The following is a recording of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. For more information, visit gpts.edu. I bow my knees to the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." This is the Word of the Lord. Please be seated. The sentence that we just read is one long sentence. If you're a Greek student, you can see that if you have your Greek New Testament. It's one long sentence in Greek, and it reminds us of the most famous long run-on sentence in all the Pauline Corpus in Ephesians 1. But what you need to recognize, and I hope you'll begin to grab hold of these texts, especially in the New Testament, This is a prayer, and it's a prayer specifically with four requests. And what I want us to do this morning is look at those requests. We'll get to them very quickly, but a few preliminary things you should notice about this prayer. First of all, it's Trinitarian. Look at it in verse 14. You see there the Father and the Son are both mentioned in verse 14, and then the Spirit in verse 16. Christian prayer is not Unitarian. Paul is modeling right practice for us in prayer, showing us that the whole of the Godhead is being called to do something for the Christian, and you'll see that specifically in this text. You'll also notice that this prayer is not about Paul's physical state, or the physical state of his ears, or either one of their economic condition. This prayer that you see, look at it very carefully, is general. It therefore can be used in any century by any Christian at any time. It's appropriate in India or in Greenville. It's always appropriate. Paul, by the way, is praying it from prison. Don't you find it interesting that Paul doesn't say, would y'all pray for me that I get out of this? That's not what he's praying. This prayer, notice as well, is for others. Paul seeks the highest gifts of God on behalf of others. It's interesting in Paul's prayers all through his epistles, Paul expresses his intercession for others and his thanksgiving for them on 42 occasions. If you're going to be shaped by the ministry and especially the prayer life of Paul, what it will do is it will drive you to have an intercessory ministry. Two times in his letters, praise for others. That in itself, the sheer numerics of that ought to weigh heavy upon you. If you don't already have a vibrant intercessory ministry, then you've missed the point of much of Paul's pastoral ministry. Now let me remind us as we go into this text. It's a text about prayer. And you need this text. You need this exposition today. Because you don't know how to pray naturally. You don't come out of the womb knowing how to pray. In fact, just like your relationship with the Word, that you and I come out of the womb suppressing the Word in unrighteousness, we come out of the womb running from communication with God. When a man is converted, he has to learn how to pray. This is why the disciples pled so fervently with Jesus, Lord, teach us to pray. Well perhaps many of you, I would dare say most of you, struggle in the foundational discipline of prayer. And today what we're going to see is an important model of how to pray from the pen of the apostle. Now look at verse 14 and how Paul begins. When Paul begins with, for this reason, the careful interpreter wants to know For what reason? What is he basing this on? And the rationale for the prayer, if you know anything, if you've read through Ephesians once, you know this, that Ephesians 1 through 3 is the indicative. It's all God has done for us. And Ephesians 4, 5, and 6 is the imperative. Those are broad categories, but they fit. But the rationale for this prayer that Paul is saying is when he says in verse 14, for this reason, He's saying the rationale for this prayer is all of the indicative, everything that has been stated in Ephesians 1-3, God's predestination and election of the redeemed, His redemptive work through Christ, His adoption of them, His giving them every spiritual blessing, His sending the Holy Spirit to indwell them, His drawing them who were formerly far off, drawing them near, and doing all of this by free grace. And so because of all of that, Paul says, for that reason, for everything that's come before in Ephesians 1 through 3, I'm going to teach you how to pray. Now, notice before we get into the four requests, look at the object of Paul's prayer in verse 14 and 15. And notice as well, When Paul enters into prayer, he does so humbly. Prayer is always about humility. This is why Paul says he's coming to God on his knees. That's always the proper posture for prayer. Now notice as well in verse 14, the object of prayer, and I would be glad to have this lengthy discussion with you, the object for prayer is normally not exclusively, normally the first person of the Trinity. Paul has already asserted this already in Ephesians 2 and Ephesians 3. But in calling upon the Father, which is what Paul does here in verse 14, we as believers, as children of the