Wednesday Bible Study: Or, the short version

So this week we get back to our tour of the 3:16s and are in Ephesians this week.  Now I took a lot of notes, graphed the passage all out, but then found a new "Doc Martin's Rule" to help us out.  And our verse this week is this:

Eph 3:16  that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 

So with a verse that starts with a "(so) that", and ends in a comma, I start have to asking a bunch of "whys" in order to understand where we're at and where we're going.  First why is, " 'so that' what?"  In other words, what is it Paul was doing "so that" God would grant what He does?  And we get that two verses back...

Eph 3:14  For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 

So Paul was praying for them.  Why?

Eph 3:13  So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. 

And that makes us ask, why was Paul suffering to the point that his Ephesian brothers were at a point of possibly losing heart?

Eph 3:1  For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles-- 

Eph 3:2  assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, 

Eph 3:3  how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. 

Eph 3:4  When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, 

All right, so now we can put this together.  Paul was suffering ( at the hands of Roman jailers) in order to share with the Ephesians- and all Gentiles- what Christ had taught him.  The suffering, to them, was extreme enough that they were beginning to question its worth, and he prayed for them to the Father.  So now, we shift the other way and ask, what did he pray for?

There are three main sections to our target verse.  First, Paul has to show them that God has the resources to do what Paul asks for them.  I like that one commentator took the words "according to the riches of His glory" and reworded it as: " Out of the inexhaustible stores of grace."  One of the things that led Martin Luther to his protest against the church of his day was the concept of a "grace bank", that you add to with "small acts of kindness", and prayers to the saints, but most of all by paying to have masses said, and paying for indulgences from sin.  You could literally pay money to shave hundreds or thousands of years of "purgatory" from the deceased, because your "deposit" in the grace bank let God make a "withdrawal" in the name of the deceased you dedicated it to.

Let me be clear.  There is no "grace bank" that WE need to contribute to.  There is "the inexhaustible stores of God's grace", that we access through faith.

Second section is what Paul was basically praying for- that they be strengthened with power.  Here I had to dig a little bit further.  Strengthened comes from a word that translates as "empowered."  Empowered with power?  Again, look deeper.  The word used as "power" isn't so simple a term.  From Strong's concordance:

force (literally or figuratively); specifically miraculous power (usually by implication a miracle itself)...

So now, we see Paul isn't just asking God to prop them up, but is calling on miraculous intervention in their lives.  And in a way, God answered this prayer, as he would shortly be released from his first imprisonment in Rome.  A valuable lesson here, as Paul prayed for them, and the answer redounded to his personal benefit.

The third section explains the realm in which he asked for this empowerment- in their inner man, the "new man" that he constantly tells us to put on.  This means, as I have often pointed out, he isn't asking for God to improve their circumstances, but to improve THEM from within to handle whatever the circumstance was.  The focus isn't on the suffering that causes one to lose heart, the focus is on the "new man" with his goal of Heaven and the building of the Kingdom of God, that he not turn back and lose heart over the world.  But stopping here doesn't make that clear, so we have to ask- why does Paul want them to have this miraculous empowerment, and what should they do with it?  And we find he has three goals for them:

1- from v17, second half:

that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 

First, he wants them rooted and grounded in love.  He wants them assured of their salvation in Christ.

2- From the first half of the same (changed in order because of Paul's unique writing style):

 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith--

 with the next verse and the first part of v19:

Eph 3:18  may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 

Eph 3:19  and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,

Second, he wants them to advance from that position of being rooted to move on to comprehension of the love of this Christ in their hearts, because they cannot overcome their fears without His assurance.

3- And the close of v19:

 that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 

And there is the end goal.  Paul suffers that they may be made full; they should not be dismayed at his, or even their own, potential suffering.

So having done my first go through of this sequence, and thinking about how complex the whole process was, I moved on to my own nightly reading- and soon after starting, a found a verse that compacted the whole thing in one spot:

2Ti 1:12  which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me. 

And that is the entirety of Ephesians 3:1-19 in a nutshell.  Leading me to yet another valuable rule to follow.  If the passage is proving too hard to get a grasp on, just pray about it- God usually has a "simplified version" elsewhere.  Timothy was already a pastor and teacher- he did not need the "baby food" that the Ephesian laity did.  God uses the Bible to talk to a LOT of people on a lot of different levels.  If Paul puts it a way you don't quite grasp, look for the same idea in John, or elsewhere.  Odds are God will show you a way that will speak to YOU.