Note: Devotion based on last Sunday's sermon on Ephesians 3:14-21.
Unto him be glory in
the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen
(Ephesians 3:21).
The third chapter of
Ephesians ends with a prayer by the apostle Paul. It begins in v. 14, “For this
cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Kneeling is not
the only Biblically sanctioned posture for prayer. The reference to Paul‘s kneeling
reflects his humility before the Lord in worship.
Paul was a man of
prayer. He urged believers to engage in constant prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
We talk about something bursting into flames. Paul would sometimes burst into
spontaneous prayer! Here it is in writing. If he did this in writing one can
only imagine how he must have done so in normal conversation.
We can notice a prayer
pattern. Paul first worships the Lord (vv. 14-15), bending the knee before him.
He then petitions the Lord (vv. 16-19). He asks the Lord, according to his
riches in glory, to strengthen the believers in the inner man (v. 16). We tend
to think first of needs of the outer man, the external condition. But Paul
teaches in this prayer another priority. He pleads for the strengthening of the
inward condition of believers.
He further asks that
Christ “may dwell in your hearts by faith” (v. 17a). R. C. Sproul points out, despite
the popularity among evangelicals of this image of Christ dwelling in the
believer’s heart, that this is “the only place in the whole Bible that mentions
Christ dwelling in our hearts” (Ephesians, p. 87).
In v. 17b Paul mixes
metaphors of agriculture and masonry, asking that believers might be rooted (an
organic, agricultural image) and grounded (a structural image, cf. 2:20-21) in
love.
To what end? That we
might be able to comprehend the vast greatness of God in Christ (v. 18). That we
might know “with all saints” the breadth (the wideness, the thickness) and the
length, and depth, and height of God. The theologians remind us that the finite
cannot comprehend the infinite. We cannot know all of God, or we would be God.
But to some limited degree he allows us to comprehend his magnitude and his
vast greatness.
Paul petitions, in
particular, that the Ephesian believers might know “the love of Christ” and
fill them “with all the fullness of God” (v. 19).
Finally, Paul concludes
with doxology and adoration (vv. 20-21). He ascribes glory to the one who is
able to do more than we could ever ask or imagine (v. 20).
His final petition is
that God might be given glory “in the church” (v. 21). In answer to the
question as to man’s chief end, the Catechism teaches, “To glorify God and to
enjoy him forever.”
God gets glory in his
creation and through the lives of individual believers, but here Paul reminds
us that God also gets glory in the church. This includes the invisible (mystical)
church of all times and places, and the concrete, visible, and local church.
Why does our particular
church, or any other church, exist? To give glory to God.
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle
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