Heavenly Father, are doing what Jesus commanded us in Matthew 6 and 9 in the Lord's Prayer. But notice how Paul talks about prayer in verse 14 and 15. He talks about it as a family activity, as the activity of those who've been adopted by a father. All people, of course, are not part of this family. Indeed, all men are by nature hell-bound and they're in a different family. Paul's already talked about that in Ephesians 2. But God becomes the Father of some whom He adopts and brings into His family. This is gloriously expounded in Ephesians 2. But this family that we're a part of, I hope you think this way, this family has members in heaven, Adam, Abraham, my granddad, John Calvin, they're known as the church triumphant. And this family has members on earth, you and I, the church militant. But we are still in the same family. This is our primary identification. And you know how our culture is into identifying as fictional characters. You know how this works, don't you? This is very popular with our culture. So you have white people who identify as black men, men who identify as women, Two men who identify as a husband and wife. And it's all fictional in nature. It's all irrational. It's a desire to subvert and mock God's holy design. But when Paul says, look at this here in verse 14 and 15. When Paul says to believers, you are part of a family. that is worldwide and it has members in heaven. This is not irrational fiction or a desire to subvert God's design. This is God's plan. This is your family. You have, let me say this to you over and over again, you have more ties today to a poor, illiterate Ugandan woman who is trusting in Christ alone, or a young Guatemalan man who is converted, then you do your unregenerate next-door neighbor who went to the same university and speaks the same language and drives the same kind of car and likes the same kind of cuisine. Just because you live by them and have all of these other affinities, it does not make you family in any meaningful sense. Here's what makes you family. Conversion. Regeneration. adoption. And that's what Paul says in verse 15 when he's talking about the whole family in heaven and earth. Never forget where God says your loyalties lie. Your family are those who join you in bowing the knee to the Father in the name of Christ. Your family are those who have been regenerated by the same Holy Spirit, justified by the righteousness of Christ. Your family are those who love the Word in prayer and have vital union with Christ. Your family are those people who are partakers of the covenant of grace and they bear the family likeness. Holiness. That's the family likeness. Don't get hung up on black or white, Guatemalan language or Spanish or English. Your family are all those who bow the knee to the Father. Well, look at the four requests. And what I want to do is I want to push you on this. I want to ask you over and over again this morning as we delve into this text. Are these the requests that you find yourself praying? Because if not, I would say to you very carefully, very pastorally, your praying may not be biblical. Your praying may be civil religion or cultural. It may be something other than what the scriptures teach. I'll just say as an aside, as a book reference, Don Carson's book, A Call to Spiritual Reformation, picked it up 15 years ago, it had a transformational effect on me. where Carson goes through the prayers of Paul, and I kept saying over and over again, my goodness, this is not how I pray. I'm not praying like Paul prays, I'm praying like the culture prays, and the culture doesn't pray very biblically. And so what I want to push you to do, for your sake and then for your congregation's sake, where God will call you, is for you to conform your prayers, the very request, the subject of them, to the prayers we see in the New Testament, and then train your congregation to do the same thing. First request, look at verse 16. The first request Paul prays for is the strength of the Holy Spirit. I think of counseling situations I've had recently in the last two weeks. A single woman in our congregation who was asked out by an unbelieving man and because she's weak she enters into a relationship with him knowing that it's wrong. Or a young man that I spent time with yesterday who just can't seem to overcome pornography. Why? He's weak. What both of these people needed was power and resolve, determination to do the right thing, the biblical thing, the holy thing, the lawful thing, no matter how painful or how difficult. And we know it's the person of the Holy Spirit who gives the Christian power. We know that, right? Remember what Jesus said in Acts 1-8 just before His ascension, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Look at verse 16. What is it that Paul's praying for them? He's praying for them to be strengthened with might through His Spirit. Why would you not pray this for self and for others? Do you think that one can