Trinity 16
Beloved. St. Paul wrote this letter to the Ephesians while he was the first time in Rome, under house arrest, on account of his preaching and confession of Jesus. The church, the Christians, in this city of Ephesus was especially dear to him. He had spent almost three years there. And now, while he was suffering this consequence of his faithfulness to the Lord, his heart was still directed toward his Christians, the congregations he founded. Now confined, St. Paul still remembers and is concerned for these congregations—and the congregation in Ephesus in particular. That’s why we read at the beginning of our text: So I ask you not to lose heart because of what I am suffering for you, because it is your glory. Here is his earnest plea to the congregation that the fact that he is imprisoned in Rome not be a hindrance to them in the faith. The very fact that he is under arrest on account of preaching the Gospel should not be a reason for them to doubt or to question the truth of what he had taught them. He pleads with them to hold fast to the doctrine he taught them—the doctrine of Jesus and His saving work—and not to stumble/ be offended by the sufferings he is going through; not to think that what he had taught them was false because he was suffering and imprisoned.
This is one way that the devil attacks Christians. He tries to get us to doubt our faith because we are suffering; here he tries to get the people to think that the truth of the Gospel that St. Paul here preached was wrong/ a lie because the very one who was preaching it was now under arrest. We are naturally attracted to the outward glory and so we can easily think that “might makes right”, that is, that the more followers a religion or thought has must be right; how easily we become disheartened when we see so few in church or how godless our society is increasingly becoming; or, when we see that we are suffering or going through some hardship, we easily fall prey to the notion that the devil so easily implants, that God is against us or that somehow maybe our faith is wrong.
The vital thing for us to remember is that we not…lose heart, not turn away from Christ and His holy doctrine, when we see how seemingly lowly and poorly His Church and His Christians are faring. Remember: precisely in lowliness and suffering, by the cross of suffering, Jesus brought about the salvation of the world; precisely by lowly and suffering apostles He brought the Gospel into all the world; precisely in the humble word, water, bread and wine Jesus still comes to His Christians to strengthen and keep us in the faith. We dare not look in the grand and glorious and expect to find Jesus there; we look to these lowly things and there Jesus is working mightily.
This is a spiritual struggle—just like these Christians in Ephesus were seeing St. Paul as a prisoner and then even losing heart that what he had taught was true and then others—teachers certainly much more glorious—were surely coming in teaching a different doctrine [1 Ti 1.3]. So what does St. Paul do for this congregation? He prays for them! Our text: For this reason I kneel before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the entire family in heaven and on earth receives its name. St. Paul prays for this congregation and every congregation, committing his prayers to God in confidence, expecting every good and help from Him.
And what was the content of St. Paul’s prayer? That according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
In the midst of St. Paul’s prayer—which was for the congregation in Ephesus and for all congregations down through the ages, even for us today—are those interesting words that we comprehend and know. That raises the question: How do I comprehend/ know the things of God? After all, it is certainly not by outward glory and circumstance—after all, St. Paul writes/ prays this while under arrest.
Long story short, we comprehend and know the things of God only because He reveals them to us. By His divine working and gift, He enlightens, illumines and transforms our intellect. To put it in other words, by ourselves/ left to ourselves we will never understand God and the things of God. It’s not as if given enough time and effort that we will on our own come to understand the things of God. St. Paul [Rm 11.33-34] writes: Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor? The point is clear: we cannot understand God and His ways. He is, after all, the holy, almighty and all wise God. He is the one who made us. A creature is never greater than its creator.
We also have another strike against us. Not only are we His creation, but we are sinners. Because of sin we do not know God and the things of God rightly. Sin clouds our mind; it turns it away from God the things of God. Elsewhere St. Paul puts it this way [1 Cor. 2.14]: The natural person [that is, all people as we come into the world] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned [that is, only through faith].
