To Know the Surpassing Greatness of his Power
To Know the Surpassing Greatness of his Power
Ephesians 1:15-23
by William Klock
Do you ever wonder how I pray for you as your pastor? You know I pray about the needs and concerns each of you shares with me, but I’m talking more generally about how I pray for you all as Living Word Church. It occurred to me this week that in all my years in ministry no one has ever asked me that. But I do pray for you and our text today from Ephesians—it’s 1:15-23 if you want to follow along—this text is one of my favourite prayers. For you. In fact, I have this printed sheet taped inside my prayer book. And what’s on it is five prayers, all taken from Paul’s letters; prayers he prayed for the churches he cared for. Prayers inspired by the Holy Spirit. About fifteen years ago it struck me that I should pray these Spirit-inspired pastoral prayers for you. And so I typed them up, tweaked the wording a bit to fit the form of a collect, printed them out, and stuck them inside the back cover of my prayer book. And each day at Morning Prayer, I pray one of these prayers for you. And this one is, I think, maybe the most important.
This prayer is still part of Paul’s introduction to his letter to the Ephesians. Last week we read that long run-on sentence that’s all about the Father fulfilling his promises to Israel in Jesus; how we as Jesus’ people share in the inheritance that was promised to Abraham, to Jacob, and to David; and how God’s indwelling Spirit is the downpayment and guarantee of that inheritance. And we heard that this inheritance is God’s new creation. That long run-on sentence was sort of Paul’s opening shout of praise to God for what he’s done.
Starting with Chapter 2, Paul’s going to use the rest of the letter to unpack this great shout of praise, to preach it, and to explain how it applies to us—how it shapes the church. But first, there’s this prayer. Paul prays that his brothers and sisters in Ephesus will really and truly hear this message, that they’ll take it to heart, and that they will be transformed by it. In short: Paul’s told them about the promised inheritance they have as the Messiah’s people, now he prays that the knowledge of that inheritance will transform them.
Before we get into Paul’s prayer, there are three Old Testament passages we need to be familiar with, because they’re what give shape to Paul’s vision of the Messiah and the church. The first is Psalm 110. Psalm 110 is one of those Old Testament passages it’s worth getting into your memory, because it echoes so powerfully throughout the whole New Testament. It is, far and away, the most quoted Old Testament passage in the New. This is the psalm, written by King David, that begins with the words, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” When the first Christians wanted to stress that Jesus isn’t just Saviour, but that he’s even more importantly Lord of all, the King of kings, this was their favourite Old Testament passage.
And then there’s Psalm 8. It’s a close second behind Psalm 110. It’s the psalm that begins, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” For Paul writing to the Ephesians, the really important part begins in verse 4, where David praises God for what he has made us as human beings. David sings, “What is man that you are mindful of him?…You have made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honour. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet…O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” The psalm echoes Genesis and God’s creation of human beings as his image bearers. That means to be the priests and stewards of his garden-temple. That’s what we were created to be and it’s the vocation we rejected when we, instead, chose sin—to try to be gods ourselves. In Paul’s day many of the Jews saw not only the human vocation in Psalm 8, but they saw it as a prophecy of the Messiah who would be the truly human one—a new Adam who will get it right this time; a Messiah whom, according to Psalm 110, God would raise to his right hand to reign until he’s put all his enemies under his feet.
And then, what does the Messiah’s victory look like? Isaiah, especially chapter 11, was a favourite of the early Christians. “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.” So Isaiah is talking about the king who will arise from the line of David. “And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” That’s the Messiah. And his kingdom? It should sound familiar: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat…the lion shall eat straw like an ox…and a little child shall lead them.”
