Transcript
During this time together in God’s Word we’re going to be looking at verses 17-21 during this time in God’s Word. we’ll be looking at the end of Ephesians chapter 3, and the love of Christ that passes all knowledge.
Pastor Tim Brown writes the following: I’ve been around college students a long time, and one I was partial to was a kid named Tim Vanderveen from Spring Lake, MI. Tall, broad shouldered, with curly hair and a smile as broad as the dawn.
He was a great student. He graduated from Hope College in the early ’90s and took a job at Prince Corporation, now Johnson Controls.
He scurried up the ladder of success about as quickly as anyone can, that is, until a rawboned, wind-whipped November afternoon.
I was sitting in my office, and my secretary told me Tim Vanderveen was on the line. I was glad to hear this and was eager to talk to him.
I said, “Hey, Tim, how you doing?” A weak, trembling voice said, “I’m not doing so good.” I said, “What’s up with you?”
He said, “I’m in the hospital in Grand Rapids. I got the flu or something. My folks are out of the country.” I said, “I’m going to be in Grand Rapids later today. I’ll stop by and see you. Would that be okay?” He said, “I’d like that a lot.”
By the time I got to Tim, the doctors had already gotten to him and told him that it wasn’t the flu. It was leukemia. And that began a three-year, arduous battle that he would lose—or win, maybe.
Now come with me to Room 5255, Butterworth Hospital. I walked into the room. His mother was sitting in the corner crying. Tim was lying on his side.
They had positioned the pillows between his skinny little legs. His hair wasn’t curly anymore. There wasn’t enough energy for him to look at me, so I got down on one knee so I could look at him eyeball to eyeball.
I said, “Hi, Tim.” He said, “Hi, Tim.” There was this long, awkward pause. I’d been a pastor for 20 years, and I still didn’t know what to say.
He broke the silence. He said, “I’ve learned something.” Now I know this much at least: you don’t trifle with the words of a person who is about to die; you just listen carefully. So I said, “Tell me, what have you learned?”
He said, “I have learned that life is not like a VCR.” Now, I didn’t get it then any more than you’re getting it now. So I said, “What do you mean?”
He said, “It’s not like a VCR; because you can’t fast forward the bad parts.” Long pause. Then he interrupts the silence again to say, “But I have learned that Jesus Christ is in every frame, and right now that’s just enough.”
Pastor Brown writes: “It was just enough when his parents rocked that little baby at his birth that Jesus Christ should be in the frame.
“It was just enough when he toddled off to first grade that Jesus Christ should be in the frame. It was just enough when he turned his tassel toward an uncertain future at Hope College that Jesus Christ should be in that frame.
“And it was just enough when Tim breathed his last here on earth and his first there in heaven that Jesus Christ should be in that frame.”
For the believer, out of His infinite love, Christ is in every frame of our lives. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians here was that in view of His presence always that Christ would dwell in their hearts by faith and be at home in their lives.
Ephesians 3:17a says, “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith…”
The first part of Paul’s prayer was that the believer would be “strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.” The second part here is that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith. Now at first glance, the order seems reversed here.
Because every believer is indwelt by Christ at salvation and the believer does not have the Holy Spirit in the inner man until he has trusted Christ as Savior.
But Paul has already clearly established the fact that all believers are in Christ. His point here is not Christ’s indwelling believers in salvation, but in sanctification.
The idea behind the word “dwell” is literally to “settle down and be at home.” As it’s been said about this verse, “Paul’s teaching here does not relate to the fact of Jesus’ presence in the hearts of believers, but to the quality of His presence.”
The first part of the prayer leads into the second, because when the believer lives by the Spirit, by His Word, in His power, it provides a place where Christ is at home.
All of us feel the most relaxed and comfortable at home.
And so this begs the question for all of us, is Christ at home in our lives, are our lives conducted in such a way in which Christ comfortably resides within us? Do our actions, our words, our thoughts, make Christ feel welcome and at home?
