A Glory-Filled Church
By William L. Hogan
Ephesians 3:14-21 In Chapter three of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul tells believers there that he has been praying for them. We don't ordinarily pray for things we are not concerned about. So we can learn from this prayer what Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is concerned to see happen in that church. That concern applies, of course, to any church in any age.
He starts the passage in verses 14-21 by saying, "For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father..."
The opening phrase, "For this reason", serves to tie back to what he has said earlier in the letterthat the church is a temple made of living stones taken from Jewish and Gentile quarries and assembled by the Holy Spirit to form a dwelling place for God. The reason for his prayer is thus related to this lovely image of the church.
In II Chronicles 6, there is also a prayer linked to the building of a temple, the temple in Jerusalem. When it was completed, King Solomon dedicated it to God. At the conclusion of that prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple (7:1).
I am persuaded that Paul remembers that dramatic incident as he writes this passage. Hence, he closes the prayer in verse 21 with this doxology: "To him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations for ever and ever. Amen." Paul desires the glory of God to fill the church.
The content of the prayer
In the prayer, Paul asks four things for his readers. The four are progressive; each leads to the next, like steps in a staircase.Step One. The first is in verse 16: "That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner man."
It is significant to note what Paul does not pray for. He does not ask here for any change in circumstances, either for the Ephesians or for himself. (He was in a Roman prison then.) Instead, he prays that in the midst of their difficulties, God would give them inner strength.
At the end of World War II, when the Nazi concentration camps were liberated, many people were found to be on the verge of starvation. But some of them actually died later as a result of their having been fed too much too quickly. They were not strong enough to take normal food. They needed to regain enough strength first.
Likewise, our spiritual constitution is too frail to be nourished by what is offered to us. Without the power of the Spirit at work to reinforce the recesses of our soul, it would not be possible for Christ to dwell in our hearts.
Step Two. And that brings us to the second step: "that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith" (v. 17a).
Since Paul is praying for those who are already Christians, and the most basic fact about a Christian is that Christ lives in him, why then does he ask that Christ would dwell in their hearts? The answer is found in the Greek verb he uses for the word "dwell". It means "to settle down and be at home." Paul is praying that the Ephesians would turn their lives more and more over to Christ's control.
This is what God expects of you and me. Jesus enters our hearts the moment He saves us, but He cannot work in and through us until He is at home there. How does this happen? Our inclination is to say: by coming to the place where we abdicate the throne of our lives and ask Jesus Christ to rule. And that's true.
But Paul wants us to understand that it is not something to begrudge. He prays that this wonderful thing will take place in us "by faith". He is saying, in effect, "The Son of God can indeed be intimately real in your experience. Believe that this blessing is available to you."
Step Three. Beginning with the second half of verse 17, Paul presents the third step in his staircase of prayer: "and that you, being 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."
He speaks in these verses of love in two directions. First, he speaks of our love for God and for our neighbors. This is a logical progression from the previous step. When Christ is truly "at home" in our heart, love is produced in us. We become rooted and grounded in love.
When we are "rooted" in love, we are much like a tree that has its roots going deep into the groundour Christian life is strengthened and nourished by love. And when we are "grounded" in love, we are like a building that is built upon a strong foundationour Christian life is solidly built upon love. Both metaphors tell us, in other words, that it is love that makes us strong Christians.
No other virtue energizes us for action like love. A person will do things for love that he will not do for duty. Love does not count the cost. Love does not watch the clock. Love does not require a reward. Love is not self-protective. Love does whatever needs to be done at whatever cost is required for the benefit of the beloved, and does it joyfully.
Super love. Moreover, Paul longs for them to also grasp the tremendous love Christ has for all believers. So he prays that they may comprehend the full dimensions of the vastness of His love. In its breadth it encompasses people from every tribe and tongue and nation. In its length it stretches in an unbroken line from eternity past, when He chose us to be His before the foundation of the world, to eternity future.
And what of the height of His love? Hear Him pray for His followers in John 17: "Father, I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, in order that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me." His love exalts us to heaven.
Paul wants us to understand that it is not something to begrudge. He prays that this wonderful thing will take place in us "by faith". And when we think how far down He had to reach to save us we see the depth of His love. He left the glory of heaven to live amidst the darkness and depravity of earth. He who was equal with the Father came in the likeness and in the form of a man. And He endured not only all kinds of physical sufferings, but the alienation from the Father that resulted as He underwent the hell that we deserved.
Paradoxically, Paul wants us to know this love that actually surpasses knowledge. We can never know the love of God fully, but we can experience it truly. We cannot know all of God's love for us, but we can know a portion of it.
Step Four. In the middle of verse 19, Paul's prayer reaches its highest step. The inner strengthening of the Holy Spirit leads to Christ being at home in the heart, which leads to being established in love, ours to Him and His to us, which leads now to this: "that be filled up to all the fullness of God."
God's supreme goal in making us His children is to fill us with Himself, with all that He is and has.
A person who is "filled with rage" is dominated by anger. A person who is "filled with joy" is dominated by joy. To be "filled with the fullness of God", then, is to be dominated by Him, and thus characterized by those qualities that dominate Himlove, mercy, kindness, patience, longsuffering, and everything else God is.
The potential of the prayer
How is all this possible? Obviously, it is not something we can produce in ourselves. Only God can do it. Thus, Paul expresses the potential of his prayer in a burst of praise, saying in verse 20 that God "is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us."Our God, Paul says, can make things happen. He is able to do what we ask. His working is not confined merely to His own concerns and interests; He acts on behalf of our concerns as well. Not only is He able to do what we ask, He is also able to do what we think, says Paul. Haven't you ever had the experience of thinking about something you would like to ask God for but not asking Him because you had no real confidence that the thing was God's will for you, only to discover that He brought that thing to pass?
This doxology would have been great if he had stopped at this point, but we're only halfway through it. Paul continues, God is able to do even more than all we might ask or think, abundantly more, exceeding abundantly more. Haven't there been times when you have found it to be true that God did something bigger and greater for you than you asked? He didn't deny your request, He improved it. And wasn't it generally something different, something you would not have anticipated?
Prayer power. Now, how do we tap into this potential? The answer is found in the form of the passage. This is a prayer. There is nothing else Paul could do to make these things real in the lives of the Ephesians but to pray that God would do it. And there is nothing more important for us to do to unleash the power of God in our lives, and in our church. We must pray earnestly. We must pray continually. We must pray expectantly.
One of the most important things that could happen in a church is for the people to learn to lay hold of God until His presence and power are evident, until the fruit of the Spirit and the reality of Christ are manifested in the lives of God's people. In short, until the glory of God fills the temple.
Paul concludes on that note, and so do we: "To him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations for ever and ever. Amen." o
Dr. William L. Hogan is Professor of Preaching at Reformed Theological Seminary, 5422 Clinton Blvd., Jackson, MS 39209.