in order that he may give you according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power by his Spirit in the inner man;
Paul has just finished setting out the mystery — the deep purpose of God he has been unfolding in this letter. Now he kneels and prays for what words alone cannot give: inward strength from the Spirit, supplied out of the riches of God's glory.
Paul has already said everything he can about the mystery, and in simple words. He prays because words alone cannot do the work.
The Apostle clearly saw that stating the truth in set terms would not achieve God's purpose. It is reached only as the Holy Spirit, in mighty power, gives the believer perception through deep exercise of soul.
Another writer draws a line between what anyone can grasp and what only the Spirit can give:
Our natural ability, even in someone born of God, is of no use for understanding the things that belong to divine counsel. Anyone can understand the gospel preached to the people of the world — repentance and forgiveness of sins. But when we come to the deep things of God, we must have the help of the Divine Spirit. Yet God grants this freely.
The phrase means something real inside the believer. Three passages show what it is.
In Romans 7 the apostle looks into himself. He made that wonderful discovery that one part of him, the flesh, "does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot." But he also found a part of himself that delighted in the things of God. In Romans 7 that inward man is without power. In Ephesians 3 the apostle prays that they might be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man. He does not say it has already happened. What is lacking is strength, and the Spirit of God is there to give that strength. The third reference is in the closing verses of 2 Corinthians 4: "though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day."
So the inner man is not the natural person improved. It comes from God's own work:
The outward man is the physical man — the man who walks, eats, sleeps, and does the ordinary things of life. The inward man belongs only to the Christian. It speaks of a gracious work of God in the soul, beginning with the new birth, the fruit of God's sovereign act.
One commentator notes which word Paul uses here, and which one he does not.
The Apostle does not say "according to the riches of His grace," as in Ephesians 1:7. He says "according to the riches of His glory." The prayer is not connected with meeting our need, but with the fulfilment of the counsels of the Father's heart.
One writer explains why every believer's capacity for truth is still not enough here:
Every believer, as one whom God has worked upon and who has received the Holy Spirit, has the spiritual capacity to receive truth. But this verse shows that special communications from God need special preparation of heart, if they are to be impressed on the heart. Does this not mean that the Holy Spirit forms us to receive the truth of the Father's counsels as we are occupied with the Father's glory? We easily become absorbed in our needs, and perhaps in our service for the Lord too — things we do need to speak to the Lord about. But there should be time for communion with the Father about His things, about His glory and about Him who sits in that glory on the Father's throne.
This is Paul's second prayer in the letter, and it asks for something the first did not.
This is an entirely different line of truth from his prayer in Ephesians 1. There it is a question of standing; here it is of state. In Ephesians 1 he prays that the saints might know their place before God in Christ more fully, with all the privileges of that position. Here it is a question of practical power by the Holy Spirit.
The power Paul asks for has a purpose.
God is indeed displaying His glory in all its fullness. He wants us to grasp this in the heart — but for what purpose? Not so that signs and miracles may display what God is working, but "so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." How fitting that He should dwell there through faith — not as a Visitor, known now and then and only in part, but truly dwelling there.
- Weakness. The inner man is God's own work in you. Yet in Romans 7 it delights in God without strength: the lack is never desire, always power.
- Prayer. Paul prays instead of explaining. Set words cannot open the deep things of God; only the Spirit can.
- Measure. The supply comes "according to the riches of His glory." It is not just enough to meet a need. It is enough to fulfil what the Father purposed.
- Method. When we are occupied with the Father's glory instead of our own needs and service, the Spirit strengthens the inner man.
- Aim. The power is not for display but for residence — that Christ may dwell in the heart, not visit it.
that the Christ may dwell, through faith, in your hearts, being rooted and founded in love,
Paul is in the middle of a prayer. He asks that Christ Himself would settle in the hearts of his readers. Two questions follow. How is this different from the Spirit already living in every believer? And what has love to do with it?
The verb Paul chose is not the language of a short visit. One writer points to Matthew 2:23, where older translations say Jesus "dwelt" at Nazareth:
In Ephesians 3:17 the Apostle prays that "Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." The word translated 'dwell' is the same word as in Matthew 2:23, "He came and dwelt at Nazareth." ... The whole word means 'to settle, to dwell.' Some think 'To make one's home' is nearer the true meaning; or, perhaps, 'to settle down.' Either translation seems to bring a lovely thought: "That Christ may make His home in your hearts." When I am in my 'home' every part of the house is open to me: nothing is hidden or closed: all is, in a sense, mine.
Is this just another way of saying the Spirit lives in every Christian? One writer says no:
It is not the Spirit of God dwelling in us; it is just as sure now that He has come and abides, as the work of Christ for us. Because of that work, the Holy Spirit never leaves the Christian. Once He is given, He never departs. But Christ may not be always dwelling in our hearts. Let us take care not to make this part of the believer's standing privilege. It is not. It is a question of spiritual experience, once God has established us in our place before Him.
