This is the first recorded prayer of Paul for the Ephesians. Having heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus and their love for all of God’s people, Paul constantly thanked God for them and remembered them in his prayers. He prayed for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation that they may know God better. God’s word is the source of all wisdom and the Spirit inspired the Word. The Holy Spirit is the one who reveals the truth of God in the first instance and then illumines our minds in order that we may grasp and understand the Word better. Paul is not asking that believers may receive new revelations from God but that the Spirit may help them to understand the revelation God has already given in the Scriptures. “That you may know…” is the emphasis of Paul’s prayer. Growth in knowledge is indispensable to growth in holiness and maturity; it is not just knowledge in understanding but knowledge in experience as well, and there is no greater knowledge than knowledge of God Himself.
The great puritan John Owen had a deep concern for Christian experience. To him, there is a great difference between the knowledge of the truth and the knowledge of the power of the truth. Owen knew that it is the presence of the Spirit of God that transforms our bare knowledge of the truth into our experience of the power of the truth. He realized that if we could get revelation from God directly, it is psychologically inevitable that we would find less enthusiasm for serious Bible study. Here he affirmed that true knowledge of the power of the truth comes from illumination of the Word by the Spirit. We see therefore the great need to spend time studying, understanding and assimilating the Word of God in our lives, with dependence on God’s Spirit for illumination, and the practice of communion with God and prayers to God for wisdom and spiritual life.
We need to recognize Paul’s example of keeping praise and prayer together. Let us praise God that He has already blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing and let us keep praying that we may know the fullness of what He has given us.
Paul went on to pray that the eyes of the believers’ hearts may be enlightened to know the hope to which God has called us, the riches of God’s inheritance in His people, and the great power for us who believe. The whole Christian life involves an unfolding and enlarging of the heart’s openness to the things of God. There will always be parts of us that need to be opened more and more to let the fullness of God’s truth dwell in us.
What did God call us for, we may ask? His call is not random without purpose. It is a call to something and for something. God has certainly called us to belong to Jesus Christ and to enter into the fellowship with Him and all the saints who have been called throughout all generations. He who is holy has called us to be a holy people, freed from the bondage of sin and the judgment of God’s law. It is a call to be a united people characterized by love, crossing all boundaries of race, class and gender, in Christ Jesus, who is the head of the body, and Lord of the new community. Besides the call into one body, we are called to enjoy the peace of Christ, to live a life worthy of this wonderful calling. At the same time as we enjoy this peace, we should be aware of the opposition from the unbelieving world and the attacks of the evil one in various forms. In a nutshell, we are called to Christ and holiness, to freedom and peace, to suffering and glory.
Understanding and appreciating our call is a great impetus to persevere and to endure in the midst of persecution and pain, and to look beyond our sufferings and struggles to the glory which will one day be revealed. We need to pray with Paul to be enlightened by God to see with the eyes of our hearts the glorious hope of our calling in Christ Jesus, a hope initiated by God the Father before the creation of the world, accomplished and secured in Christ, and applied to us and in us by the Holy Spirit. It is not a call or a hope to us individually; it is a call to many to collectively form the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, the temple of God, a new society, a new humanity now and in a new heaven and new earth.
With this in mind, we can now focus on the riches of His glorious inheritance in the believers. This ‘inheritance’ points us to the end, to the final inheritance described as imperishable, undefiled and never fading away, kept in heaven for us, for which the Holy Spirit is our guarantee. We shall ‘see’ God and Christ Jesus, and worship Him and it will be a transforming vision, for when He appears, we shall be like Him, not only in body but in character. Furthermore, we shall enjoy perfect fellowship with one another in the midst of a vast multitude from every nation, tribe and tongues, before the throne of grace and before the ‘Lamb of God’.
What shall keep us from the beginning of our calling to the end of our inheritance? It is surely the power of God! It is definitely God’s power that can fulfil the expectation of the call and bring us safely to the riches of the glory of our inheritance in the end. The manifestation and demonstration of this power is seen in the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. Two powers man cannot control in this fallen world are death and evil. Man cannot avoid death because he is mortal; he cannot overcome evil because he is fallen. But God in Christ, in His divine power, has overcome both death and evil at the cross, and in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Therefore, He can rescue us from both these powers.
Believers sometimes look towards the power of healing, of miracles and wonders. However, they fail to realize that the greatest divine power is that which destroys death and evil. This power also raised Jesus, the perfect God-man, from the dead, and exalted Him above all principalities and powers, seating Him at the right hand of God in the heavenly realms. Those who believe in Christ are united with the Lord Jesus and experience this reality spiritually, and totally at the end of this age. Nothing is more powerful than God causing a man to be ‘born again’, delivered from his dreadful sinful ways and destiny in hell, to be transformed to be like His Son in body and character and to be placed with many others throughout all generations in the new heaven and new earth, where only those who are holy like the Lord Jesus can enter and dwell eternally. Only such a divine power can overcome the formidable power of the evil one and change the hearts of sinful men! It is sad but true that we often take this divine power for granted and live our lives not in a manner worthy of our high calling.