How do you understand what is impossible to be understood? How can a finite human know what it is impossible to know? How can we fathom the unfathomable?
Humans do this with the really really big things. And they do it with the really really small things.
Let’s start with the really small things first. We have all heard of DNA, from all of those police shows. Now, I’m definitely no scientist. But in each of our cells is DNA. The DNA is a big long string of information about us in each of our cells. The DNA is basically a language storing unique information in a human cell. The information is a message 6 billion letters long[1]. And it is irreducibly complex. You cannot predict what it is going to say from one individual to another. It is different for each individual. (http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/faq/faqs1.shtml).
In other words, in each of our cells, there is coded information that is equivalent to 200 thousand page telephone books. It would take 9.5 years straight to read out loud the DNA information encoded in one human cell. It has been called ‘the language of God[2]’ by Francis Collins, President Obama’s nomination as the Director of the US National Institutes of Health. At the tiniest levels, we see the fingerprints of God. And scientists are spun out with the complexity of it. We are fearfully and wonderfully made.
And at the biggest levels, the universe is mindblowing. Wikipedia tells me that the observable universe is 46 billion light years radius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way). And of course, that’s just what we can see. Who knows what tip of the iceberg we are seeing. There are probably a hundred million galaxies in the observable universe. And our galaxy is just one of them. And for a pretty ordinary galaxy, ours is pretty impressive. The milky way is a hundred million light years across. And our sun is just one of an estimated 200 to 400 billion stars in the milky way.(http://www.universetoday.com/22380/how-many-stars-are-in-the-milky-way/)
Really really big things are so complex we are just starting to understand them. And the really really small things are so complex that they are incredible and amazing. They are true, and part of God’s world. But who would have thought it or believed it?
Not only is God’s world amazing and beyond understanding, but God’s word is amazing and beyond understanding. Sure, we understand bits of it, just like astrophysicists have scratched the surface of the universe and molecular biologists have begun to understand DNA. We can understand enough to know God and be saved by trusting Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. But often what we learn about our world simply raises a whole new set of questions which the next generation of investigators has to answer.
That is why Paul prays at the end of Ephesians 3.
Paul has spent the first chapter talking about how we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. We are rich towards God. We were chosen before the foundation of the world to be adopted as Sons of the Father. We have God’s loving predestination and adoption. We have redemption through Jesus’ blood, forgiveness of sins. We have wisdom and understanding. We know where the world is going – to be under the headship of Jesus Christ.
And the Ephesians themselves have been caught up in all this. They were walking their own way, dead men walking, in their transgressions and sins, following the world, the flesh and the devil. And God made them alive with Christ, raised them with Christ, and seated them in the heavenly realms with Christ. Christians are saved by grace through faith, not by works. They are saved for works, but not by their works. And God has reconciled them not merely to himself, but to others, into a new household, in which God himself lives by his Spirit.
All of this prompts Paul’s prayer at the end of chapter 3. It is a prayer deferred. It is deferred because he is distracted by it all. And who wouldn’t be? He is so blown away with it all, that he has to spend another 13 verses enjoying it with the Ephesians. But the postponed prayer is worth the wait.
So Paul gets to praying. Verses 14 and 15:
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. (NIV)
‘For this reason’ gathers up all of chapters 1 and 2. It reminds us that God is glorifying his Christ and of all the spiritual blessings of Christians, regardless of whether they are Jew or Gentile.
And then Paul bows the knee. The usual posture for prayer among 1st century Jews was standing. Kneeling was a sign of homage to the sovereign God as a great King. Paul has access to the Father. So have we:
For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit (Ephesians 2:18 NIV).
So he uses that access on his knees. And the person he bows before is the Adopting Father, the one who predestined his people to be adopted as his sons.
But Paul wants to emphasise that God is the God of every nation. So he describes the Father as the one from whom every family is derived. The NIV of verse 15 says from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. But literally it says ‘from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.’
Paul is probably reminding us here what he said in Acts 17:
From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.' (Acts 17:26-28 NIV)
There is a sense where God is the Father of every family and tribe and nation. Every nation springs from him. For from one man God created all the families and tribes and nations.
