PRAYERS OF PAUL: Becoming Rooted In God's Love
6 And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus. 7 By God’s grace and mighty power, I have been given the privilege of serving him by spreading this Good News.
8 Though I am the least deserving of all God’s people, he graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ. 9 I was chosen to explain to everyone this mysterious plan that God, the Creator of all things, had kept secret from the beginning.
10 God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 11 This was his eternal plan, which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord.
12 Because of Christ and our faith in him, we can now come boldly and confidently into God’s presence. 13 So please don’t lose heart because of my trials here. I am suffering for you, so you should feel honored.
Paul’s Prayer for Spiritual Growth
14 When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, 15 the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. 16 I pray that from HIS GLORIOUS, UNLIMITED RESOURCES HE WILL EMPOWER YOU with INNER STRENGTH through HIS SPIRIT. 17 Then CHRIST will make his home in YOUR HEARTS as you TRUST IN him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power TO UNDERSTAND, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the LOVE OF CHRIST, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. 21 Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.
At least he writes that it is ‘through the gospel’ that Jewish and Gentile Christians become united to Christ.
This can be so only because the gospel announces the mystery, so that people come to hear it, to believe it and to experience it.
At least he writes that it is ‘through the gospel’ that Jewish and Gentile Christians become united to Christ.
He says so plainly: Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace which was given me (verse 7).
He takes the superlative (elachistos, ‘least’ or ‘smallest’) and does what is impossible linguistically but possible theologically; he turns it into a comparative (elachistoteros, ‘leaster’ or ‘less than the least’).
He is deeply conscious both of his own unworthiness because he ‘formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted’ Jesus Christ and of Christ’s overflowing mercy towards him.
a. The church is central to history
Verse 11, as we saw, alludes to the eternal purpose of God. It is also called his ‘plan’ or ‘the plan of the mystery’ (verse 9)
Secular history concentrates its attention on kings, queens and presidents, on politicians and generals, in fact on ‘VIPs’.
The Bible concentrates rather on a group it calls ‘the saints’, often little people, insignificant people, unimportant people, who are however at the same time God’s people—and for that reason are both ‘unknown (to the world) and yet well-known (to God)’.
Secular history concentrates on wars, battles and peace-treaties, followed by yet more wars, battles and peace-treaties.
The Bible concentrates rather on the war between good and evil, on the decisive victory won by Jesus Christ over the powers of darkness, on the peace-treaty ratified by his blood, and on the sovereign proclamation of an amnesty for all rebels who will repent and believe.
For the Bible does not ignore the great empires of Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome; and a true secular history cannot ignore the fact of the church.
b. The church is central to the gospel
‘Christ died for me,’ we say, and then sing of heaven: ‘Oh, that will be glory for me.’ Both affirmations are true. As for the first, the apostle Paul himself could write, ‘The Son of God … loved me and gave himself for me.’
not only to reconcile us to God but also to reconcile us to one another. Thus the church is an integral part of the gospel. The gospel is good news of a new society as well as of a new life.
c. The church is central to Christian living
Now ‘suffering’ and ‘glory’ are constantly coupled in the New Testament. Jesus said that he would enter his glory through suffering, and that his followers would have to tread the same path.
If the church is central to God’s purpose, as seen in both history and the gospel, it must surely also be central to our lives.
How can we take lightly what God takes so seriously? How dare we push to the circumference what God has placed at the centre? No, we shall seek to become responsible church members, active in some local manifestation of the universal church.
We shall not be able to acquiesce in low standards which fall far short of the New Testament ideals for God’s new society, whether mechanical, meaningless worship services, or fellowship which is icy cold and even spoiled by rivalries which make the Lord’s Supper a farce, or such inward-looking isolationism as to turn the church into a ghetto which is indifferent to the outside world and its pain.
If the church is central to God’s purpose, as seen in both history and the gospel, it must surely also be central to our lives.
6. Confidence in God’s power
3:14–21
1. The introduction to his prayer (verses 14–16a)
2. The substance of his prayer (verses 16b–19)
a. Strengthened with might
2. The substance of his prayer (verses 16b–19)
b. Rooted and grounded in love
To express how fundamental Paul longs for their love to be, he joins two metaphors (one botanical, the other architectural), both of which emphasize depth as opposed to superficiality.
c. Knowing Christ’s love