Ephesians 3:14-21, "A Love So Strong"
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If you had infinite power and limitless glory, what would you do with it?
What does God do with His? From our passage today, we will see that God uses His glory to consume us with His love so that we will walk in humility, gentleness, patience, love, and peace.
When we pray the prayer Jesus taught us and we get to the last half, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen,” do we know what are we saying? What is the connection between those sentences - between forgiveness, overcoming evil, and the glory of God’s powerful reign as King?
The last sentence we include in the prayer doesn’t appear in the oldest manuscripts we have for the Bible, it is probably an addition from an editor later. So, why did they add it? Someone saw a connection between this prayer and a doxology, praising God for His powerful reign and glory.
The word glory is important for understanding our lesson today, because it tells us what the most powerful and glorious Person in heaven and earth is doing with His infinite power and limitless glory. A person’s glory is the sum total of everything that makes them significant, important, and worthy of praise. If you add up your achievements, wealth, possessions, power, and authority, that is your glory.
The Bible tells us a lot about the glory of God. His power and authority go beyond anything in this world. He is worshipped by all the angel in the heavenly places. He is more glorious than all the most beautiful and powerful things in all of heaven and earth.
So, if we pray to that God, “forgive us our debts,” and really take stock of those debts we owe God, we would be overwhelmed. How can we keep coming back over and over and expect to keep being forgiven? And we in and of ourselves are powerless to overcome temptation and evil, which is why we ask God for help in the first place. It can seem pretty hopeless.
The truth is, if any of us got what we deserve from God, we would be completely consumed by the wrath of God for our sin. He is glorious in His perfect holiness. He has infinite power and limitless glory. God is a consuming fire. But God’s wrath for sin is not His defining characteristic nor His greatest glory. It is a necessary contingency of His holy nature, but it is not His nature. In other words, God’s wrath has to be stirred up or provoked by our rebellion and sin. He doesn’t come by it naturally.
So it’s essential we understand, when God wanted to truly reveal His glory and power according to His nature, He sent Jesus to demonstrate His love for sinners.
The EFCA Statement of Faith puts it this way in our statement about God:
“We believe in one God, Creator of all things, holy, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in a loving unity of three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Having limitless knowledge and sovereign power, God has graciously purposed from eternity to redeem a people for Himself and to make all things new for His own glory.”
We believe it is the glory of God to redeem a people for Himself and make all things new. What does God do with all His power and glory? He loves us and redeems us.
Then the gospels tell us how God did that. God revealed His glory through Jesus, the Redeemer. John especially says,
John 1:14 (ESV)
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
What was the glory of Jesus?
Jesus linked His glory with His crucifixion. At the moment Judas went out to betray Jesus to the chief priests,
John 13:31 (ESV)
When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
Jesus’ greatest glory on earth was His sufferings for our sins, and His resurrection.
Context: 3:6-13, Paul wants the Ephesians to understand the gospel. The gospel is that gentiles have access to God through Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 3:8 (ESV)
To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,
Ephesians 3:11–12 (ESV)
This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.
Those who had formerly been kept from God because of our idolatry and sin now have bold, confident access to God through our faith in Jesus Christ. This is the glory of Christ. He has done what all of us, with all of our good works combined, could not do. We could never repay God the debt we owe Him. We need forgiveness. Jesus fulfilled God’s will completely in His life and died as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. So, we can be forgiven. You can boldly access God with confidence through your faith in Christ Jesus our Lord.
When we pray for forgiveness of our sins, or for help overcoming temptation and evil, God our Father wants us to do it with boldness and confidence. Our faith is in Jesus. Why is this important?
I met with a man last week who feels trapped in a negative cycle of failure. He struggles with a particular sin (he didn’t say which one), but it’s keeping him from having confidence in his relationship with God and from having any peace with himself. He feels like he just needs to try harder to show his love for God, but it never seems to work. He listens to other people talk about their freedom in Christ, but he can’t believe it’s enough. “Don’t we also need to do the right thing?”
All of us know someone or we ourselves are in this place - trapped by our failures, unable to make progress spiritually because we’re overwhelmed by our temptations and wrestling with the fact that in all honesty, we often love our selves and our sins more than we love God Himself. We promise God we’ll never do that thing again. Then the right set of circumstances lead us to the same place and we give in to the weakness of our flesh. We sin knowingly. Our guilt and our shame come rushing in and it takes a long time to look up again. Weeks or months go by until we get up the courage to pray once again. How do we get out of that cycle?
