At the church where I serve we are spending our time
together looking at a letter that is recorded for us in the New Testament of
our Bibles called the book of Ephesians. This week I would like for us to pick up where we left off last week. And as
we jump into the next section of this letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to
early followers of Jesus at the church at Ephesus, we are going to discover
another timeless truth regarding our identity as a follower of Jesus that has
the potential to change how we see our true identity, the
identity that God designed us to live in, so that we would live our day to day
lives in light of our true identity. So let’s discover this timeless truth together, beginning in Ephesians 3:14:
For this
reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and
on earth derives its name,
Paul begins this section of his letter with the phrase
“for this reason”.
As we discovered last week, Paul used this exact same phrase before
experiencing a “squirrel” moment, so to speak. Before penning the words of this
prayer, Paul decided to take a tangent. And it was in that tangent that we
discovered that our identity as a follower of Jesus
should result in equality amongst followers of Jesus.
After
taking that tangent, here we see Paul get back on track. Paul basically states
“in light of the reality that your identity as a follower of Jesus should
remove racial barriers and should result in equality amongst followers of Jesus.
In light of the reality that as a
result of our confident trust in Jesus, regardless of whether we are Jew or
Gentile, we have a confidence and a certainty that we can enter into God’s
presence, I am going to enter into God’s presence to pray for you”.
You see, Paul prayed in light of the reality that he had
the confidence and certainty to be able to enter into God’s presence because of
his relationship with Jesus. Paul then reminds the members of the church at
Ephesus that He was praying to the God from whom every family derives its name.
In other words, Paul wanted the members of the church at Ephesus to clearly
understand that God was the Creator of all of humanity, regardless of their
ethnicity or cultural identity. After providing the reasons for his prayer,
Paul then reveals the content of his prayer in Ephesians 3:16:
that He would grant you, according to the
riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the
inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
To fully understand Paul’s prayer here, we first need to
understand some terms. As we discovered earlier in this series, when Paul
refers to the riches of His glory, he is referring to the wealth and abundance
of God’s radiance and splendor. So Paul is praying that God would give the
members of the church of Ephesus, and followers of Jesus throughout history,
what flowed from the wealth of His abundant splendor and radiance.
Paul then explains that what flowed from the wealth of
God’s abundant radiance and splendor would strengthen with power the inner man
of the members of the church at Ephesus. But what does that mean? The phrase strengthened with power, literally
means to become strong. Paul’s here is asking God to give followers of Jesus throughout
history what flowed from the wealth of His abundant splendor and radiance that
would cause followers of Jesus to become strong.
How followers of Jesus were going to become strong was
through His Spirit in the inner man. Now the phrase “inner man” if communicated
in the language we use in our culture today, would be described as the “core of
our being”. Paul then explains that the reason why they were going to become
strong was so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
Now with this phrase Paul is not saying that he is praying
for the members of the church at Ephesus to become followers of Jesus. The
members of the church at Ephesus were already followers of Jesus. Instead, what
Paul is praying that God would give the members of the church of Ephesus the
ability to experience the Holy Spirit’s transforming power as a result of Jesus
taking up permanent residence in their lives. Paul wanted the members of the
church at Ephesus to experience the Holy Spirit’s activity in their life so
that they would become more like Jesus as Jesus lived within them.
And what is so interesting here, is that as we will see
in a minute, Paul here is praying this very same prayer for us. Paul here is
praying for us today as followers of Jesus that we would experience the Holy
Spirit’s power as a result of Jesus taking up residence in our lives through
faith. You see, as a result of our confident trust in Jesus, Jesus takes up
permanent residence in our lives. And as Jesus takes up permanent residence in
our lives, Paul prayed that the Holy Spirit would be at work in our lives in
such a way that we would experience the Holy Spirit’s transforming power in our
lives.
Now a natural question that
arises here is “well Dave how can you say that Paul here is praying for us
today? And what did Paul want the Holy Spirit to do in our lives if Paul was
actually praying for us today?”
If that question is running
through your mind, I want to let you know that is a great question to be
asking. And we find the answer to those questions in what Paul has to say next.
Tomorrow, we will look at what Paul has to say next…
No comments:
Post a Comment