Ephesians 3:14–21 · WEB Classic
14 For this cause, I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that you may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person, 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, to the end that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be strengthened to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and height and depth,
19 and to know Christ’s love which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, 21 to him be the glory in the assembly and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Paul bows his knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. The posture expresses dependence and reverence. The apostle who has received an extraordinary commission still asks God to provide what the church needs. Knowledge of God’s purpose gives him reasons to pray rather than reasons to consider prayer unnecessary.
He asks that the Father grant strength through his Spirit in the inner person according to the riches of his glory. The measure is God’s abundance. The location is the inward life of the believers. Spiritual strength concerns the people they are becoming before it concerns any public impression they can create.
We can recognize the need for that inward strength without waiting for an extraordinary occasion. A person can remain very composed while rehearsing an argument he intends to win at home. He knows precisely what the other person did, remembers several related offenses from 2018, and is preparing an explanation in which his own contribution will be difficult to locate. His problem is not a shortage of energy. He needs strength to relinquish resentment, speak honestly, and seek another person’s good. Those are acts of the inner person before anyone hears the resulting conversation.
Paul prays that Christ may dwell in their hearts through faith. He has already described them as believers sealed with the Spirit, so this is not a request for Christ to begin belonging to them for the first time. It concerns the settled reality and influence of Christ’s presence within their lives. Faith is the continuing posture of dependence upon him.
Being rooted and grounded in love, they need strength to comprehend with all the saints the breadth, length, height, and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. The dimensions express the greatness of what they are being invited to grasp. Paul does not supply a hidden code assigning a separate secret to each measurement.
The love is known “with all the saints.” That gives the prayer a setting larger than one person attempting to produce a sufficiently moving private experience. The people joined to Christ learn together. One believer understands something of patient care because another has stayed beside him through a long illness. Someone learning to confess a wrong discovers that the brother he hurt is willing to forgive. Those acts do not replace Christ’s cross as the measure of love. They are ways the people loved through that cross learn to act toward one another.
We can also learn from people whose lives refuse the assumptions we have brought into the room. A suffering believer may trust Christ without being able to explain why relief has not come. His confidence does not prove that pain is trivial; it shows that Christ’s love is more substantial than the circumstances we assumed would be necessary to recognize it. Paul asks for understanding shared among the saints, including saints whose experience may correct ours.
Knowing a love that surpasses knowledge is not a contradiction. We can know something truly without knowing it exhaustively. A child can know that his father loves him long before he understands the cost of everything the father has done. Paul wants believers increasingly to grasp a love whose greatness they will never finish measuring.
The love already has an observable history. God made us alive when we were dead in sins because of his great love (2:4–5), and Christ loved the church and gave himself for her (5:25). Paul’s dimensions should be understood in relation to that revealed action. We are not trying to stretch our minds around an undefined feeling. We are learning the greatness of the love that sought guilty people, bore the cost of their redemption, and received them into God’s household.
Romans 8:31–39 helps us follow that love into circumstances that seem to contradict it. Paul begins with God giving his own Son for us, then asks who can bring a charge against God’s people or condemn them. Christ has died, been raised, and intercedes for them. The assurance rests upon acts God has accomplished. Paul then names trouble, persecution, famine, danger, and the sword. He has not forgotten that believers suffer, and he does not answer their suffering by pretending it is a particularly enjoyable form of blessing.
None of those things can separate them from God’s love in Christ. That is the kind of understanding the Ephesians need strength to grasp. Knowing Christ’s love does not require concluding that a painful event was painless or that the person who harmed us behaved well. It requires learning to judge those circumstances in the light of the Son God has given. The cross remains true when an afternoon, a year, or an entire season of life gives us very little else that feels reassuring.
Being rooted and grounded in love gives this knowledge a stable setting. Roots hold a living plant and draw nourishment; a foundation supports a building. Paul combines the images to describe a settled life whose growth depends upon something deeper than the latest circumstance. A believer can endure a painful season without concluding that the cross has ceased to tell the truth about Christ’s love.
Filled with God’s fullness
The prayer reaches toward their being filled with all the fullness of God. This does not mean believers become God or acquire his incommunicable attributes. It concerns the fullness of life and maturity God gives to his people through Christ and the Spirit. The people who are his dwelling are to be thoroughly shaped by his presence.
Paul praises the God able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power at work in us. The immediate setting is the request he has just made for spiritual strength, Christ’s dwelling, and comprehension of divine love. Turning the sentence into a guarantee of unlimited income or personal ambition replaces the prayer with a different subject.
We can therefore ask for help that reaches beyond managing the appearance of faithfulness. The person rehearsing his grievance can ask for strength to forgive. The exhausted believer can ask for love enough to perform the next necessary act of care. Neither request is small merely because it involves no audience. A changed response in an old quarrel may require more of the strength Paul describes than a public speech delivered to people already disposed to applaud.
Paul gives glory to God in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations. The people for whom he kneels remain the place where this strengthening is to bear fruit. When the resentful man abandons the speech he has been preparing and begins an honest conversation instead, the prayer has not been diverted into something beneath its grandeur. The Father is being honored in a person learning the love of his Son.