Now none of us are perfect and none of us will be on this side of heaven. But Christ is infinitely patient, kind, and gracious, and continues to love us in spite of our faults, weaknesses, and imperfections. He gently works on us and in us through His Word.
Paul is yearning for an ever-deepening relationship “by faith” with Christ, a life where Christ reigns and is first, and is included in every area of our lives, in which He dwells personally and powerfully as the rightful owner over us, and we allow Him to do this.
He wants our Savior to be the dominating factor in our attitude, conduct and choices. Paul wants Christ to have more and more of us, for Him to be comfortably in our lives.
Van Morris tells the following: On the advice of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, the parents of Helen Keller sent for a teacher from the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts.
Anne Sullivan, a 19-year-old orphan, was chosen for the task of instructing 6-year-old Helen. It was the beginning of a close and lifelong friendship between them.
By means of a manual alphabet, Anne “spelled” into Helen’s hand such words as doll or puppy. Two years later Helen was reading and writing Braille fluently.
At age 10, Helen learned different sounds by placing her fingers on her teacher’s larynx and “hearing” the vibrations. Later Helen went to Radcliffe College, where Anne spelled the lectures into Helen’s hand.
After graduating with honors, Helen decided to devote her life to helping the blind and deaf. As part of that endeavor, she wrote many books and articles and traveled around the world making speeches.
Since Helen’s speeches were not intelligible to some, Anne often translated them for her. Their nearly 50 years of companionship ended when Anne died in 1936. At this time, Helen wrote these endearing words about her lifelong friend:
“My teacher is so near to me that I scarcely think of myself apart from her.
“I feel that her being is inseparable from my own, and that the footsteps of my life are in hers. All the best of me belongs to her—there is not a talent or an inspiration or a joy in me that has not been awakened by her loving touch.”
Can we say this about our Savior? That He is so near to me that we can scarcely think of ourselves apart from Him? That in our practical experience, His being is inseparable from our own, that the footsteps of our life are in His?
Can we say that all the best of me belongs to Him, and that there is not a talent or an inspiration or joy in us that has been awakened but by Him? This is Paul’s prayer for us the Body of Christ in allowing Christ to dwell in us “by faith.”
Ephesians 3:17,18 continues, “that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height.”
The next part of Paul’s prayer is that we might be rooted and grounded in the love of Christ.
The term “rooted” is of course an agricultural term. The term “grounded” is an architectural term.
Paul desired the believer’s spiritual roots to grow deep into the love of Christ. And he desired the believer’s life to be firmly founded and established on Christ’s love.
Paul wanted the Ephesians to be as a deeply rooted tree and a house built on a firm foundation. I.e., Paul wanted stability for their life by growing in Christ’s love.
To be rooted and grounded in love means we need to be rooted and grounded in God, because God is love, and we do this as we are rooted and grounded in His Word.
And as we are rooted and grounded in Christ’s love, Paul’s prayer is that we may be able to “comprehend,” or to apprehend, lay hold of and make it your own, to seize, to take possession of Christ’s love for yourself.
And again as we are immersed in the Word of God, we will grow & apprehend Christ’s love more and more for us personally. Paul prayed that individually we might lay hold of Christ’s love, along with all saints. This is Paul’s desire for all believers.
A young lady walked into a fabric shop, went to the counter, and asked the owner for some noisy, rustling, white material.
The owner found two such bolts of fabric but was rather puzzled at the young lady’s motives. Why would anyone want several yards of noisy material?
Why would anyone want several yards of noisy material? Finally the owner’s curiosity got the best of him and he asked the young lady why she particularly wanted noisy cloth.
She answered: “You see, I am making a wedding gown, and my fiancé is blind. When I walk down the aisle, I want him to know when I’ve arrived at the altar, so he won’t be embarrassed.” That is the selfless love of Christ that God wants us to lay hold of.
And Paul desired all believers to know the breadth, length, depth, and height of Christ’s love. Paul says in every spiritual direction we look we see God’s love. And what we see is that it is vast and immeasurable.
Love’s breadth extends to all people. Christ loves all men and died for all men. And love’s breadth is extended today to Jew and Gentile without distinction, who are made one in Christ, by faith alone in His all-sufficient sacrifice on their behalf.