The families in heaven might be those who have died. There are many lines of human families that are ended. But no family line is ended to the one who resurrects the dead. Every family that ever existed or will exist lives to him. Or it might be families of angels that are referred to. Although we don’t know anything about angelic families, or whether they are related. We do not think of angels reproducing as humans do, so the grouping of angels must be on a different basis.
And they are all named by God, and owned by God. They are his offspring. Mike Wizowski says in Monsters Inc. ‘Once you name it, you become attached to it’. And how much more are you attached to those who bear your name. We are attached to those who carry our family names. Our wives, our children carry our family names, and rightly so.
Well, there is a sense that every family on earth carries God’s name. Every family on earth is made in the image of God. And if every human is God’s offspring, there is a real sense where every human family bears God’s name. Just as the angels are sometimes called the ‘sons of God’, so it is with humanity. And so this means that every family on earth is fitted and appropriate to join the household of God, and become adopted sons of God in Christ Jesus. When they do that, the families of humanity are simply ‘coming home’. They are returning to the one who gave them life, the Father through the Son by the Power of the Holy Spirit. For every human family find its ultimate fulfillment and purpose and satisfaction in the new house God is building.
Now Paul’s pray is a prayer for power. Paul’s petition is that God might give power to the Ephesians. Paul wants God to enable and empower and strengthen the Christians. He uses power language throughout this prayer.
Paul by praying for the Ephesians is consciously plugging them into the limitless powerful resources of God, and pleading with God that he do the things that the Ephesians by nature can’t do.
God has glorious riches. He has a wealth of glory. He can do more than we even ask or even think. And so Paul begins asking big things of God, because God can do all things, and no purpose of his can be thwarted.
Paul prays for power for his people. But it is interesting to see what Paul asks for.
Suppose your dad or grandpa is the riches man on earth. Suppose he has access to effectively limitless resources. What are you going to ask for? What request are you going to make?
No more money or financial worries? No more problems with school fees, or medical costs, or mortgage repayments, or car bills.
Remember Solomon at his best? God gives him a blank cheque. God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you." (1 Kings 3:5 NIV) And Solomon answered, 'So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.' (1 Kings 3:8-9 NIV) And God was please that Solomon had not asked for long life or wealth in this world.
That is the spirit in which Paul prays for us. He wants to pray for the things that really last.
Verses 16 to 19 tell us the purpose of the power Paul prays for. There are four things I want to mention here.
The first is in verses 16 and 17:
16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. (NIV)
Now Paul knows what it is to speak of the indwelling Christ. He did so also in Galatians. 'I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me' (Galatians 2:19-20).
Paul is praying for their insides, their inner person, not their bodies, but their hearts. And he wants them continue as they have started.
By the Spirit, Jesus Christ comes to dwell in every believing heart. Bodily Jesus Christ is in heaven. But the Spirit of Jesus Christ, who is the Holy Spirit, dwells in every believer. Christ makes his home in us individually and corporately by his Spirit. And he dwells in the believers gathered, the church
Now, I don’t think Paul is praying that the Christ come as a second experience. It’s not that the Holy Spirit came as a deposit when they first believed, but that only after Paul’s prayer does Christ come as a second blessing. No, rather the word points to Christ ‘settling down’ in their hearts.[3] Paul wants Christ to continue dwell on and on in their hearts, not as a temporary resident but as a permanent inhabitant. And so he prays for their strengthening to that end. So when we have the Lord Supper, we do NOT believe that Christ is bodily in the bread. Christ is bodily NOT in the bread. Christ is bodily in heaven. And Christ is spiritually already in you, by faith, before you take the bread or wine. He always dwells in our hearts by faith, at communion, or not. But eating the bread and drinking the wine, as visible words and outward signs, strengthens our faith as we exercise it at that moment. And it is by faith that he dwells in our hearts, and it is by faith that he stays in our hearts. And that’s what Paul prays for. Continuing faith leading to permanent settled residence.