This was the new world that Israel expected the Messiah, the great King from the line of David, this is what they expected him to usher in. God’s Spirit would rest on him—That sounds like what happened at Jesus’ baptism, doesn’t it?—and through his wisdom and understanding, his counsel and power, his knowledge and the fear of the Lord, he will set this broken world to rights. He will bring God’s justice to warring nations and hurting people. Peace will reign and the knowledge of God’s glory will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. This was an incredibly important passage for Paul, because when Paul looked at the little churches that were popping up all over the Greco-Roman world, in pagan cities, right under Caesar’s nose, challenging the old gods, and most importantly bringing Jews and gentiles together in one family in the Messiah, Paul saw with absolute clarity the beginnings of the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy. Through the Messiah, in these churches where Jews and gentiles were becoming one, where they were worshipping together the God of Israel across their social, cultural, and ethnic boundaries, the wolf and the lamb were lying down together at peace. In them, Paul saw a foretaste of what’s to come.
Putting all these layers together, we can sum up what the Messiah was to be and do in four points. Israel expected the Messiah (1) to be the King who would defeat the powers of evil; (2) the King who would rescue God’s people from their bondage to those evil powers; (3) the King who would build a temple for God to dwell in; and (4) the King who would bring God’s justice or righteousness and his peace to the whole world. That’s the Messiah. And in doing those things, Jesus inaugurates the new creation.
But Paul also recognised that the Church, that we who are united with the Messiah by faith share in that messianic ministry begun by Jesus. Filled with God’s Spirit, we are the temple Jesus built. And we confront the powers with his victory and proclaim the liberating gospel to those in bondage. We live out God’s justice and peace. And most importantly in this passage here: As a people full of the knowledge of God and his purposes for creation, we anticipate that day when the whole earth will be full of “knowing-God” as the waters cover the sea. The church is the beginning of God’s new creation in the midst of the old.
So now we’re ready to understand Paul’s prayer. It begins at verse 15: “Because of all this and because having heard of your faithfulness to the Lord Jesus, and that you show love to all God’s saints, I never stop giving thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.”
Now, they weren’t perfect Christians. No one ever is. They weren’t a perfect church. No such thing exists this side of eternity. But Paul had lived with these people. He’d got to know them. When he was away from them, he heard what other visitors had to say about them. And he knew that, however imperfectly, they were faithful to the Lord Jesus. Faithful. What does that mean? It means not just believing the right things about Jesus, but more importantly, committing yourself to him. That’s probably why Paul calls him “Lord Jesus” here. You can believe all the true things about Jesus you want, but what makes a Christian is when you give your loyalty, your allegiance to Jesus as creation’s true Lord. When we repent and turn away from our sins and from our selfishness, when we stop trying to play at being gods and to write our stories for ourselves, and instead choose to live for him and to live in hope of his kingdom, his new creation, and not just as some thing in the distant future, but something we are beginning to live out here and now, Brothers and Sisters, that’s what a Christian is. Paul saw these men and women doing that. He saw how much it cost them. They were shunned by their families because they’d stopped worshipping the old gods; losing their jobs, because their guilds kicked them out for the same reason; their fellow citizens considered them disloyal for not taking part in the civil religion of Ephesus and of Caesar; just waiting to take the blame for bringing down the wrath of the gods on the city should some natural disaster strike. Faith in Jesus cost them something. It cost a lot. And Paul saw that they were willing to count that cost. And, too, he saw their love for each other and for their brothers and sisters struggling in other places. Poor as they were, they sent money to the even poorer Christians in Jerusalem. They supported and cared for each other like family. However imperfect their faith may have been, in them Paul saw clear evidence of the gospel’s power at work. And he prayed for that power to continue to work in them
So he goes on in verse 16. Here are the specifics of that prayer: “I pray that the God of Messiah Jesus our Lord, the Father of glory, would give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened. Then you will know what the hope is that goes with God’s call; you will know the wealth of the glory of his inheritance in the saints; and you will know the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who are faithful, according to the working of his strength and power.”
