In these last weeks we’ve absorbed the amazing vision God gives us in Ephesians of `Church`. Now the revelation gets wonderfully practical!
It’s a revelation with radical implications for our relationships. First, though, Paul gives us one more overwhelming expression of this, and one we can and should turn, absolutely right now, into prayer for ourselves and for somebody we care about. And as it’s highly practical, it’s not surprising that in the second part of Eph 2 he applies it to a longstanding alienation, the deep ethnic hostility between Jew and Gentile. (Please stay with me beyond this next paragraph, beause that may not seem instantly relevant but thereafter it all grows amazing…)
In fact the themes of our reconciliation to God and Jews’ reconciliation with Gentiles are hard to disentangle here: they’re (almost) the same problem, with the same solution. What is the process by which God breaks that or any other hostility and alienation? First and above all, by the cross: Christ `abolished in His flesh’ (2:14-15), at his cost, the root cause (partly inevitable as it was) of the ethnic barrier. So then `He Himself is our peace’ (v14; ie, all this is inseparable from belonging to Jesus); and now Jesus creates in His Body a new organism, the Church, in which both parties are truly one at a level deeper than they can grasp (v15). In fact it is only as members of that Body, with the old `hostility put to death`, that they/we are reconciled to God (v16). And He comes `preaching peace’ to both parties (v17); indeed what brings us into the Father’s presence is the Spirit, and He is the Spirit of peace (cf Gal 5:22) who transcends all such barriers, finding them redundant and hateful. (Implying, incidentally, that if ever our view of the Spirit rebuilds barriers between lovers of Christ that the Spirit himself is destroying, something may be wrong with it…) And however we may feel about sisters and brothers on the other side of some such barrier (and it might be a barrier much closer than an ethnic one), Christ Himself is `building us together’ (vv20-22). So thank You, Lord, for the cross; thankyou for the Body! Help me to hear and carefully follow when You are `preaching peace’ to me…
But then further into ch3 Paul releases a whole series more of wonderful things. Indeed, last time through Ephesians I found myself wondering: Does this entire letter hinge around the verses 3:14-4:4? Is Paul’s `kneeling’ in prayer in 3:14 the heart of his whole epistle? And perhaps more importantly: isn’t it therefore a pattern for prayer that I should copy, right now?
Look at the way he weaves the themes together in these profound verses. `For this reason’ in 3:14 picks up the flow from the `For this reason’ he wrote in 3:1 before getting joyously distracted (into sharing what all this has meant in his own life); 3:14 refers back to the verses preceding 3:1 (reread 2:11-12,17-19,22, and indeed 1:10). `For this reason’, then – that at the cross, God has nullified all alienations, and so now we have this incredible privilege of being `built together to become a dwelling in which God lives’ — `for this reason’, Paul prays (as in 1:17) for the `Spirit of revelation’ to help us grasp something that can only be perceived in partnership `with all the saints’. (So love is the prerequisite for grasping this huge revelation – Jesus makes a similar connection in Mark 11:22-26 between the release of God’s power to do the unimaginable (cf Eph 3:20) and the quality of relationships within the Body.) And the `something` that follows is the colossal, healing vision of just how astonishingly wide, long, high, deep is Christ’s love for each of us (3:16-18). (We might well be reminded of Paul’s earlier prayer in 1:18, that we will grasp how enormously God loves us as His inheritance.) And this can be deeply healing; if we’ve truly perceived this love, we’ll be set free from any small-minded scrabbling after status, or power, or affirmation. What awaits us in the infinity of God’s love is more than we dare dream, says Paul, `immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine’. And we can recall that learning the depths and `incomparable riches` of that love is a major reason why He’s bringing us to heaven (2:7)!)
Here then comes the glorious series of revelations that will enable us to `know this love that surpasses knowledge’ (3:18), God’s enormous, utterly undeserved kindness to us that is His personality in its deepest expression. Lord, thankyou; to You be `glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus, for ever and ever` (3:21)!