live the Christian life without the Spirit's power? Now notice the sphere of this strengthening. Look carefully at verse 16. It's in the inner man. about externals? Well, certainly he raises money for the poor saints in Jerusalem so they can have food and clothing because with that, with food and clothing, we can be content, Paul tells us. But his concern largely is for the souls of his sheep, for the inner man. And he reinforces this by, for example, telling Timothy that bodily exercise only profits a little. We know, according to Paul, that our outward man is wasting away and growing weaker and weaker, but the inner man, the soul, that is what Paul prays is strengthened. Look at verse 16. Look for the realm that he prays for strengthening. The inner man. And so that means the mind, the will, and the emotions. The soul. So Paul's praying for strengthening in the mind that his people would mortify false and ungodly thoughts. He's praying for strengthening in the will that they would mortify wrong choices and choose the right, the good, the true, the beautiful, the holy. He's praying for strengthening of the emotions that his people would love what God loves and hate what God hates. Only God by His indwelling Holy Spirit can change the inner man. So Paul, look at verse 16. This is the first request of four. Paul is praying that the third person of the Trinity will so work in these Ephesian Christians. that they'll be more zealous in obedience, in withstanding temptation, in mortifying sin, in pursuing holiness, in consistent in prayer, overcoming the world. Paul is praying, and I love this phrase in verse 16, and it just conjures up to me some of the, you'll see why I snicker at this phrase, the richest pictures I can think of, in verse 16. Paul is praying that God will dip into his wealth, and His divine resources. And He'll supply these believers out of His massive wealth. He'll supply them with might. How will God, according to verse 16, how will He meet the believers' needs? According to His riches in glory. His riches. Here's what they are. Here's His bank account. The aggregate wealth of the universe and the galaxies are His. So necessary to praying biblically and praying this first request is grasping this. Our God is rich. It is failure, it's foolishness to come to a pauper with requests, no matter how passionate or how strong our appeals, because their pockets are empty. But when we are coming to God, we're coming to the one of whom it is said in Romans 11, of him, to him, and through him are all things. That's the right person to go to with the request. He's rich. So let me ask you, Do you need the strength of the Holy Spirit to resist sin and to pursue godliness? Of course you do. It doesn't matter if you're 12 years old and newly converted or 85 years old and walked with God for 70 years. You need strength. So why do we piddle about in our prayer times and ask, Lord, I want to pray for my ingrown toenail. My friends, our outer man is wasting away. It's going to grow weaker. It's intended to grow weaker. But your inner man, look at verse 16, your inner man, you can plead with God for strength there and He will answer out of His glorious riches. Second request, look at it there in verse 17. Notice the four requests, and what I'm gonna challenge you to do is in your closet, in your family worship, in your prayer meetings, that you discipline yourself, maybe for the next couple weeks and say, I'm going to set aside all these other cultural models and cliches that I've heard, and I'm going to rigorously attempt to mold my praying to these four requests, and therefore know I'm standing on the solid rock of Scripture. Second request, look at it in verse 17. that Christ would dwell in the believer. That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Jesus said in John 14 in the Upper Room Discourse, if anyone loves me, he'll keep my word and my Father will love him. And then listen to this promise. We will come to him and make our home with him. Christ dwells in our hearts by His Holy Spirit. Christ by the Spirit takes up residence. And you know what He finds when He takes up residence? he finds an absolute awful mess. Sandy and I, when we got married 39 and a half years ago, we moved into a home that was all we could afford. And so, of course, it was dilapidated. And when we moved into that home that barely kept from being condemned, when we moved into that home, it had horrible wallpaper, layers of it. It had trash all through the house. It had carpet stains that were of indeterminable origin. And we had to exert a lot of effort just to make it livable. That's what Christ does when He comes and dwells in our hearts by His Spirit. He cleans out this room and He cleans up that dark closet and He makes them presentable. He sets about turning this residence into a place that's appropriate for Him. He purifies. He cleanses. He sanctifies. He repairs. He renews. He drives out by His Spirit evil