Kelly draws the same line, pointing to a difference in wording:
There is no question that the Spirit of God always dwells in the Christian. But I am not aware that He is ever said to dwell in our hearts. He may pour out the love of God there. Scripture rather says He dwells in us, making the body God's temple. Here the apostle would have Christ to be more the satisfying object of our affections.
Christ's love can be held as a fact and still leave the heart untouched. Kelly presses for more:
May we never settle for just knowing from the word of God that He loves us, holding it as our security, like a dry paper deed of gift kept in a safe. The gospel comes to the sinner free and full for this reason: that, being sure of the divine fullness of our blessing, our hearts may now be open to enjoy Christ and taken up with His love.
What changes when Christ is at home in the heart? Darby names both a loss and a gain:
"So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." This is not about having happy feelings or a pleasant character. It is one thing to be safe in the ark on the Ararat of God, and another thing for Christ to dwell in the heart by faith. Oh what a quantity of care goes out when Christ is there! If Christ is the master of the house and lives in it, He does not let the dust and cobwebs pile up. He fills the whole house. And if a sudden shock comes to the heart, you will find not fear, but Christ.
Paul uses two pictures: a plant and a building. Whose love is the soil and the foundation?
The root is that from which the plant draws its nourishment; the foundation is that upon which we build. Every blessing the Apostle speaks of goes back to the heart of God — "His great love with which He loved us" (Ephesians 2:4). Moreover we do well to be "founded in love," building not on our love to God and to Christ, but on divine love to us. "We love Him because He first loved us." It is ever God's way to teach through the affections. Spiritual understanding does not depend on human intelligence. It comes through affection that God Himself works in the soul.
Where does that love lead? One writer traces the chain:
Through the work of the Spirit, Christ dwells in our hearts by faith; dwelling there by faith He fills our hearts with love, and love prepares us to apprehend. Further, this love leads us to embrace "all saints", for the more we enjoy the love of Christ, the more our hearts will go out to all who are loved by Christ.
- Home, not visit. The word means to settle down and make a home; Christ asks for the run of the whole house, not a guest room.
- Sure, then sought. The Spirit never leaves the Christian. Christ dwelling in the heart is not a standing privilege but a matter of spiritual experience.
- Faith, not feeling. This is not a pleasant mood. It is Christ enjoyed as the heart's object — His love held as living, not a deed locked in a safe.
- Root and foundation. The love we are rooted in is God's love to us, not ours to Him; that is what feeds the plant and carries the building.
- Then the widening. Love settles the heart. A settled heart is ready to understand, and it goes out to all who are loved by Christ.
in order that ye may be fully able to apprehend with all the saints what [is] the breadth and length and depth and height;
Paul's prayer reaches a point where language runs out. He names four measurements, but he never says what he is measuring. Then he asks that believers be able to grasp them together with everyone else who belongs to God. Two questions sit at the heart of the verse — the dimensions of what, and why this grasp is impossible alone.
One writer supplies the missing word from the letter itself:
Four dimensions are listed, but we are not told what they refer to. The dimensions of what? Surely of all the great truth Paul had been unfolding, the dimensions of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
One writer reads the four measures as the range of God's eternal purpose, and gives each one its own reach:
Then the Apostle desires that we may grasp "the breadth, and length, and depth, and height". This would appear to be the whole range of God's "eternal purpose", already mentioned in verse 11. In its breadth this eternal purpose embraces "all saints". In its length it stretches into the age of ages. In its depth it reached down to us in all our need. In its height it brings us into a scene of glory.
Another writer points the depth and the height to Christ Himself:
Depth — this reminds us of all the distance and shame and suffering the blessed Lord went through. He went through it to open all this up righteously and to carry out God's wonderful plan of blessing. Height — we look up and see Him who went into the lowest depth, now in the highest height of glory. And we see the believer made to sit in heavenly places in Christ.
The verb Paul uses asks for more than information. One writer also refuses to shrink the four measures down to love alone:
In verse 18, to comprehend or apprehend is not just to know about something. It is to apply it to the heart in experience. The apostle speaks of love in verse 17. But verse 18 is not limited to love. It takes in all the counsels of God, in which He shows His great love.
These measurements are not handed to a private student. One writer draws out what that means for how we treat other believers:
How can I "comprehend with all saints" if I leave out any? I cannot separate from them without lessening my own sense of the fulness of the love of Christ and of God. If I leave out one, he is Christ's joy. And here we fail.
But believers today are scattered and divided. One writer faces that head on:
In these days of brokenness and division in the church of God we cannot bring all saints together. Nor can we stir up all saints to grasp these things. But we can hold firmly to the divine thought of all saints, and, as far as we are able, live and act with all saints in view. Those who do this are more likely than others to grasp the mighty scope of the unsearchable riches of Christ, to know His love which is centred on all saints, and to be filled with all the fulness of God.
Paul makes one thing the condition of this grasping: being rooted and grounded in love. That sounds like a strange qualification for understanding, and one writer names the puzzle:
The question is this: What is to enable you to comprehend that which is measureless? True, it is a paradox; but the answer is, the love of Christ. It is not knowledge by itself, or general intelligence, or great mental power. It is being rooted and grounded in the love of Christ.
