Strengthened to See

Have you peaked in your life? It’s a question that we tend to not want to confront in our lives. We don’t want to think of the best days of our lives being behind us or think that everything else that we will do won’t quite measure up to what we have already done. This is something that I think everyone from artists to athletes to academics worry about to some level. The harsh reality is that if we haven’t done so in this life already, at some point, we will, and we likely won’t know it, or at least know it for sure, until sometime after. 

But before we all have a crisis about that, let me ask you a better question, a more important question, have you peaked in your Christian life? What this brilliant passage tells us is no we haven’t. There is still progress to make, and wonderfully there is still wonder to behold. 

We are returning to our series in Ephesians, so it is worthwhile to have a review after so many weeks away.. Paul is writing a letter to the believers in Ephesus. He started out by describing the immense grace of God in predestining, electing, and sealing us for salvation. He has given to us a beautiful inheritance to look forward to as we await God’s plan to fully unfold. What is that plan? Why, it is nothing less than the summing up of the entire world in Christ Jesus. And the fact that God chooses to have us as part of that plan is amazing, especially when we get to chapter two and find out that when God found us we were dead in sin, totally insensitive to the things of God. Not only that, but we were in lockstep with the rest of the world, following Satan himself. But thanks exclusively to the grace of God, we have been saved from the wrath of God that was so richly deserved. As we get to chapter 3, we find out that Jews and Gentiles, formerly outside of God’s covenant with the Jews, have been brought in. Together, we are being made into a place where God dwells, a new temple where the world can go, “What an amazing God!” To bring this gospel has cost Paul a lot, but he is going to pray for the church that they would know something. He interrupted himself at the beginning of chapter 3, and now, as we come to our passage today, he picks it back up. How is Paul going to be praying for us, and how is this going to be the perfect wrap up of the first three chapters and be the perfect setup for the next three chapters? Let’s find out! Our points today are: Your spiritual life can be stronger and You can know God’s love deeper. 

Your spiritual life can be stronger

Paul begins His prayer to the Father from whom all the families on earth and heaven are named. One of my old professors thinks that what this is referring to is people on earth and the spirits in heaven. They are named by Him which gives a sense of ownership and control (Thielman, 227-228). Paul is not hoping, wishing, or dreaming; he is praying to the One who does great things. 

So what does Paul pray for? In what follows, we have a series of statements that build on one another (Thielman, 238). He is praying that the Church will be strengthened by the Spirit in our inner person. He is asking that we will be empowered. This power isn’t focused physically, but spiritually. But why? 

Paul continues in verse 17, “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” We need to do a little talking about this verse. Paul can’t be talking about Christ entering into the hearts of the people there in a salvation sense. Why? Because Paul is already talking to believers! (Hoener, 481). These are folks who have been sealed with the Holy Spirit, so he can’t be talking about folks who are already converted to Christ telling them to be converted. As an side note, this is why it is important to remember the context of a passage of Scripture. The original audience is key to understanding what is meant. 

So, then, what does it mean for Christ to dwell in our hearts in this passage? The word used here for “dwell” has a stronger meaning than just living somewhere (O’Brien, 259) with one scholar saying that it “connotes a settled dwelling” (Hoener, 480). When Christ dwells in a heart, He transforms it, and the longer He stays, the more gets changed. The way that I think of it is like when you move into a house. If you are traveling for work and need to live out of a hotel room for a couple weeks, you don’t bring your own furniture or pictures. You leave the hotel room as it is because you won’t stay long. However, when you move into a house that you bought and plan to stay in for a while, you don’t leave it how it was. You repaint the walls, put up your own pictures, change out some fixtures or even knock out a wall! You transform the place to better reflect your own tastes. 

This is what Jesus does when He “settles.” This is what Paul is praying for when he asks for the Spirit to strengthen us so that Jesus may settle. As soon as we are converted, Jesus dwells in our hearts and starts changing things to suit Himself. Some things Jesus deals with very quickly, and other things are long term projects, but rest assured He will deal with them. What’s great is that He involves you in the project! And He’s got more for you to do than just hold the flashlight! He invites you to work with Him using the means of grace. These would include coming to church, reflecting on God’s Word, spending time with Him in prayer. You haven’t peaked! No matter how long you’ve been with Jesus there is more strengthening to be had! 
But why should you seek more? I mean, we know that reason enough would be the fact that God told us to,but would you like some motivation? Now we get to the meat here of this passage and our second point:
You can know God’s love deeper.

Paul next says that we are rooted and grounded in love. Paul is using an agricultural and architectural metaphor. We have our root and foundation in love. Whose love? God’s. This is something that we have rightly said so much but wrongly reflected on so little. You find all of your support in the fact that God loves you so much. And the crazy thing is you barely understand that. Paul is going to go on and say that we need to be strengthened so that we can understand that. 

