Strengthened by the Boundless Love of Christ

Introduction

A father’s ambition for his children is that they would grow up to be successful in their lives. Almost everything he does is toward that end. The hours he works, the time he spends with them, the lessons he teaches them, and the discipline he places upon them. He sees what might be if they are only properly prepared.

A Posture of Prayer

Ephesians 3:14-15 (ESV)

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,

· This is the second of Paul’s prayers in Ephesians. It mirrors, in many ways, the previous prayer in Ephesians 1:15-23.

· “For this reason”: This has to do with the digression he just finished (3:1-13) and the larger scope of the epistle, having to do with the mystery revealed (that Gentiles are included in the promises of God).

· “I bow my knees”: Paul’s posture is notable as an act of submission and humility.

o Jewish men were not known to pray in such a way (they tended to stand).

§ Praying from the knees indicates desperation.

o So, for Paul to communicate this posture indicates that he is powerfully moved on account of the gospel, and its impact upon the Ephesian church.

· “Before the Father”: Paul directs his prayers to the Father, as a way of communicating the Trinitarian quality of our salvation.

We pray to the Father, through the Son, and by/inthe Holy Spirit.

· God is the Father over every family of the earth as our Creator.

o But Paul is reminding the Ephesians that, in Christ, God truly is our Father too.

§ There is a familial relationship between believers and God the Father.

Our prayer is properly directed toward God the Father because He is the one whom we are dependent upon. Nothing will give us greater security and stability than to know and believe that God is our Father.

· Paul will prayer to the Father that He will grant three things to the Ephesians that will help them to endure and to thrive in faithfulness.

Strengthened Within

Ephesians 3:16-17a (ESV)

16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—

· The first request of Paul is for the Ephesian church to be strengthened.

o They were in need of such strength because they lived out their lives in hostile territory.

· “Be strengthened”: The form of this is passive; that is, it is not something that we do, but rather, something that is done to us.

o We cannot strengthen ourselves on our own; it is something that God must do in us.

In the same way that we cannot save ourselves but must be saved by God, so must we also not seek to live for Christ on our own, but be strengthened to do so.

· We need the strength that only God can provide; strength that is overflowing on account of the “riches of His glory.

o Glory—the outshining of all that He is.

§ Jesus, for instance, is the perfect revelation of this glory.

· John 1:14 (ESV)

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

§ In Jesus Christ, we find the source and the fullness of God’s blessings for us.

o God freely and richly gives us the strength we need to live lives that are pleasing in His sight.

· Philippians 4:19 (ESV)

19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

This is important for us to remember in our prayers. We should not separate God’s blessings from God Himself. To treasure the blessing apart from the blesser is to reject God because He blesses us with Himself.

· Paul gives three qualifications about the strength he asks God for.

o “With power”—the means of strengthening.

§ Not strengthened with knowledge, or hope, or holiness, but working power.

o “Through His Spirit”—the agent of strengthening.

§ We aren’t strengthened through obedience, or forms of worship, or any other thing but through the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit indwelling us.

o “In your inner being”—the location of strengthening.

§ We aren’t strengthened physically, taking on some form. (Muscularity, glowing in the dark).

· The result of this strengthening is that “Christ may dwell in your hearts”

o This is not to say that Christ doesn’t already dwell in our hearts upon our salvation.

o But it is to say the continual ongoing experience of Christ’s presence in us.

o That Christ would make his dwelling place (permanence) in us.

Moving into a house is not a one-day process. It is sometimes a years-long or life-long process of making a place your home.

· “Through faith”—The process of being made Christ’s dwelling place is made possible by faith.

o Not a crisis experience, but an ongoing lifestyle of trust in the finished and perfect work of Jesus Christ.

o Faith is crucial for the Christian life. Hebrews 11:6a (ESV)

6 And without faith it is impossible to please him,

Paul prays for the Ephesians, that they would be a properly fitted dwelling place for Jesus Christ.

For this to happen, they need some structural work done in them in order to properly function as His temple.

This is the importance of taking holiness in our body seriously. If Christ is our Savior, and the Holy Spirit makes His home in us, then it becomes so important that we (body and soul) are made increasingly holy.

And everything that we need to be properly fitted for this purpose is freely made available to us through the generosity of God.

Understanding the Incomprensible

Ephesians 3:17b-19a (ESV)

that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,

· “Rooted and grounded in love”—The second request of Paul is that the Ephesians would understand and experience the love of Christ.

o He employs agricultural and architectural terms.

§ The plant puts down roots deeper and deeper in order to draw nutrition from the soil better and to anchor it from being dug up.

§ The building foundation is crucial for bearing up the weight of the structure that is built upon it.

o The love that Paul speaks of is not our love for God, but rather His love for us.

§ The love of Christ is the basis for our love for one another.

§ The love of God enables all Christian love.

· For example, consider the fruits of the Spirit.

Galatians 5:22–23 ESV

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

o Love—Key

o Joy—Love singing in worship of God.

o Peace—Being at rest in the love of God.

o Patience—Love that endures evil.

o Kindness—Love that reaches out to others.

o Goodness—Demonstrating the character of perfect love.

o Faithfulness—Love’s habit of obedience.

o Gentleness—Love considering others as more important than self.

o Self-control—Love directing our lives.

· Paul wants the love of Christ to be the center of the Ephesians’ life and church.

o He prays that they would come to grasp the immensity of Christ’s love for them.

· He prayed previously for them to being strengthened, for such strength will be needed for the next request. Great strength is required to understand Jesus’s love for us.