The second, third and fourth things I mention are all about love. Paul wants the Ephesian Christians to know how much God loves them. And so he says this in three different ways.
The second is in verse 17:
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love (NIV)
Here, by the word 'rooted', the Christians are viewed first as plants or trees. And the rich soil into which they are planted and embedded is love. Then, by the word 'established', they are viewed as a building. And their foundations are driven deep into the bedrock of love.
I suspect it is not our love for God that is being emphasized. It is God’s love for us in Christ.
What is the way to be solid and established in the Christian faith, unshakable despite all the harassment of the world, the flesh and the devil? Know that God loves you in Christ.
What is the way that Christians wander from the faith, seeking other loves that don’t satisfy and only lead to our hurt? They have forgotten that God loves them, and cleansed them from past sins, and so seek a love they believe will be more real and tangible. Paul wants them to be rooted and established in love. That will keep them from wandering.
Paul then turns from images of horticulture and architecture to mathematics and geography and cosmology. Verse 18:
[I pray that you] may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ... (NIV)
Take out the tape measure. Measure the love of Christ. Measure it in all it’s three-dimensional bigness. Look out into the Jamison Valley from Echo Point Look Out. The big air and great space cannot contain God’s love. Go to a headland on the coast and look out across the big blue. Try and see New Zealand. Observe the curve of the horizon. And still the vast Pacific Ocean will not exhaust the depth, and height, and width of God’s love. Look up at the stars at night. Consider how insignificant we are compared to the vast spaces overhead. The huge distance between us and the moon. The US cannot get back there anymore. The many years it will take to travel to Mars, our nearest, friendliest planet. And remember, if in the next hundred years humans send people to Mars remember, they have not outrun God’s love. Travel across the trillion trillion light years that might turn out to be our universe, if it were possible, and realize this. You cannot go anywhere in God’s cosmos that is beyond God’s love that is in Christ Jesus.
Because the width of the love of Christ is his armspan. It’s height is that which he was raised from the earth. It’s depth is that of Joseph of Arimathea’s cold stone tomb, now empty. And it’s length is from eternity past, in which he predestined us in love, to eternity future, which we will spend in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ and which will never end.
Now, why would you try to understand things that are un-understandable? Yet this is what the Apostle Paul prays. May you understand the un-understandable. In verse 19, Paul prays that they would
know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (NIV)
May God help you to know something unknowable. It is a paradox. We start the Christian life learning about Jesus’ love for us. That’s what John 3:16 is about. The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me. And here, Paul says that we never grow out of learning that. Paul’s prayer is that, as we go on in the Christian life, we will learn the dimensions of Jesus’ even though we will never understand it in all its fullness, because it is a love that surpasses knowledge. It is just too big. But we’ll have a good time trying. In other words, we never get beyond singing, ‘Jesus loves love me this I know, for the bible tells me so.’ If we are growing in maturity, we won’t say, ‘This is kid’s stuff. I’ve moved on!’ We will understand the song more, and sing it with more conviction.
But Paul has big expectations of a big God. Verses 20-21:
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
God can do more in us than we expect. God can do more in us than we even ask. God can finish in us the work of new creation. And he will glorify his Son. God will finish what he starts, and bring us to completion in the end, to the glory of his Son.
We have just finished the first three chapters of Ephesians. And Paul has finished with praying that Christians understand the un-understandable love of God.
And there is another very important reason for this in the context of the letter. For chapters 1 to 3 are basically about what God has done for us and how God loved us in Christ Jesus. But chapters 4 to 6 are about how we are to respond to the love of God with our obedient lives and our love of neighbour. So Paul grounds his readers in the love of God. He wants them to know that power of the love of God, so that they will live God’s ways. You know you are loved by God, you will respond with grateful loving obedience. May we do so as we see how God wants us to live.
Let’s pray.
[1] John Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 152
[2] Francis Collins at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_of_God:_A_Scientist_Presents_Evidence_for_Belief
[3] P T O'Brien, Ephesians: Pillar, 259