Paul longs for them to be enlightened by the Spirit. Wisdom and revelation. Here’s what Paul means. Wisdom and revelation are two facets of the same thing. When you hear “wisdom” think of the book of Proverbs. Wisdom is what you need if you want to truly live as a human being according to God’s design. But thanks to King Solomon as the paragon of wisdom in Israel, wisdom is also a royal thing associated with kings. Now remember Isaiah 11. This is why Isaiah described the coming messianic king, the one who is truly human, the new Adam, Isaiah describes him as perfectly wise. And Paul knows that the people who are in the Messiah, share in that wisdom, that “revelation”. Think of “revelation” as “insight” into God’s design for living. This broken world sorely lacks that wisdom and that insight, but it is ours in Jesus the Messiah. In him we have the knowledge of God that the world lacks, the knowledge that will one day fill the earth. The knowledge that, as the church lives it out in daily life, acts as the salt of the earth, as light in the darkness, that gives everyone around a anticipatory glimpse of creation set to rights. Paul prays that their hearts will be opened to this knowledge. He saw it happening already in their faith and in their love for each other, but he prayed that the Spirit would open their hearts more and more to the knowledge of God. That the Spirit would clear away the fog that surrounds us. Our world has its own ideas about wisdom—and they’re often wrong. Think of how the world tells us to think about ourselves, our relationships, about work and vocation, about sex and money and power, about God. All very different from what God, in his wisdom, says about all those things. As Jesus’ people we need to take our cues and to glean our wisdom from God and from the scriptures, not the world, not worldly philosophies, not TV or movies, not social media, not motivational speakers, but from God. As C. S. Lewis astutely pointed out in The Screwtape Letters, the devil doesn’t need to put wrong ideas into people’s heads; he just needs to keep the true ones out. Brothers and Sisters, we need the eyes of our hearts opened to know God.
And Paul says here that this knowledge primarily consists of three things. These all come from that picture of the Messiah in Isaiah 11. Paul wants us to know the hope, the inheritance, and the power. The hope is for Jesus’ victory at the cross and the empty tomb to change the whole world, bit by bit, here and there, wherever it’s needed, to bring creation under the rule of the Messiah. The inheritance is the promise that the Messiah will inherit and will rule the nations—every square inch of creation. And I think we often forget, but this shapes the mission of the church. This is our vocation. This is our way today of being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth and wherever we go we bring the power of the gospel, the reign of the Messiah, and the reconciling peace of his kingdom.
And the power. Brothers and Sisters, we forget the power of the gospel. Verses 19 and 20 are a little difficult to translate into English because of the way Paul heaps up the words for power. He literally says something like, “that you may know what is the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe according to the energy of the might of his strength, which he worked out in the Messiah.” Greatness, power, energy, might, strength. Rooted in the resurrection of Jesus. The living God raised Jesus from the dead. The greatest display of his power in history. It went out like a shockwave, pushing away the great stone from the tomb, and reverberating through creation. New creation bursting into the old. And, Brothers and Sisters, the church—we—are the working model of that new creation, of that power that is transforming the world as the good news of Jesus goes out and continues to reverberate through creation.
But there’s more to it than just Jesus’ resurrection. Remember that “Messiah” means the “anointed King”. Jesus is Lord. That’s a big part of this picture too. So Paul goes on in verse 20: “This is the power at work in the Messiah when God raised him from the dead and sat him at his right hand in the heavenlies, above all rule and authority and power and lordship, and above every name that is invoked, both in the present age and also in the age to come. Yes, God has ‘put all things under his feet,’ and has given him to the church as the head over all. The church is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all in all.”
