“Thanking God for Security” – Ephesians 3:14-21

“Thanking God for Security” – Ephesians 3:14-21

There are few things more comforting than a loving hug. When we are afraid, or when we are grieving, when we are tired, when we’ve had a bad day, or when we are experiencing wonderful joy, a hug will always fill the need.

A hug is a source of security, of belonging and of empathy. We need this in our lives. We need to know that someone understands. We need to know that someone cares and we need to know that there is always a safe place we can go, whether that place is to find spiritual and emotional nourishment, or a place to reflect and decompress, or just a place to be ourselves. In one of my favorite passages of Scripture, God tells us that “He tends His flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart; He gently leads those that have young” (Isaiah 40:11). This picture is of the security we find in God. He is like our shepherd, tending to our needs and providing us the security we need in an uncertain and sometimes unforgiving world.

In this season of Thanksgiving, we need to remember the security that God provides us through His Son Jesus Christ. Knowing we rest in the presence of God through Christ and that the Father dwells with us in the Holy Spirit gives us a sense of assurance and safety. As Jesus tells us in John 10:29-30, “My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

In today’s passage, Paul reminds us what it means to be secure in God through Christ, and reminds us why we are people who give thanks.

Background

In this passage, Paul comes to the mid-point of his letter. He has begun with a hymn of praise about the spiritual blessings we receive in Christ (“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing” [1:3]), followed by a prayer of thanksgiving for the Ephesians (“For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers’ [1:15-16]). He reminds them in Chapter 2 that they are made alive in Christ and brought into unity in Christ, stating, “For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in His flesh the law with its commandments and regulations His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross” (2:14-16).

Paul begins Chapter 3 with the intention of moving into a prayer of thanksgiving for our security in Christ, but he becomes distracted and describes the ministry given him by God. Having concluded his brief chasing of a rabbit, Paul returns to what he meant to say with “for this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles” (3:1). As we look at this passage, we see the truth of the passage in this way:

Central Truth: We thank God the security He gives us.

We are secure in Christ because:

1. Christ lives in our hearts through the Spirit (14-17a)

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom His whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

When we read the Bible, there are times we need to distinguish between God’s rules and our practices. For instance, the Ten Commandments are hard and fast rules for living out our relationship with God and others, as is the Golden Rule. However, practices are things that can change over time.

One such practice that has changed is the way in which we pray. It was the Jewish practice to stand as they prayed, as Jesus mentions in the Sermon on the Mount. However, it is our custom, our practice, to kneel when we pray. The reason we changed from standing to kneeling is from the examples we see in the Bible. Jesus knelt in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the parable of the Pharisee and the sinner praying to God, it is the one who leaves forgiven that was kneeling in prayer before God. Solomon knelt at the consecration of the Temple. Kneeling represents a deep conviction or emotion involved in the specific prayer.

It is with this idea in mind that Paul says he kneels before the Father. Not wanting to just express the depth of his emotion in this prayer, Paul also wants us to understand that our relationship with God is as children to a Father. He wants us to understand that the idea of God as Father did not originate with us, but it was given to us by Christ Himself—“When you pray, say, ‘Our Father, who is in heaven. . .’”. John reminds us that to those who believe, we are given the right to become sons of God because God makes us born into His family.

Having expressed the emotion and the relationship of the prayer, Paul then expresses the purpose of his prayer. He wants us to be secure in the strength of our faith made possible by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Here Paul invokes not just the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, but he also expresses the hope that Christ will dwell in our hearts through faith. Jesus tells us in John that we will abide in Him, and He will abide in the Father and He will abide in us. There is a communion between us, God and Jesus made possible by the gift of the Holy Spirit living in us, reminding us of what Jesus said. He makes known the thoughts of God the Father and God the Son to us.

It is because the Holy Spirit lives in us that we can be secure in our faith, and for this we give thanks to the God who alone makes it all possible.

2. We are rooted and established in love (17b-19)

And I pray that you being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

The Bible is constantly in conflict with the ways of the world. The world desires power, and it desires power in order to control things. A ruler who has absolute power has the ability to dictate the way his or her country is run and how it is run. The uses his power to impose his or her will on the company and the employees.

The Bible, on the other hand, wants to use power differently. Jesus told His disciples, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25-28).

Paul continues his prayer, asking that God grant his readers power. This is a power that is rooted and established in love. Paul states that he knows his readers are centered on Christ, and this is evidence that they are secured in Him through the love that comes from God the Father to His children, the Father who imparts this relationship to us by His will and power.

Having been rooted in love, then, Paul wants the power to come to the readers, but this isn’t a power that is like Gentile power. Instead, it is the power to discern. It could be argued that Paul is actually asking for wisdom, but he uses the word power. The power is to be able to grasp the vastness of Christ’s love for us. As we come to a greater awareness of the love that comes to us from the Father through the Son, we find a greater security and a greater power. This power comes not from our ability, but from our awareness of what God is able to do through us as we rely on the Spirit to not only guide us but to live through us.

As we come to this great power of knowledge of the vastness of God’s love, we will be filled with God’s wondrous grace and goodness. The God who is love wants to pour that love over us and in us, and as that love flows in and over us, it inevitably will flow through us to the world around us. And our love for the Father, the Son and the Spirit will overflow to giving praise and thanksgiving who is the source of our power, our love and our awareness.

We give thanks to God as He secures us in His knowledge and His power.

3. God’s power is at work in us (20-21)

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

My parents met on a blind date. My mother and her older sister, Hazy, were visiting their mother’s cousin in El Paso. Cousin Jessie didn’t have any children of her own, so she turned to one of her friends and asked if her son and his best friend would like to escort these two young ladies around for a night on the town. The son turned out to be my uncle Mickey, and his best friend was my dad. The dates worked out. Uncle Mickey married Aunt Hazy, and of course, Dad married Mom.

I heard this story for all my life. Even as I got older and began to date, I never thought to ask Mom and Dad what was going through their minds when they were asked to go on a blind date. It never occurred to me to ask that until after Uncle Mickey died. I did ask Aunt Hazy, but she clearly didn’t want to talk about it in depth, so I never really heard the story from one of the original cast of characters.

Sometimes, we miss opportunities because we never realize the potential that is there for us to tap into, if only we will ask.

Paul shares this truth with us in these verses. He describes God as, “. . . Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.” We come to God asking Him to do what we consider great things, but we never stop to think about Who and What God really is. It’s not that we don’t want to, but we can’t really fathom the greatness of God. Our finite minds are limited to understand an infinite God.

We cannot “out ask” God. And when we do ask God, we may not be asking for the right reasons. James reminds us, “You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures” (James 4:2b-3). Jesus tells us that we can have whatever we ask, as long as we ask in Jesus’ name. To ask in Jesus’ name, though, means that our prayer is one that is surrendered to the will of God. We come in submission to the One who died for us, knowing He is Lord of our lives. We ask as He directs us.

Paul tells us in this passage that once we come to this awareness, and once we begin to grasp the fullness not just of God’s love, but His power and His desire to work through us, we will inevitably fall on our knees before God and give glory, praise and thanks to Him. He will be glorified through us and His church for all generations.

We thank God because His power is at work in us.

Conclusion

Can you imagine all that can be awaits us if we really surrender ourselves to the Father? If we really embraced the Lordship of Christ, and if we really let the Holy Spirit lead us? We can, but it all begins with a grateful heart that gives itself to Him with praise and thanksgiving.

Are you ready to make that commitment?