Does that surprise you? No matter what you know about God’s love, there is more to know. I don’t just mean facts to know about God’s love, I mean knowing in an experiential way, grasping God’s love for you. It’s something that you need to be strengthened for. You wouldn’t just leave here and go run a marathon without training, and in the same way, you can’t leave here fully grasping God’s love for you. This is something that you need to pray for strength to understand, appropriate the means of grace to understand, and there will always be more for you to comprehend. 
Knowing that God loves you is one of the most life-changing things that you will ever grasp. Let’s see what that will change when you have a firm grasp of the love of God. 

Let’s begin with trials, the hard things in life. You will trust God to the level that you grasp His love for you. If you have a hard time trusting God, it isn’t because God doesn’t love you, it is because you don’t realize how much He does love you. When your health isn’t good, when a relative of yours dies, it is tempting to say, “God must not love me. Look how much suffering He is putting me through!” If you have ever seen an intense strength coach working with a player, you’ll see him making the athlete pick up these super heavy weights, screaming right into their face! If you weren’t aware of the context, you’d think the coach hated the player. But because you know what the coach is doing, you’ll see that the yelling is passion, the yelling is trying to motivate the athlete to use more of their potential to better themselves. If you are the athlete, and you assume the coach hates you, your experience of that training is going to be very different. It is similar with God. When God takes us through something hard, all we can hear is divine shouting. But what these trials are doing for us, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:17 (1147) that our afflictions are producing an eternal weight of glory! There is something wonderful that God is doing with our trials, and they are hard enough without also believing the lie that God hates us. This is why Paul wants us to be strengthened so that we will be able to grasp such love. 

God’s love also changes how easily you fall into sin. Try this the next time you are tempted to sin. Take a moment, step back and think about the fact that God actually loves you more than you can literally comprehend. Spend time thinking about the cross, think about the blessings in your life, your life itself, and remember that you were not owed any of those things. In fact, you deserved to be denied all of those things. How can you sin against such love? 

Knowing God’s love will also change how you approach the things that you know you need to do! Doing things out of duty is a fine motivation, and sometimes that’s necessary, but oh, how much sweeter your devotion time will be knowing that what you are reading is written by a God who loves you, not just what you do for Him, but just you! Praying is conversation with a God who loves you perfectly. 

This love that God has for you is one that wants the best for you. He doesn’t tell us to do things that are hard because He gets a kick out of seeing us struggle to do them. He calls us to the things that He does because He is doing something great for us. I’ll grant you that some situations are harder to see that than others, but I can be sure because I have see God’s love that He will do something good. 

Having this attitude will lead us to the fullness of God. What Paul is referring to here is full maturity, arriving at the potential God has for us (Thielman, 238)! 

After this, Paul then goes on to praise God in a final doxology to close out the first half of the letter. Paul lifts up his glass so to speak to praise God for being able to do far more than we can ask or think. Now, you may say, “I don’t know, I can imagine quite a bit.” I guarantee you can’t. Sure we can think of stuff to ask God for, but would you think to ask God to give you an honored place in heaven based on what Jesus did? Would you think of asking God to give you a heart that can love someone who hurt you badly? Would you think of asking God to forgive all of your sin? It’s hard to come up with other examples because that’s what I can think of, and Paul is saying that God can do more than even that! Paul then closes with a call to give glory to God in all times forever and ever, amen! 

Thus closes the theology section of Ephesians. We’ve learned a lot, but what does this mean for you to be loved by God? 

Well, if you are single and earnestly desire to love and be loved by someone, this is a good desire. God created us to love and be loved, but even when you do find that special someone, this will not replace your need for God’s love, and He will always provide it. Expecting your spouse to be the one to fulfill your need of divine love is a burden that will crush them! Learn to lean into this love now, because you will always have a need for it and gloriously will always have a source for it. 

If you are loved by God you are never alone. Kids, this is a good one for you to remember. Jesus lives in your heart. You are neve alone in the dark. Jesus is always with you and is always watching you. Adults, this is true for you as well. Our fears may be more sophisticated than monsters in the closet, but we fear that feeling of being alone. 

If all this sounds mysterious and vague, it’s because it is hard to put into words this magnificent truth that God loves you. So pursue knowing it. Dive headlong into God’s word and prayer and just behold what you will find there. Will you ever fully grasp it? No, just like you can’t eat an entire birthday cake by yourself. But that shouldn’t stop you from taking a slice or three. This is something that you can indulge on! Pray that God would show you more of His love, seek down into its depths and you will find more! Rise up to its heights and you will find more. Run to its left, run to its right, and you will never reach the end! So keep going, you will never know what you have been missing until you find it. 

And when you do, share it. Don’t keep it to yourself. See how much God loves you, and then let that pour out of yourself and on to those around you. 


Works cited:   
Ephesians, Frank Thielman 

Ephesians, Harold Hoener 

Ephesians, Peter O'Brien