Love’s length extends to all time, from eternity to eternity, it is eternal. Jeremiah 31:3 says, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” Nothing will ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Christ’s love never fails; it never ends.
Love’s depth extends to depraved sinners, reaching any person in any sin, even the worst sinner, rescuing people from sin’s consequence of hell and from the grip of Satan. And love’s depth is seen in Christ dying for our sins, for sinners, His enemies (Rom. 5:8).
Love’s height is seen in saving us and giving us an inheritance in heaven, in blessing us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, raising us up, exalting believing sinners and making us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 3:19 says, “And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Now it seems to be a contradiction, a paradox, for Paul to pray that the Ephesians know a love that is completely unknowable, and transcends knowledge.
But what Paul is saying is that he wants the Ephesians to spiritually and experientially know the love of Christ which surpasses human knowledge. Paul is not speaking of our love for Christ, but “the love of Christ,” His love for us.
And His love for us is limitless, perfect, abiding, it is immeasurable and surpasses all human understanding.
We grow in Christ’s transcendent love and “know” it spiritually and experientially more and more through the illumination of the Spirit to His Word. All of this is a call to a closer relationship with the Lord through His Word and prayer.
Pastor Wayne Cordeiro, writes: Some time ago some wonderful people in our church gave Anna, my wife, and me a dinner certificate to a nice restaurant for $100. We thought, Wow, a hundred bucks. Let’s go for it. A free evening out. So we dressed up.
I took a bath, used deodorant and cologne—the whole thing. I even washed and waxed my car, because we wanted to take it through the valet, and I didn’t want my Ford Pinto to look bad. The night came, and we were excited.
We went to this ritzy restaurant and walked in. They gave us a nice, candlelit table overlooking a lagoon adjacent to a moonlit bay there in Hawaii.
Oh, it was nice. And we thought, for a hundred bucks for just the two of us, we could eat high on the hog. So we ordered the most expensive thing there.
It was wonderful. When the bill came, I said, “Honey, why don’t you give me the certificate.” She said, “I don’t have the certificate. I thought you brought it.”
I said, “You have to have it. You’re supposed to have it. You’re the wife!”
She said, “I don’t have it.” And I thought, We are in deep yogurt. Here we are. We look rich, we act rich, we even smell rich. But if we don’t have that certificate, it invalidates everything.
There are times in our lives when we can look holy, we can act holy, we can smell holy. But without an active relationship with the Lord, we’ve forgotten something. It’s that relationship that validates everything else.
It’s our relationship with the Lord which transforms our lives by His grace.
As we are strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man through nearness to the Lord, this leads to our lives being a place where Christ feels at home.
And as we are firmly rooted, grounded, and growing in the knowledge of His infinite love by the Word, all this then leads to being “filled with all the fullness of God.”
Colossians 1:19 says, “For it pleased the Father than in [Christ] should all fullness dwell.” Col. 2:9 says, “For in [Christ] dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”
Eph. 4:13: “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”
For our lives to be filled with the fullness of God, God wants our lives to be filled with Christ.
To be filled with all the fullness of God, He wants our lives to be filled with Christ’s attributes of love, patience, grace, kindness, longsuffering, righteousness, mercy, etc.
Christ is love, and to be filled with God’s love and Christ, is to be filled with the fullness of God.
God wants us to be filled with the fullness of Christ and His life so that He crowds out and displaces sin and self, and so our hearts and minds are centered on Him.
Paul’s prayer is for spiritual growth and maturity in Christ, that thru the power of the Spirit, growing in His love that we’d be filled with Christ’s fullness and grow to be more and more spiritually mature in Him.
Our prayer should be as David’s in Psalm 17:15 where he says: “I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness.”
A Chinese Christian, named Dr. Yu, who was martyred in 1956 wrote these words: “The Father wants us to be filled only with His Christ.
“Will you let Him deal so thoroughly in His love, until you are consumed with Him, having to continually depend upon Him, instead of anything of yourself?