That’s what this passage is all about. If you could really comprehend the love of God for you in Jesus, it would change your life. But we find it so unbelievable. If we focus too much on God’s love and don’t talk about His wrath for sin, won’t people just go on doing all the wrong things?
That’s not what Paul says. After Paul explains the gospel, he adds, Ephesians 3:13
Ephesians 3:13 (ESV)
So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.
What is our glory? Paul says it is linked with his suffering for their sake through the ministry of the gospel. He was in prison because He had been preaching that Jesus is Lord and we have freedom in Him. So, just like it was Jesus’ glory to suffer for the sake of love, it is our glory when we demonstrate that same love by suffering on behalf of others, that they may grow in their knowledge of Jesus.
Jesus told His disciples,
John 13:34–35 (ESV)
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
We demonstrate the glory of Jesus when we love one another sacrificially. Love is the nature of God, demonstrated through Jesus in His life, death, and resurrection to give sinners access to God. We do not have that kind of love within us. It is not in our nature. We can only demonstrate this kind of love if Christ dwells in us.
Do we realize what that means? For Paul, this gospel should blow your mind. It is far more than anything you would ask or think to receive from God. So, Paul prays this mind-blowing prayer.
Ephesians 3:14–15 (ESV)
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,
Consider who God is. God is infinitely powerful and limitless in His glory. He is the God that can't be contained. He inhabits heaven and the heaven of heavens, and does not dwell in temples made by human hands. He dwells in unapproachable light. His holiness is all-consuming and sinners cannot enter His presence.
God has always desired to dwell with His people, so He had given them the Law so that their external righteousness would keep His holy presence from destroying them. But He desired greater intimacy, to dwell in His people. This would require the eradication of their sin. But if God was to reside within, could your or I withstand being filled with His presence? So God has done something humanly impossible through Jesus Christ. He has eradicated the sin in the sinner who repents and unites themselves to Jesus by faith.
For that person, how do we experience the infinite power and limitless, uncontainable glory of God?
Ephesians 3:16 (ESV)
that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,
Ephesians 3:17 (ESV)
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
The God who could consume you in His wrath for your sin loves you in this way, He will redeem you through Jesus, rename you His own child, and Christ will make His home in your heart. This is the love of God.
This love is your root; you will gather all life and sustenance from God's love. You cannot make too much of the love of God for you in Jesus. The moment you stop trusting in God's love for your life, energy and motivation, you cut yourself off from the root of your spiritual existence and vitality.
The love of God is your ground, or foundation. The foundation of your life determines your power to stand through adversity; it shapes the structure of your life. Many of us live out of self-centeredness, fear, control, anxiety, bitterness or greed. If the love of God is our ground, our foundation, our life takes shape as more loving.
When we think about how far short we all fall much of the time, the love of an infinitely holy God for sinners is incomprehensible. So Paul keeps praying,
may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
How do you comprehend the incomprehensible? You don’t try to make sense of it. You experience it. You learn by throwing yourself into the unknown until it becomes more familiar. When you cannot wrap your head around God’s love for you when you have failed for the millionth time, come back boldly through your faith in Jesus and sink the roots of your soul deep into the ground of God’s love for you. Wrap your doubting, troubled soul around the solid foundation of God’s unconditional, unmerited, irresistible love for you in Jesus Christ who has paid your debt.
Let this lead you to give God glory for doing the impossible.
Ephesians 3:20–21 (ESV)
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Isn’t there a danger that if we preach the love of God too much, we won’t take sin seriously enough? Wouldn’t we end up praying, “forgive us our debts,” too easily and freely, but end up losing the battle with temptation and evil? Paul says that’s not how it works. If we really comprehend the gospel of God’s love for us in Jesus. If the roots of our faith sink deep into the foundation of God’s love for us in Jesus, glorifying God will be the natural outcome. He goes from the doxology of 3:20-21 into chapter 4, verse 1:
Ephesians 4:1–3 (ESV)
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Communion
Questions for Discussion
If you had infinite power, what would you do with it?
What are some ways people seek glory? What are the results?
What do we learn about the glory of God in Ephesians 3:14-21?
What are some other important things we learn about God in this passage?
How does God use His power and glory, according to these verses?
What do we learn about ourselves?
What is/are the promise(s) we can claim in this passage?
How will you respond to this passage this week?
Who is someone you can share this passage with this week?