Don’t forget Psalm 110. There’s an echo here of Daniel 7, too. The Messiah has been raised to sit at God’s right hand—to his throne as creation’s true Lord. And the practical thing that means for the church is that no matter how things may look from our perspective here, Jesus sits above every authority, every CEO, every billionaire, every ruler, every king. There is no name on earth that anyone can invoke that will trump the name of Jesus. This was a jab at Caesar, whose cult was especially prominent in Ephesus, but it applies just as much to the kings and power-brokers of our own day. Think of the names in the news. Think of all the rivalries in business or in politics or in culture. Brothers and Sisters, Jesus outranks them all. And in this lies our vocation as the people of the Messiah. A people, Paul says here, who is Jesus’ own body. This sovereign power—a power rooted on the one hand in God’s power and glory and in the other in the love, mercy, and humility Jesus puts on display at the cross—this sovereign power is our vocation. God created Adam and Eve to bear his image—to be good and wise stewards of his creation. Remember we saw that in Psalm 8. Paul’s prayer here is that we would recognise that Jesus is that truly good and wise human, now enthroned at God’s right hand and that through the gospel he is creating a people—you and me—to learn that godly wisdom, to learn that godly knowledge, and to share in his godly rule. God has made Jesus the head of the church so that the church can now act, now live out that delegated authority as his body. We’re called to be a community that embodies Psalm 110 and Psalm 8 and Isaiah 11. Brothers and Sisters, the church is the fullness of the one who fills all in all. We are God’s new creation, however small, however imperfect, however incomplete at the present, but still God’s new creation in the midst of the old, full of light and life and gospel power and authority, proclaiming the Lord Jesus and his kingdom and causing that Easter shockwave to continue to reverberate through creation until the knowledge of God’s glory fills the earth as the waters cover the sea.
And if that seems impossible, if it seems ridiculous, if it seems overwhelming, if makes you afraid, think how it must have seemed to the people in those little churches around Ephesus in a.d. 50. A handful of churches, each with ten or fifteen or maybe thirty people. Mostly poor, more women than men, more slaves than freemen. They lived for Jesus in the midst of a hostile world permeated through and through with paganism. Everyone thought they were weird and crazy, impious and disloyal. In not too many years some of them would be rounded up, arrested, tortured, sent to the arena to be eaten by lions because of their faith in Jesus. The emperor would burn others alive as human torches to light his garden parties. These little churches had no programmes. No Sunday school or youth group. No bands or fog machines. No ad campaigns. They didn’t even have their own buildings. They just studied and preached God’s word, they loved and cared for each other, and they taught the world what grace and mercy and true holiness looks like. They had the good news about Jesus, crucified and risen, and in that was a power that outshone everything. Imagine how ridiculous and impossible it might have seemed to them: this idea that Jesus is Lord and that the knowledge of God will one day fill the earth. And then drop them into a modern-day city. I found myself thinking of the view we had from the US Consulate in Montreal, up on the twentieth floor of a skyscraper, looking out over the city and the steeples every few blocks—more than I could count, as far as the eye could see. Even in little woefully unchurched Courtenay, you don’t have to walk very far in any direction to find a church. Brothers and Sisters, the power of the gospel is real. Even though there’s so much more work to do, just look at how the gospel has transformed the world since the days Paul wrote to those little churches in Ephesus. Jesus really is Lord and the fact that you and I are here today to worship the God of Israel instead of worshipping whatever pagan God’s our ancestors worshipped is proof of that power. When someone tells me, “I’m leaving, this church is too small,” I pray Paul’s prayer here all the more for them and I pray it for all of you and for myself: that we would be full of the knowledge of God and the power of the gospel and that we would trust it and have faith in what God has promised it will accomplish through us. The proof of Jesus’ reign and the power of the gospel is all around us. May he open the eyes of our hearts to see it.
Let’s pray: Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah, open the eyes of our hearts to the power of the knowledge of you. Remind us of our calling in Jesus and the hope and inheritance we have in him. Give us the faith and courage to be the people you have made us, to be the vanguard of your new creation as we live and proclaim your good news. Give us a passion to see the knowledge of your glory covering the earth as the waters cover the sea. Make us faithful stewards, we ask through Jesus our Lord we pray. Amen.