patterns and habits. He humbles the believer and lowers them. He conforms them to Himself. He gives them hope. If your view of grace and salvation is that when Christ by His Spirit saves you and comes to dwell, but then He's passive and does nothing, you have sadly misunderstood the nature of salvation. Because when Christ comes in and He's dwelling in your heart by faith, which is what Paul prays here in verse 17, when Christ comes in and He's dwelling in your heart by faith, He will be active. He will be moving you to obedience to His command, He'll be producing fruit, and He will be conforming you to His image. Now notice what the emphasis of Paul's prayer is. This is the second request in verse 17. It's that Christ would keep dwelling in their hearts. The word dwell means a permanent abode, not a casual visit. What Paul is praying for is permanence of abode. Third request. Look at verse 17 through 19. And this really, this third request, is the center. It's the heartbeat of Paul's petition for the Ephesian church. And it begins with an acknowledgment that the believers in Ephesus are rooted and grounded in love. Paul uses two different metaphors here. Notice how he mixes his metaphors. One is botanical. The other is architectural. So the botanical one is he says that Christ's love is the soil. You're rooted. Christ's love is the soil in which believers are planted and will grow. And then the second is architectural, that Christ's love is the foundation. In other words, here's where you're grounded and the rest of your Christian life is built on the love of God. But notice what Paul is praying. I want you to really be able to untangle these clauses and get in verse 18 and 19, what is it that Paul is praying? He is praying for a cognitive grasp of the love of Christ. Do you see it in verse 18 and 19? He says in verse 18, he's praying that these Christians may be able to comprehend. And then again in verse 19, that they would know. Both of these are cognitive words. Paul is saying, I'm praying with such fervency that the people in Ephesus would be able to wrap their head around this truth, the love of Christ. Now you know what the problem with comprehending and grasping the love of Christ for believers is? Well, it's problematic. Because first of all, there's the problem of the antiquity of Christ's love. grasping that, because He loved you before the foundation of the world. He had a deep affection for you long before He spoke the world into being on those six days. And then there's another problem. There's the largesse of Christ's love. How can you begin to number all the proofs of His love? It would wear out the hand of an angel to list them all. Think of, by His great love, the number of sins He's pardoned just for you. I meditate on this sometimes of how many sins of mine Christ has pardoned. It's in the tens. It's in the hundreds of thousands. It's more. And think of by His love how many of the mercies and blessings that have flowed to you. But there's still another problem. And that is we don't know how to think about constancy. But that's another one of the mark of Christ's love is constancy. No length of time. no distance of place, no change of condition in us can make Him love us any less. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. His love for you is immutable. Our love for one another and for our wives and for God runs hot and cold, moody and fickle, but not Christ. His love is steady. It's unending. It's uninterruptible. And then think of another problem with grasping and cognitively comprehending His love. And that is the transcendence of His love. We have nothing else to compare it to. It's hard for us to grasp because there's nothing to compare the love of Christ to. Oh, we can try. We can look in Scripture and we can say, well, Christ's love for us is like the love between Jonathan and David times a million. Or the love of Christ for us is like Jacob's love for Rachel times 10,000. Christ's love for us is like my love for my newborn child times a billion. Husbands, every year at Valentine's Day, you may try to make the case that your love for your wife is the greatest thing ever. You might even buy her chocolate and candies and say, look, this is proof how much I love you. But when you place your love on the scale next to Christ's love for the elect, yours is non-existent. Paul engages in a petition for the Ephesian Christians as well. Look what he says in verse 18 and 19. That they'll grasp the dimensions of Christ's love in all its immensity and vastness. So he thinks about width. Wide enough to reach from Estonia to Zimbabwe. In its length, long enough to stretch from eternity to eternity, knowing that you've been loved with an everlasting love. Its depth, deep enough to rescue men from sins, degradation, and even from the grip of Satan himself. Its height, that Christ's love is high enough to raise Jews and Gentiles to be seated with Christ in heavenly places. if I