“For God to take you deeper into Himself, He must expose all in you that is not of Himself. I hope that, as He shines in you, you will allow Him to deal completely, so He may possess you wholly, and bring you into His fullness in your lifetime.”
Ephesians 3:20 says, “Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.”
In culmination to His prayer, Paul breaks out a doxology of praise and also a declaration of the power and provision that is found in God and is available to each of us.
In verse 20, Paul was aware in his prayer request for the Ephesians that God is able, He is able to do all, He is able to do above all.
He is able to do abundantly above all, He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all, we could ask or even think, or ever anticipate, conceive, consider, or imagine.
Paul strains language, using every word possible to convey the greatness and vastness of God’s power and ability. Like the love of Christ, the power of Christ is equally beyond human understanding and measurement. It is inexpressible and indescribable.
As Jeremiah 32:27 says, “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?”
William Barclay has said, “When we pray, remember: 1) The love of God that wants the best for us. 2) The wisdom of God that knows what is best for us. 3) The power of God that can accomplish it.”
A group of seminary students were visiting the massive Metropolitan Tabernacle to hear Pastor Charles Spurgeon speak.
Pastor Spurgeon approached them before the service. He asked them if they’d like to see the powerhouse which powered this great church.
They were delighted and agreed, and Spurgeon led them through a long hallway, down a stairway, and cautiously opened a door at the bottom. What the five young men saw astonished them.
Looking through this open doorway, they saw about 700 church members in prayer asking God for His blessing on the upcoming service. “That,” said Spurgeon “is our powerhouse!” Prayer has power. Paul knew this.
Prayer, just our words, in and of itself, doesn’t have any power. Prayer has power because it calls upon the all-powerful God who is able to do over and above and beyond all that we request or consider possible.
But He does so always according to His perfect will.
Max Lucado in his book “A Gentle Thunder” writes this, “Once there was a man who dared God to speak. Burn the bush like you did for Moses, God. And I will follow.
“Collapse the walls like you did for Joshua, God. And I will fight. Still the waves like you did on Galilee, God. And I will listen. And so the man sat by a bush, near a wall, close to the sea and waited for God to speak. And God heard the man, so God answered.
“He sent fire, not for a bush, but for a church. He brought down a wall, not of brick, but of sin. He stilled the storm, not of the sea, but of a soul. And God waited for the man to respond. And He waited. And He waited. And waited.
“But because the man was looking at bushes, not hearts; bricks and not lives, seas and not souls, he decided that God had done nothing.
“Finally he looked to God and asked, ‘Have you lost your power?’ And God looked at him and said, ‘Have you lost your hearing?’”
In how God works today under grace, His power is seen in the salvation of souls and in the transformation of hearts and lives by grace.
This is how and where we should look for God’s power today. He works through the power of His Word and prayer to change, comfort, encourage, strengthen, embolden His people.
The end of verse 20 says, “according to the power that worketh in us.” Paul shows here that the unlimited power by which God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask in prayer or think is the same power that works in us.
And therefore there is no limit to what God can do in and through you and me. He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all, we could ask or even think, or ever anticipate, conceive, consider, or imagine through us and our lives. He is able, more than able, to transform our lives by His grace.
Ephesians 3:21 says, “Unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.”
Paul says, “Unto Him be glory.” “Unto Him” is referring to God and how He is described in the previous verse, the God “that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.” “Unto Him be glory.”
We are able to bring glory to Him according to the power that works in us and because we are accepted in the Beloved, having redemption thru His blood, the forgiveness of sins.
And because He has so richly and abundantly blessed us by His grace, God is worthy of all glory, praise, honor, and adoration in the Church, the Body of Christ, through Christ Jesus its living Head, for all eternity.
For eternity Eph. 2:7 says, “That in the ages to come He might shew the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”
For eternity and the ages to come, God will show grace and kindness toward us.
And Ephesians 3:21 says for eternity throughout all ages without end, we the church, will offer our praise and thanksgiving to Him. It is and will be our privilege to worship and honor Him for all He has done for us for all eternity.