: Ephesians overview – 3:14-19, Putting the entire prayer together.

Wednesday July 29, 2020

 

 

Regeneration is a work of the Holy Spirit. At the moment of faith in Christ a person is baptized by the Holy Spirit and entered into union with Christ and both the Spirit and the Son indwell.

 

This is a most wonderful news. It can be ruined by systematizing systematic theology too much. We need systematic theology, but it must never replace our personal relationship with Christ. Systematic theology guards us from false doctrine, which is always based on some human reasoning and/or emotionalism. It keeps us accurate in our knowledge of God so that we may execute our relationship with Him in life and appropriate all that comes with that life.

 

Eternal life that is imparted to every believer, by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, is inseparably related to Christ.

 

JOH 1:4

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

 

JOH 10:10

“The thief comes only to steal, and kill, and destroy; I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly.”

 

JOH 11:25

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies”

 

JOH 14:6

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me.”

 

COL 3:4

When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

 

1JO 5:12

He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.

 

Jesus is the life for us. He is human whereas the Holy Spirit and the Father are not. We follow Christ. He is the new humanity. But His humanity is like the Father and the Holy Spirit. He is God and co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Spirit as the only begotten Son of God. Mysteries abound here, but simply, the Son of God became the Son of Man and we are conforming to His image. Since He is the exact image of the Father, we are also imitating the Father. The Holy Spirit, the member of the Trinity that is most in the shadows, empowers us and guides us in our maturity, yet not Him alone, for we will see that strength comes from Christ, from wisdom, and from resurrection.

 

Indwelling Spirit: JOH 7:39; 1CO 3:16; 6:19; 2CO 1:21-22; EPH 2:22; 3:16; ROM 8:9, 11; GAL 4:6.

 

Indwelling Christ: MAT 28:20; JOH 14:20; 15:4; 17:23, 26; GAL 2:20; COL 1:27; 1JO 3:24.

 

EPH 3:14-19

For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, 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; 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 [so that] may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God.

 

The structure of vs. 17 leaves some doubt as to whether the word love (agape) should go with the infinitive “dwell” or with the participles “rooted and grounded.”

 

Christ is at home in our hearts in love, or we are rooted and grounded in love.

 

The word order: May dwell the Christ by faith in your hearts in love being rooted and grounded so that you may be able to comprehend [apprehend] with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.

 

So it is either “the Christ dwells in our hearts by faith in love,” or “the Christ dwells in our hearts though faith, being rooted and grounded in love.”

 

The two perfect participles are rhizoo (to cause to take root) and themelioo (to lay a foundation).

 

COL 2:6-7

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 7 having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.

 

Rooted and grounded points to a stable life on the foundation of Christ.

 

The strength from the indwelling Spirit and Christ, the truths of Him, dwelling at home in our hearts provide a life of stability.

 

LUK 6:46-49

"And why do you call Me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say? 47 "Everyone who comes to Me, and hears My words, and acts upon them, I will show you whom he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation upon the rock; and when a flood rose, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 "But the one who has heard, and has not acted accordingly, is like a man who built a house upon the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great."

 

EPH 2:19-22

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, 20 having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, 21 in whom the whole building, being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord; 22 in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

 

EPH 3:14-19

For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, 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; 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 [so that] may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God.

 

Verse 18: So that you may have full strength (exischuo: aorist active subjunctive) to apprehend with your mind with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth.

 

The NASB puts the conjunction hina before “being rooted and grounded in love.” In the text it is after it. We could alter the reading, “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, in love being rooted and grounded, so that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints …” It’s not a great difference, but I think it more clearly shows us the purpose. Strength from the Spirit so that Christ dwells at home in our hearts through faith, in love rooted and grounded, so that …

 

The purpose of the Spirit, doctrines of Christ, being rooted in faith is to comprehend the vastness of the love of Christ for you, so that you might be filled up with all the fullness of God.

 

Strengthened by the Holy Spirit in our inner man to live a life of obedience to the Father so that we come to know the Person of Christ who will reside at home in our hearts through our faith, being thus rooted and grounded, we find the full strength to apprehend the vastness of the love of Christ for us.

 

I’m sure that Paul isn’t simply trying to sound poetic and majestic. He means exactly what he says, having experienced all of it himself. It is a wonderful comfort and exciting hope to know that the end-goal of the spiritual life is to comprehend the greatness and depth of the love of God for you. In striving to live the life of Christ we can know that this is our reward: to know how truly, unconditionally, and infinitely we are loved by Him. It will bring us that life of daily gratitude. But it can’t just be claimed.

 

The life has to be lived completely for us to comprehend the vastness of God’s love for us.

 

It takes full strength to apprehend the love of Christ.

 

Over the centuries there has been an underlying but pervasive lie that the doctrines of Christ, the full knowledge of Him, theology of Him should only interest the clergy and not the layman. Theology is not for a special group in the body of Christ who are ministers or theologians. Christ is not to only take His due place in the hearts of ministers.

 

For the believers who neglect the full knowledge of Him through in-depth study of the scripture, they don’t come to comprehend the riches of His glory or the depth of His love for them.

 

One writer puts it:

“If at the present time the religious life of the church is languid, and if in its enterprises there is little of the audacity and vehemence, a partial explanation is to be found in that decline of intellectual interest in the contents of the Christian faith which has characterized the last hundred or hundred and fifty years of out history.” [R. W. Dale wrote that more than a hundred years ago from today.]