7b Praying for Power
Notes
Transcript
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 second prayer in chapter three his doxology that celebrates the matchless, praiseworthy power and glory of God. 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.
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.
In Ephesians 3:14-19, Paul humbly and boldly petitions God the Father to exercise His omnipotent power on behalf of the church, that they may experience the blessing of Christ’s presence by faith and grasp more of Christ’s limitless love so that they may be filled with God’s fullness. In verses 20-21, the apostle puts these extraordinary requests in proper perspective with a closing word of praise that stresses two themes: the power of God and the glory of God.
The New Testament includes many doxologies—brief declarations of praise to God in joyful response to His glorious and gracious work of salvation. These short words of praise often follow prayers, as in Ephesians 3:20-21, or conclude sections of letters, as in Romans 11:33-36 and 16:25-27. Doxologies typically have the following three parts: the one worthy of praise (“to God”), the word of praise (“glory”), and a reference to time (“for ever and ever”) and often conclude with “amen.”5 Elsewhere Paul directs such bursts of joyful worship “to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel … the only wise God” (Rom. 16:25,27, NIV), “to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God” (1 Tim. 1:17, NIV), and “to our God and Father” (Phil. 4:20, NIV).
Returning to Ephesians 3:20, notice first that Paul directs his praise “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.” The apostle has boldly asked God to empower believers that they may “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” and so “be filled with all the fullness of God.” Such divine blessings eclipse all our human categories, and so perhaps some sophisticated readers may be tempted to conclude that Paul is being overly optimistic or simply speaking rhetorically. However, Paul goes further and insists that we cannot request or even conceive of blessings that are beyond God’s ability to give His children.
The doxology continues Paul’s focus in Ephesians on God’s abundant power, which exceeds all other power. In 1:19, the apostle extolled “the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe,” the same power exerted in raising Jesus from the dead. In 3:7, Paul highlighted “the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power.” Then he petitioned the Father to grant believers “to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (3:16). Now in verse 20, Paul declares that this same life-giving, knowledge-surpassing power of God, is “at work within us”—not only the apostle but all believers—to accomplish His purposes that vastly exceed what we could ask or even conceive of.
Verse 20 stresses the power of God, and verse 21 again highlights God’s glory. Paul has stressed that God carries out His full-orbed saving work—including election, predestination, redemption, forgiveness, revelation of His purposes, sealing by the Spirit, and guaranteeing our inheritance—for one purpose, repeated emphatically in 1:6,7, and 14: “to the praise of his glorious grace,” “in accordance with the riches of God’s grace,” “to the praise of his glory.” Thus in his first prayer report in 1:17 the apostle addresses God as “the Father of glory” (ESV) or “the glorious Father” (NIV). The doxology in 3:21 brings this theme of divine glory to its fitting climax: “To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” To give glory to God isn’t to add something to Him that He doesn’t already possess; rather, it’s an active recognition or celebration of who God is or what he has done. As the psalmist declares, “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness” (Ps. 29:2).
The doxology of Ephesians 3 also confronts our sinful human tendency to usurp God’s rightful place in pursuit of our own glory. This God-centered word of praise forces us to examine even our motivations in prayer: Do we make our requests to God both with the immediate goal of receiving what we need and with the ultimate goal that God receive the glory due His name? The ultimate aim of Paul’s prayer is thus the same as God’s aim in everything He does, to ascribe glory to God, the Father of glory, “in the church and in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 3:21). Believers are blessed “in Christ” (Eph. 1:3), give thanks to God “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:20), and here are summoned to join Paul in living for and declaring God’s supreme glory and majesty as Jesus Christ is exalted in Christians’ thoughts, speech, and conduct. Here, then, is how we shall reform our praying. We shall learn to pray with the apostle not only in his petitions, but in his words of praise, in his ultimate goal, in his profound God-centeredness.