For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—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, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. —Ephesians 3:14–19
Paul began praying for the Ephesian believers in 1:15, but then in chapter 2 he switched back to instruction. In 3:1 he resumes his prayer, but then inserts an explanation that runs to verse 13.
The Concept of Family: An Analogy
According to verse 3:15, the concept of family is derived from the very nature of God our Father. The existence, the concept, and the experience of fatherhood comes from God. Every fatherly relationship has its prototype in God. Athanasius wrote, “God as Father of the Son is the only true Father; and all created paternity is a shadow of the true.”((Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians, 1.23.)) Karl Barth lectured that “God epitomizes the fatherhood in all relationships in heaven and on earth. . . . These relations can exist because of him. They are merely parables and images of him.”((Barth, Ephesians, 142.)) Jesus often employed parables to teach spiritual truths from earthly things. However, in Ephesians there are two instances where God uses heavenly realities to explain earthly relationships. The first is here where the family nature of God is used to explain God’s purpose for earthly family. The second is found in 5:32–33, where Christ’s love for the church is illustrated through marriage. The dysfunction commonly found in both family and marital relationships reflects our misunderstanding of God’s nature and our deprivation of God’s grace. Dr. Dennis F. Kinlaw argues that the legal metaphor of salvation is not adequate. We must also employ the family and marital metaphors.
Paul is not making an analogy that God is a father like human fathers. He is teaching that the very notion of human fatherhood is derived from the fatherhood of God. No one has developed this concept more thoroughly than Dennis Kinlaw. In Let’s Start with Jesus (2005), Dr. Kinlaw wrote that Islamic and Jewish monotheism uphold God’s sovereign will but fail to understand that this one God is a Trinity, or family, of free persons bound by self-giving love. Those who reject the Son fail to properly understand the Father. The term father best describes the character and nature of the first member of the Trinity. Other terms describe what God does; Father describes who he is. J. I. Packer wrote that fatherhood implies authority, affection, fellowship, and honor.((Packer, Knowing God, 185.)) Thus, every family is named. The Jewish idea of naming implies more than nomenclature. It involves determining the character and exercising authority over what is named.((Muddiman, Ephesians, 166.))
Three Petitions
In this prayer, Paul prays that God’s children will experience strength, comprehension, and fullness. Each verb is expressed in the subjunctive mood, which expresses action that is not necessarily taking place but that is possible. The petition for the power of the Spirit and for the indwelling Christ is one petition stated in two ways: strength through the power of the Spirit and strength through the indwelling Christ.
Strength through the Power of the Spirit
According to verse 20, God’s power was already at work in them, but Paul prays that it be intensified. While all true believers have the Holy Spirit, William Burt Pope explained that “the continuous and ever-increasing strength of the Holy Ghost, is granted by degrees, and the measure of these degrees makes the difference between one Christian and another.” The inner man, having become the new man, is now perpetually strengthened, invigorated, and renewed by the indwelling Christ who teaches, rules, and sanctifies.((Pope, The Prayers of St. Paul, 243, 245, 247–48.)) Apparently, this is what Charles Spurgeon meant by the statement, “There is a point in Grace as much above the ordinary Christian as the ordinary Christian is above the worldling.”((Spurgeon, “Former and Latter Rain,” 385–96. Sermon #880.))
Strength through the Indwelling Christ
Paul is not praying that Christ may come into our hearts for the first time. Paul is praying that he may be at home in the sense that the believer has consecrated himself completely. Paul utilizes a verb in verse 17 which means to dwell, reside, settle down. This dwelling denotes Christ at the very center of our heart, deeply rooted in the believer’s life. The concept of being rooted is borrowed from agriculture and is described in Psalm 1:3. The concept of being grounded is borrowed from architecture.
The second petition centers on comprehension: grasping the magnitude of God’s love and knowing the love of Christ.
