7a Praying for Power

Prayerlessness is often a warning light indicating our ignorance of God. Genuine and vibrant knowledge of God not only instructs us what to pray, but it also encourages us to let our requests be made known to the all-holy, all-loving, all-wise Triune God, our Creator, Savior, and Lord. In Ephesians 3, Paul grounds his petitions in his understanding of God’s revealed character as Father and the salvation He accomplished through Jesus Christ.

Tonight we will consider Paul’s prayer for power. We’ll see that God must empower us by His Spirit so that we might be increasingly transformed into the likeness of Christ. Further, we need God’s power so that we might comprehend the limitless love of God for us in Christ. When we pray for God to strengthen us and other believers in this way, we should recognize that God is able to do abundantly more than we can ask or think and thus respond by praising our all-powerful, glorious God.

Ephesians 3:14–19 ESV

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 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—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, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

We learn to pray by listening to the prayers of others, particularly Christian parents, mentors, or pastors. If you grew up in a Christian tradition that utilizes the King James Version, you may petition God reverently in Shakespearean English, “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Alternatively, if your formative discipleship took place in high school or college through a parachurch ministry, you may pray more casually, “Jesus, thank you for this day” or “Daddy, we love you.” Regardless of our spiritual heritage, we should look to the prayers of the Bible for sure models and guides for why and how to pray to the all-holy, all-loving, all-wise God, our Creator, Savior, and Lord.

In Ephesians 3:14-19 the apostle Paul offers a model prayer that has two remarkable requests.

What does Paul ask for first in verses 16-17a?

First, Paul asks God to strengthen believers with power through His Spirit (3:16–17a);

What does Paul ask for second in verses 17b-19?

second, he prays that the church may have power to comprehend the limitless dimensions of Christ’s love (3:17b– 19). This intercessory prayer report is closely tied to the apostle’s first prayer in 1:15-23, which we studied in session 6. In both passages, Paul asks God to grant the church increased understanding mediated by the Holy Spirit.

Let me ask you a question, if you were to break Ephesians down into 3 parts, what would those be do you think? Or to ask it another way, what is the overall theme or argument Paul is making in Ephesians?

If I were to break the book down I would say it goes like this:

Chapter 1-3 is written as a encouragement for believers letting them know that they were chosen as adopted sons of God before the foundation of the world. They are God’s chosen people and were called.

Chapter 4-5 encourage believers to walk in a manner worthy of their calling.

Chapter 6 then is where he tells the church how to do this, but putting on the armor of God.

Before considering Paul’s petitions, a few comments are in order on verses 14-15. Please look at the transition Paul uses in verse 14. What is that transition?

First, “For this reason” takes up and completes the sentence begun in 3:1, “ For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles,” which builds on Paul’s articulation of how the Ephesian Gentiles who were once alienated from God’s presence and promises have been brought near by the blood of Christ (2:13) and are now members of God’s household (2:19). Paul interrupts this thought in 3:2-13 to clarify his apostolic role and the mystery of Christ with which he has been entrusted. Thus, we see that Paul’s prayers are motivated and informed by God’s purposes in Christ and His work in the lives of the Ephesian believers.

The second thing I want you to notice is how Paul pray’s, what does verse 14 say about this?

Second, Paul mentions his posture of prayer when interceding for the church: “I bow my knees before the Father” (v. 14). Jews and Christians in the first century often stood to pray. Kneeling to pray communicates reverence, humility, and submission to the will of God. In Isaiah 45:23 the Lord declares, “Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear allegiance” (NIV), and Paul’s kneeling posture may communicate his homage to the sovereign King of all.

Third how does Paul address God?