were to get a team of some of you this morning and send you out with these instructions. I want you to come back and report in a couple of weeks how wide, how long, how deep, and how high is the Pacific Ocean. Come back and report to me in a couple of weeks. When you came back, each one of the members of this team would say, I know a little bit about the vastness of this great body of water. But even if we put together all your reports, we couldn't map the immensity of the Pacific Ocean completely. Who can grasp a love so rich that it would compel Christ to leave the glory of heaven for the sufferings of earth, culminating in the greatest act of love ever known, the sacrificial death of a perfectly righteous man for wicked sinners. And note what Paul is praying for. Look at his prayer in verse 18. Paul is praying for ability. He says, I'm praying that you may be, here's the key word, able. Able to comprehend. Now you will never fathom Christ's love without the enlightening work of the Holy Spirit. The incarnation of the cross will all be foolishness unless the Spirit gives understanding. Now notice, and this is what makes this prayer even more astounding. Paul is praying that we may be able to do this corporately. Look at verse 18. that you do this with all the saints. Paul's not just praying for a stray individual here and there. He's praying for the whole congregation in Ephesus. That corporately they'll have a grasp of this. Paul isn't just praying that one really mature man will have a private revelation and an isolated, unique, ecstatic experience of Christ's love. No. He's praying that the body, the church, will collectively grasp this. that we, not I, that we will gain some maturity of understanding about the sacrificial substitutionary love of Jesus. Now here comes the funny part to me. Look at verse 19. Even as Paul prays, he adds the caveat that no believer will be able to grasp in an exhaustive fashion the love that Christ has for believers. That's why he says, it passes knowledge. So Paul immediately gives the caveat and says, I'm praying this for you but I know. I know that nobody will get there and grasp it. Then look at the fourth request. Fourth request in verse 19. That you may be filled with all the fullness of God. This is a staggering thought and we need to step back and be very careful in how we state this. This is where careful theology greatly assists us. And this is where the distinction between communicable and incommunicable attributes of God come in handy. Let me help you pass your licensure exam right now. As somebody who's been the chairman of exams committees in three presbyteries across the country, I can't tell you how many men have made shipwreck when I say to them, could you tell me five incommunicable and five communicable attributes and distinguish between them? And they whiff. And we say at that point, Why don't you come back in six months? So let me make a distinction and tell you how it applies here in verse 19 and help you so that you don't fail on this point. The incommunicable attributes of God are those that He does not share with His creatures. Think about them. Such as immutability, saying that God's nature doesn't change in any way. His essence has been, will be, always exactly the same. His omnipotence, that God has the power to do anything He desires. Or His omnipresence, that God is in all places and all dimensions simultaneously. Nothing in the universe exists outside the immediate presence of God. Or his omniscience, that God has perfect, complete knowledge. He never learns, nor does he forget. He knows all things that exist and all things that could have existed. He cannot grow in knowledge, wisdom, or understanding. Or his self-existence. I love the strand of God's attributes, His incommunicable attributes that make up that complex theologians call aseity. His self-existence, that God is not dependent upon anyone else for His existence. He's uncaused. The infinite being who's always existed and he's self-sufficient. That he needs nothing outside of himself to maintain his existence. Therefore, he doesn't need us to fill a void. Those are some of his incommunicable attributes that he doesn't share with the creatures. Then, and this is what Paul is referring to very carefully, are his communicable attributes. Those attributes which you and I can share to some small extent. Think, for example, of his justice. where God always does what is perfectly right according to the law, we don't behave so perfectly. But we can be by the empowering grace of the Spirit. we can be lawful, and in so doing, in a tiny way, we can reflect the perfect justice of God, or the love of God, where God perfectly expresses it through Christ, but because we're tainted by sin. All our expressions of love towards others will always be darkened, but we still, in the faint, dim way, can know that attribute. in our marriages, in our homes, in our churches. Or His mercy. God's