And if you do not know this love of Christ—if your past has been filled with the rocky shallow soil of fallen, broken love; if you have heard “I love you” from so many different voices that all turned out to be lying or powerless or fickle in their love that you have decided that there is no point in even searching for it anymore—if you have listened to the world tell you that the real solution is to work on “loving yourself” first and most of all—then please listen to this Good News from God’s Word today.

The love of Jesus Christ for you drew Him from the heights of His infinite glory in Heaven down to this earth to rescue you from the hopelessness and wretchedness of your sin. He did not do this because you were so lovable; you had nothing to offer Him but your sin and rebellion and law-breaking. Every commandment that He gave, you broke; every revelation of His power and authority you rebelled against. Listen to the way the Apostle Paul puts it in his letter to the church in Rome:

Romans 5:6–8 LSB

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Here is love like you have never experienced before—love that suffered and died for you when you were still as unlovable as you could be. Love that calls to you today to turn away from the sin and shame and guilt that separates you from Him; love that will transform you from an object of wrath to His precious child, from the squalor and filth of a broken down hut to the palace of a King hung with banners of love, from an isolated, lonely outsider to a member of His Body, the Church, where you will be showered with His love and really able to love others rightly, with the hope of eternity together with Him being astounded every day by the heights of His love that reach higher than the last. This love is waiting for you—free, abundant and eternal—when you come (and welcome!) to Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Ephesians 3:20–21 LSB

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION:

What are some reasons that your enthusiasm for your interests or hobbies might weaken over time? Why is this a much more serious concern for your walk as a Christian? (Read Mark 4:18-19 again for context.)

How does the position of this text within the overall course of the letter of Ephesians help us understand its point? What is Paul preparing to say in the next chapter that gives us a reference point for understanding his prayer here at the end of Chapter 3?

What does it mean for Christ to dwell in your heart as an owner, not a tenant? How will your life reflect the presence of Christ at the core of your life?

Why does Paul specifically say that comprehending the love of Christ must be done “with all the saints”? What does this tell you about the role of the local church in your Christian walk? How can you explore the love of Christ with your church family this week?