On its own, the human mind is finite. But, dear Christian, we have been given the Holy Spirit who has worked faith in our hearts and has given us a new mind and understanding. Again, elsewhere, St. Paul writes [Rm. 12.2]: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. By the work of the Holy Spirit, He has renewed/ restored our minds to the way of thinking He created them to have. Will we know/ understand everything of God and His ways? Hardly—for we are still His creatures with a finite mind! But we will begin to know God and His ways rightly. We will have strength to comprehend with all the saints… and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. God reveals Himself in His word. There we find the love of God for the sinner; there we see the cross of Christ; there we see the great mysteries of the faith like Jesus is one Person but true God and true man; there we see the great mystery of the Trinity—that God is one divine being but three Persons: Father, Son who also became true man, and Holy Spirit. There we see the great mysteries of the faith, like in the Blessed Sacrament Jesus giving us His very body and blood. There we hear of the resurrection of the body on the Last Day. And so many more!
These are great mysteries of the faith. We will not completely and fully understand them. We will still have questions and wonder about the how’s and why’s of so many things. God and the things of God are so great that they cannot possibly be fully known but God has revealed the great mysteries that He has and by the faith He gives us by the working of His Holy Spirit, He illumines and transforms our intellect so that we begin to comprehend them/ see how the different pieces of the puzzle fit together; but even though we know them, we cannot grasp them but simply receive them in the beautiful simplicity of faith.
This is the work of God! This is that great work of God St. Paul writes about in our text: that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being. Notice: God is the giver. He strengthens us with His Holy Spirit. Not only does He illumine and transform our intellect, that is, not only does He give us the gift of faith and create that new self/ the Christian/ our inner being in us but He continues to daily reveal Himself to us in His holy word as we make frequent and diligent use of it. The riches of his glory is the undiminished fullness of His revelation that He makes known to us in His word. The more that we Christians, with our renewed mind, diligently search out our Lord in where He reveals Himself—that is, in His holy word and sacrament, the more He reveals His glorious self to us. His strengthening grace must daily be poured into us, into our inner being. Daily spend time in God’s word, read Scripture and sound devotional books; place the holy crucifix before you and meditate on Jesus work for your salvation. Especially in church when you see the elements of bread and wine in front of you, ponder the great mystery of God becoming man and giving you His very body and blood; especially in church when you see the baptismal font, ponder the Lord’s washing away your sin, and uniting you with Jesus’ death and resurrection. As you ponder the fullness of God’s revelation, He is revealing Himself to you, illuminating and transforming your mind and strengthening you. We strive to understand but cannot grasp God and the things of God, so in humble faith we simply receive them.
But notice something else in our text. Not only do we in faith simply receive what God reveals, but we experience the great things of God; we experience His love and all His divine graces. By experiencing the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, [we are] filled with all the fullness of God. Our faith is not just “pie in the sky” philosophy but rooted in our daily lives in this sin contaminated world. To know God rightly, means that we experience Him as our dear loving heavenly Father who in Jesus, His Son, has brought about our forgiveness and salvation. We experience His love and work for us as we receive it in the absolution; as we receive Him in our mouths with the bread and wine. And we comprehend the things of God as He dwells in us. Our text: that according to the riches of his glory [the Father] may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 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. Notice—the Holy Triune God dwells in the Christian. This is called the mystical union. This is what Jesus talks about with the disciples as He promises [John 14.23]: If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. Through faith there is that blessed union. And where there is that blessed union there we 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. Again, left to ourselves we could never comprehend God and the things of God but He Himself is dwelling in us through faith, giving us His gifts of grace. And with Him in us, He is purifying our minds that we may know Him better and leading us in lives of love—greater love of Him and our neighbor. To be sure, we will never be perfect in faith and love in this life, but with the Lord in us, we know Him better as we experience Him in us. As St. Paul says of the Lord at the end of our text: 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... He gave us life and faith and so He can also strengthen and preserve faith, create all good in us and fill us with His gifts, virtues and powers and all this in communion with His church around the word and sacrament.
How do we comprehend God and the things of God? By ourselves we can’t; but only by His revelation of Himself with His divine gift illuminating and transforming our intellect and by His dwelling in us by faith do we receive them. To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.