mercy is that attribute where He doesn't give us what we deserve. We can exhibit mercy to others, though we'll always do it imperfectly and not so properly. Now, look at verse 19, the final and fourth request. Paul is not praying that his readers be infinite or omnipresent. He's not praying that they would take on the incommunicable attributes of God, but when he says he's praying that they be filled with all the fullness of God, he's praying that all his readers have all the communicable attributes of God in full measure. Long-suffering, love, joy, goodness. That's what he's praying. He's praying that his readers have all of God's character that they can have. What a glorious prayer to pray. So how do we apply this? Let me make several applications to you today. First of all, so many professing Christians, and maybe it's you, pray abysmally. They pray so poorly. It's not scriptural. Their prayers never rise above this. Health needs, doing well on a math test, praying for good weather and travel mercies. When I hear that, I just cringe. I'm thinking, are these people who have ever read the New Testament? Have they ever looked at Paul's prayers? Because the prayers of the New Testament soar higher and stretch further. If there is ever a time to heed the words of James, and not be hearers only, but also doers of the word, let me plead with you to begin intentionally, self-consciously implementing the models of prayer that we see in the New Testament. Start with the book of Ephesians, where you have several of these, and they're glorious, and to put off childish praying. to put off and to put on mature biblical praying. And I will tell you as men who are going to be pastors, most of you, your congregation will never rise above you. As goes the pastor, so goes the people. And what I've noticed is the Lord has been merciful to me to mature my praying. I hear echoes of that coming back in the prayers of my elders and in the prayers of my congregation. They will learn to pray from you. They have no other model. And so if you are weak and childish and driven by civil religion and cultural cliches, that's how your people will pray. The second application. Let me get real personal. Have you ever prayed, as Paul does, for another believer's spiritual strength and comprehension of God's love? When have you ever prayed for somebody and said, Lord, I'm pleading with you that they might get a glimpse of the height and breadth and depth and length of your love? Do you pray that way for your spouse? If not, you're not praying biblically. The takeaway of this sermon is pray biblically for others. That's the takeaway. That's what is, steal this prayer, make it your own. Ephesians 3 verse 14 and 19. I would say for those of you who are parents, this text not only teaches you how you should be praying for others in your congregation, it certainly is how you should be praying for your children. Isn't this what you want for your children? not for their outer man, for their popularity or their academic success, but for their inner man, that they're strong by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. How can you pray better than that for your children? Now let me ask you by way of application, why is this such a big deal to Paul? Why is it so important for him that believers comprehend the love of Christ? That they at least stretch their minds and meditate and give their cognitive abilities to grasping the love of Christ? Because he knows something. He knows when they do, that they will be infinitely more passionate and zealous in their worship. Because then they will be zealous to obey the one who has loved them so deeply. Let me close by saying, Paul's not praying for people who've never heard of the love of Christ. He taught them of the love of Christ. Remember, he was the church planter. He pastored these people. He instructed them. He's not praying for people who've never heard of the love of Christ. He's praying for believers. But he's praying that they will mature in their comprehension. You may have been in Christ for 20, 30, 40 years, but you and I, even as believers, have great need to deepen in our efforts to grasp the love of Jesus for sinners. That's what Paul is telling you. You have great need today to meditate on the love of Christ for sinners and be struck and smitten by that all over again today. Let's pray. Our Father, we ask for maturity in our praying and conformity to the holy pattern that you have modeled for us in your Word. We ask that you would deliver us from praying clichés, but instead grow us up. We pray for the congregations these men will serve, that they will so be enabled to disciple their flock, that they will pray well and with maturity and with power. All this we pray in the name of the one who loved us and gave himself for us, even Jesus. Amen. Thank you for watching this production of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. For more information, visit gpts.edu.