But we should notice too that Paul is here enriching our lives practically with a second pattern of prayer we can use, just like he did in 1:16-19. (Cf https://petelowmanresources.com/latest-ephesians-2-i-realise-i-dont-pray-about-the-things-paul-prays-about-115-23/ .) Like that one, these verses aren’t just abstract theology; they are very specific things we can pray for ourselves, and again for one or two people we care about…
1. So then: Paul’s first prayer (v16) is `that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being.` God says, the strength, the empowering for everything we’ve got on hand here, doesn’t happen by accident or by our own efforts, it comes through My Spirit out of My glorious riches. So seek Me! Absorb My Word, talk with Me, do things with Me. Be with God first (cf Mark 4:14 by the way), and the strength for everything else will come. We need to pray this priority-choice for each other!
2 Then he prays (v17) `that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.` Growth in faith will lead us and those we care about into deeper experience of Christ’s presence. Again, let’s pray!
3 vv17-18: ` I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ!` Do we see what that says? We’ll grasp the colossal love of Christ as we grow more rooted & established in love ourselves. Choose to forgive & we’ll be forgiven. Choose to live out love & we’ll experience more of God’s love. Pray for yourself and your friend or colleague to be rooted and grounded in love like this! (Maybe there are specific applications to pray about too: things that come to mind about people we used to be close to, people we used to work with, our parents maybe…)
4 Then he prays (v18, and so can we) for us to have that power to grasp how enormous is Christ’s love for us. (There are Christian traditions that alas are weak on this, seeing Christ only as a distant, demanding ruler. And it’s so unlike the understanding of God in Islam, isn’t it.) But we actually need God’s power to grasp this; therefore Paul prays, and so should we! Paul’s saying, Pray that you may be helped, empowered, to grasp these deepest realities of the universe. (And is there a contrast here with 4:18-19, where those who are `separated from the life of God’ are described as having `lost all sensitivity’ and therefore `given themselves over’ to a second-rate life? What we’re praying for here is for the Spirit to stretch our sensitivities to the limit (just as does great art)!) Paul’s saying, I’m praying that your mind will be expanded to the ultimate of its perceptions so that you may dare to grasp the depth of God, the enormity of His love for you. (That `for you` is for us individually too!) There will be no desperate quest for others’ approval, no dark fearful insecurity, if we really grasp the unshakeable fact of this foundational love. Nor will we doubt our security in our salvation – if Christ loves us this much, He is simply never going to let us go! Pray all this for yourself and for someone you care about!
5 And like we noted earlier, it’s `with all saints` that we’ll come to a deep grasp of this – so, let’s pray that we’ll be determined learners – from other Bible-rooted traditions, other cultural heritages…
6 Then, v19 (but is this possible?)- `that you may be filled with all the fullness of God!` Christ loves to share all He has with His Bride! Can you pause to pray that God will help you grasp what this means, and then pray it likewise for one or two friends? For your kids? For some missionaries you know? For the pastor and leaders of a different church?
7 And the only reason why this is possible is that God is forever `able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us`! Will you pray that way? And yes, let’s pray it about some specific situation we know that needs the inrush of the power of God. But remember too that this is explicitly about how God is going to do things in your life and the lives of others you’re close to that are bigger, more far-reaching, more unimaginable, more unexpected than you can envisage right now. So can you rejoice in that for your own life? For your spouse? For your daughter or son?
8 And finally: `To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!` Worship is where it must lead and climax! `For from Him and through Him and for Him are all things; to Him be the glory forever!` (Rom 11:36); amen and amen!
Every time I reread these verses I think: this is colossal! And although it’s vision, revelation, isn’t it a fantastic template also for very practical prayer? I trust some of us reading this right now will feel the need to stop and pray these things for our spouse, our friend, our homegroup leader, our mum. There are so many other valuable things to pray about: for our children, our job, our evangelism, our church, our country, mission we’re aware of elsewhere in the world, the suffering church worldwide. But as we include these things too, we know we’re praying in specific ways God desires. And in heaven we’ll see the results!
And not only that, of course: the outflow of our grasping this vision, our beginning to `know this love that surpasses knowledge’ (3:18-19), will be very practical: we will be `strengthened with power… according to his power that is at work within us’ (3:16,20; compare, again, 1:19), to `live a life worthy of the calling you have received’ (the next verses, 4:1-4). (The repetition in 4:1 of `as a prisoner of the Lord’ suggests that what he aimed to get to in 3:1 is only finally expressed at 4:1-2?) Chapter 2: all the walls have been broken down; now Paul longs and prays that through God’s power the fullness of practical Jesus-love will flood in through the breach. The next chapters will illuminate all that. More next week…