Grasping the Magnitude of God’s Love
When Paul originally started his prayer, he prayed that God would give the Spirit of wisdom and revelation (Eph 1:17). While verse 18 does not state the object, some translations add “love,” and this is substantiated by the context. Here Paul describes the four dimensions of love. Adam Clarke explained that the girth of God’s love encompasses the globe. The length of his love reaches from his eternal purpose of the mission of Christ to the eternal blessedness spent in his glory. Its depth reaches the lowest fallen humanity and to the deepest depravity of the human heart. Its height reaches the infinite dignity of the throne of Christ with whom we are seated.((Clarke, Commentary, 6:448.))
Knowing the Love of Christ
Paul prays that we may know that which is unknowable just as clearly as we can see the invisible (Rom 1:20). While the love of Christ does not bypass our mind, it does surpass it. “It is only by the love of Christ that we can know the love of God. . . . The gift of Christ to man is the measure of God’s love; the death of Christ for man is the measure of Christ’s love.”((Clarke, Commentary, 6:448.))
The Fullness of God
The third petition focuses on fullness. Paul prays that we will attain the fullness of God’s blessing. We can never contain the fullness of God, but we can be filled unto the full measure of blessing and maturity God has for us. According to Ephesians 4:13, when we are perfect, we have a measure of the fullness of Christ. Daniel Steele explained:
The vessel is too weak and too small to contain all that God desires to pour into it. It must be enlarged and strengthened. The Spirit is the agent for this work. The measure is according to the riches of his glory. A king gives like a king, a God works like a God. He wants to do his most glorious work in every believing soul. This he accomplishes when the human conditions are fulfilled. The chief condition is faith as expressed in verse 17.((Steele, Half-Hours with St. Paul, 18.))
Paul speaks in Ephesians of being filled with the fullness of God, the fullness of Christ (4:13), and the fullness of the Spirit (5:18). To be filled with God is to be emptied of self-centeredness. To be filled implies that everything contrary has been displaced. John Wesley preached that a Christian is so far perfect as not to commit sin. (Wesley, “Christian Perfection,” Sermon #40, 2.20.)) But here Wesley commented that this describes “a perfection far beyond a bare freedom from sin.”((Wesley, Notes, 495.)) Clarke explained:
This necessarily implies that they should be saved from all sin, inward and outward, in this life; that the thoughts of their hearts should be cleansed by the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit, that they might perfectly love him, and worthily magnify his holy name.((Clarke, Commentary, 6:450.))
The text says that we may be filled unto, indicating not a static state of fullness but a progressive filling. This filling is a maintained condition. Sangster rebutted the claim that the phrase “that surpasses knowledge” means that it is indeed beyond attainment. “Wesley would have replied that the inference was not legitimate. Much concerning sanctification, he would have argued, ‘passeth knowledge’ (in the sense that is passed explanation) but he would not have conceded that is passed experience.” (Sangster, The Path to Perfection, 42.)) In verse 20 Paul reassures us with God’s promise. The almighty power of God is already at work within us, and if not hindered will continue to work onward. “On its glorious way it utterly annihilates the sin of the nature: a blessing this that is above what most Christians ask, and in some respects above what they can think.”((Pope, The Prayers of St. Paul, 259.)) Clarke concluded:
Can any person who pleads for the necessity and degrading continuance of indwelling sin, believe what the Apostle had written? . . . I ask farther, was the Apostle inspired or not, when he wrote this prayer? . . . If he were inspired, every petition is tantamount to a positive promise.((Clarke, “The Family of God and Its Privileges,” Discourses, 1:248.))
Sermon Suggestions:
- Paul teaches that the very notion of human fatherhood is derived from the fatherhood of God.
- In Paul’s prayer, he petitions that God’s children will experience:
- Strength through the power of the Spirit and through the indwelling Christ
- Comprehension through grasping the magnitude of God’s love and through knowing the love of Christ
- The fullness of God’s blessing