Third, Paul prays to “the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (3:14-15). Addressing God as “Father” conveys a relationship of love and a role of authority and recalls Jesus’ model prayer in Matthew 6:9 as well as earlier references in Ephesians (see 1:2,3,17; 2:18). In our passage, Paul uses a word play in Greek to describe “the Father” (pater) from whom every “family” (patria) is named. As the sovereign Creator, God “names” and thus classifies and determines the identity for every grouping of human beings on earth and also the angels and spirits of the heavenly realm. This is significant for the Ephesians, who have been assigned a new identity and vocation “in Christ” (2:10,13) and who need not fear the name of any spiritual powers. Thus, God’s character and identity as “Father” motivate Paul to humbly, boldly intercede for the Ephesians.

Paul makes two petitions of God the Father. First, he prays in verse 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.” This request for power recalls 1:19, where Paul asked that believers might know “what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.” In 3:13, Paul urged the Ephesians not to lose heart over his sufferings, and he now prays for God to meet this need by strengthening these believers inwardly by His power. Second Corinthians 4:16 makes this connection explicit: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”

Verses 16-17 highlight the divine supply and purpose of the first petition. Paul asks for God to strengthen believers “according to the riches of his glory.” God’s glory is the expression of who He is in His holiness, splendor, and power. According to Ephesians 1:14, God does what He does “to the praise of his glory.” The apostle uses a similar phrase in Philippians 4:19 when he confidently declares, “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” In short, Paul appeals to God’s limitless resources to fulfill his bold request.

Paul prays that believers may be strengthened by God’s power through the Spirit to the end that they may experience more of Christ’s presence by faith, “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (v. 17). It is striking to observe the trinitarian shape of the apostle’s prayer that the Father may strengthen us inwardly by His Spirit, that Christ might dwell in our hearts through faith. Paul has in view not Christ’s initial indwelling at one’s conversion, but His continual, permanent residence with believers. Peter O’Brien explains, “The implication of the apostle’s prayer, then, is that the more the Spirit empowers their lives the greater will be their transformation into the likeness of Christ.”

Let me illustrate Paul’s image of Christ dwelling in believers’ hearts. Let’s imagine several years ago you purchased your first house. You probably immediately began to make it your home. Repainted rooms, laid tile, ripped up old carpet, hung pictures and curtains, and moved in furniture. Then over time you might finish off the basement, build a deck, install new carpet, remodel the kitchen, and replace the furnace and various other things. A substantial amount of work would be done in every room and in every corner in your home.

When Christ takes up residence in the hearts of believers, He finds our inner lives to be a complete mess—vastly worse than your first home. Christ patiently gets to work cleaning up and transforming us so that we are characterized by His presence. In 1876 Jean Sophia Pigott wrote a poem that captures the truth of Ephesians 3:17:

Make my life a bright outshining

Of Thy life, that all may see

Thine own resurrection power

Mightily put forth in me.

Ever let my heart become

Yet more consciously Thy home.

Paul makes his second petition in verses 17-19a: “that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” As in verse 16, Paul prays for divine empowerment. Here he asks that we might have power to grasp the boundless breadths of Christ’s love.

Later in Ephesians 5:2, Paul appeals to self-giving love of Christ as the ethical standard for believers: “Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Romans 8:39 emphatically asserts that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Children in Christian homes learn to sing from an early age, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” God’s love in Christ is a foundational truth that Paul wants believers to be “rooted and established in” (v. 17, NIV), so that when trials and testing come, the church will not be “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine” (4:14). But knowing the love of Christ cannot be merely an intellectual exercise.

Paul asks God to empower believers to grasp the limitless love of Christ that they “may be filled with all the fullness of God” (v. 19). In Ephesians 1:23, Paul describes the church as “his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” Later in 4:13, he explains that God has given leaders to equip the church “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (emphasis added). These parallels suggest that to be filled with God’s fullness is a theologically rich way of referring to full-orbed spiritual maturity. Genuine spiritual maturity is not equivalent to education, theological precision, years of experience, a position of leadership, or publishing books. Paul prays as he does because he is convinced that God must strengthen us to grasp more and more of the profound love of Christ and thereby grow up into spiritual maturity.