· He employs the use of dimensional/measuring language.

o He wants the Ephesians to “comprehend” the love of Christ. (A complete/full understanding)

o Breadth—Christ’s love is wide enough to embrace the whole world (John 3:16)

John 3:16 ESV

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

o Length—Christ’s love is long enough to last for all eternity.

o Height—Christ’s love is high enough to raise us up to the heavenly places.

o Depth—Christ’s love is deep enough to pull us out of the pit.

o Paul’s language shows that there is an all-encompassing vastness to the love that Jesus Christ freely shares with us.

· Paul beautifully illustrates this in Romans 8:35–39 (ESV)

Romans 8:35–39 ESV

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

· “with all the saints”

Faith is not meant to be a private pursuit, but lived out in community, in the church. Our spiritual growth is dependent upon belonging and being committed to the community of faith where we mutually support each other.

· “And to know the Love of Christ that surpasses knowledge”—in a beautifully paradoxical statement, Paul proclaims that this love which we should be strengthened to comprehend, is completely beyond our capacity to attain…and that is a good thing.

· A.W. Tozer offers this wonderful reflection on the matchless love of Christ.

Because God is self-existent, His love had no beginning, because He is eternal, his love can have no end, because He is infinite it has no limit, because He is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity, because he is immense, His love is an incomprehensible, vast, bottomless, shoreless sea.

We will spend all eternity in the attempt to understand the bottomless, boundless, and abiding love of Jesus Christ for us and we will never reach a day where it is not ever green.

Filled with Fullness

· Ephesians 3:19b (ESV)

Ephesians 3:19 ESV

that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

· Paul’s third request is a summary of what has come before.

· It is an interesting phrase that essentially speaks of the goal and the content of the praise.

o That we would be filled to God’s perfection with the perfection of God.

o The fullness of God has to do with his moral excellence; It is a description of his perfection (that He lacks nothing which would make Him more complete than He is).

o Paul’s desire is that we would be completely and increasingly filled up with His presence, His life, His power, His love.

§ More and more we would experience and come to reflect Him until we become perfect reflections of His glory…again, an eternal work that God is doing among us.

· The fullness of God is the foundation of all Christian activity…as we will come to see in the second half of Ephesians.

o We love because He first loved us.

o We are holy as He is holy.

o We are to be perfect because He is perfect.

He is the source and fountain of all that we do.

Everlasting Praise

Ephesians 3:20-21 (ESV)

Ephesians 3:20–21 ESV

20 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, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

· Paul ends with a doxology, an expression of worship which extols (proclaims) the greatness of God and praises Him for His perfections.

· Even in our praise, we can learn and reaffirm things about Him which will help us to endure in faithfulness.

· He is able—His power (dynamis) is at work (energeo) in us.

o God is both capable and willing to do His good will towards us in Jesus Christ.

o He is willing to answer our prayers, and He is able to do far more.

· Far more abundantly—this is the highest form of comparison available to Paul.

o What God is able and willing to do for us in Jesus Christ is so totally beyond measure, that we will never come to grasp all that God has provided for us.

We need never fear asking too much of God, for His will is to provide for us, to bless us, and to help us.

A perfect example of this comes in the very simple practice of gratitude. At times, the trials and tribulations of our lives tempt us to think that there is little or nothing to be thankful for. The risk of this is that we would become bitter or despairing in our relationship with God. But when we ask God for help in being grateful, He is willing to avail us of an opportunity by reminding us of the great love that He has for us in Jesus Christ. And when we find one thing to be thankful for, it is often the case that God draws our minds toward many other things that we have from Him to be thankful for.

The gospel is a never-ending engine of gratitude in our lives, and the very working of God’s resurrection power in our present lives.

· Such wonderful works naturally draw Paul and us into praise of God.

o Paul offers praise to God, not according to something that he does not already possess, but because of who He is and what He has done, which demonstrates His praiseworthiness.

· “To Him be glory in the church and in Christ”—God’s glory is closely connected to Christ and the church, because His glory is most clearly demonstrated in the work He has done in reconciling the church to himself through His Son.

o The church is the glory of God because in it, all the world is united to Him.

o Christ is the glory of God because of what he did to reconcile the world to Him.

This should give us cause to carefully consider how well our church reflects the glory that we so easily ascribe to Jesus Christ…Just how much do we look like him?

· This praise has no end date. It isn’t one-and-done. It is eternal in scope.

o God is worthy of our eternal praise.

o He is the only one who could ever satisfy such a weight of glory.

Conclusion

· We have a tendency to focus on our own power. We focus on how powerful we are (or are not).

o This beautiful prayer reminds us that the strength to serve God and defeat sin in our lives has only ever come from God alone.

If we are to be the kind of powerful and faithful Christians that we all aspire to be, it will only be because we have stopped striving in our own strength, and made ourselves humble and submissive to the work of the Holy Spirit.

· We must not let the words “Jesus loves you” become merely the words of a children’s lullaby.

o Scripture spends a great deal of time extolling the immeasurable nature of God’s great love for us in Jesus Christ.

o The evidence of this is shown in this very letter.

· Ephesians 1:4 (ESV)

Ephesians 1:4 ESV

4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love

o Demonstrated His love for us before ever he created us, setting us apart to be His beloved children through the ministry of Jesus Christ.

We must never grow cold in our efforts to meditate upon the love of Christ toward us. It is a bottomless deep. God infinity means that we can expect that we can grow in His love forever.

· Finally, we need to remember that access to God is always available to us because of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

o We are not now, and will not every be separated from the life of God, so we may freely and boldly approach Him in times of need.

Because we are His dwelling place, we must be actively engage in the work of putting off sin and making ourselves a holy dwelling place for Him.