This rules out one route and opens another:
To be rooted and grounded in the knowledge of the schools will be of no help in learning the mysteries of God. Here we touch a region beyond the wit of man. We are in touch with things that no eye has seen and no ear has heard. They have never entered the heart of man. God alone can teach them, and He teaches them through our affections.
- Strength first. Paul asks for this grasp; he does not assume it. He prays that believers may be able, because the four measures lie beyond the wit of man.
- Root next. Love, not learning, gives the capacity. The knowledge of the schools is of no help here; God teaches these things through the affections.
- Measure then. Breadth takes in all saints. Length stretches into the age of ages. Depth answers to what Christ went through, and height to where He now is.
- Company always. We grasp the dimensions "with all saints". Leave one out, and you shrink your own sense of the fulness of Christ's love.
- Fulness last. The grasp ends where the prayer ends: knowing His love, and being filled with all the fulness of God.
and to know the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge; that ye may be filled [even] to all the fulness of God.
The prayer in this chapter reaches its high point here. It asks for the knowledge of a love that no one can ever exhaust. Two questions press on any reader. How can we know what surpasses knowledge? And what could it mean for creatures as small as us to be filled with what belongs to God?
The phrase sounds like a contradiction. We will never master this love. We can keep going further into it forever.
It may seem to be a paradox to say so, but a blessed one. He does not mean that we shall ever know it perfectly. But there may be the knowing more and more of that which surpasses knowledge. He supposes us launched upon that sea where there is no shore: we can never reach the end of His love... You could no more get to the end of the love, than you could get to the end of God Himself.
Believers are not shut out from this love now. They live on it, and still cannot measure it.
But do we not know it? Are we quite ignorant of it? No — it is our security, it is our motive, it is indeed our portion. It has cast out fear. The manger, the garden, the cross, the throne, all bear witness to its fullness and eternity. But who can fully know its everlasting strength?
The prayer does not stop with glory. Even the brightest glory leaves the heart wanting more.
But the heart wants far more than glory. Even a human heart needs more, not to speak of God's heart. Suppose I were in heaven, with all the glory God could give a creature. Even then it would not be enough for what the heart feels the need of even now. So glory, bright as it is, is beneath what he next brings before us...
The measurements only mean something because a Person fills them:
The verse adds "and to know" — as though that were something extra — "the love of Christ". What would those measures mean to me if I did not have the knowledge of the love of Christ which fills it all? God is going to fill the whole sphere with the One in Whom His love is centred.
The ESV reads "filled with all the fullness of God." One writer presses a different rendering: filled unto it. That changes the picture. We do not contain God. He brings us into His fulness, and our growth in it matches our grasp of the love of Christ.
"That you may be filled unto (not with) all the fullness of God." We are filled unto that fullness in the measure in which we know the love of Christ and understand the dimensions of this love. We are filled in the measure in which Christ dwells in our hearts by faith and we are rooted and grounded in love.
Being placed inside something limitless is a different thing from containing it:
If I am placed in the middle of infinity, I am not at the end of it. I am in an infinity which I do not comprehend and do not measure. I have no smaller measure than that: it is nothing less than the fulness of God... whatever my littleness may be, I am in this blessed position... we cannot go outside this wall of enclosure with which God has surrounded us, and which is God Himself.
This fulness is not vague. It is God's own moral character, and it should show in the people it fills.
Does not the fulness of God speak of all that God is in His moral attributes — His holiness, His love, and His grace? A vessel could be filled with water, but no vessel could hold the ocean. So our little vessels cannot take in all the fulness of God, but the fulness of God can fill our little vessels. So the beautiful character of God, as He has been pleased to reveal Himself, should fill the saints, and show in the saints.
That filling has a practical cost and a practical result:
If we are to be filled with the divine fulness then everything of self, of the world, and of the earth must be removed from the vessel... All that we are to be for God, and to do for Him, must come from the fulness of God that dwells in Christ.
- Know — we know the love of Christ now. It is our security, our motive, our portion. Yet no one exhausts it.
- Surpasses — the paradox is deliberate: we know more and more of what we will never fully know, like a sea with no shore.
- Crowns — the prayer sets love above the vast measures and above glory itself, because glory alone leaves the heart wanting.
- Filled unto — read it as unto, not with. God launches us into His fulness; He does not ask us to contain it. Our measure of it matches our grasp of Christ's love.
- Shows — the fulness of God is His holiness, love and grace. Clear out self and the world, and that fulness fills the saints and shows in them.
But to him that is able to do far exceedingly above all which we ask or think, according to the power which works in us,
Paul ends his prayer for God's people with praise, not with another request. He praises the God who can do more than the prayer asks. It raises two questions. How much may we expect from God? And by what standard does He give?
One writer starts with something we all know in prayer, then turns it toward what God can do:
There are times when our minds and hearts seem enlarged, and we then ask for great things — and we think more widely than we ask. Thoughts sometimes come into our minds which we would be afraid to put into words before the throne of grace. Have you never asked, "May I expect God to do such great things for me?" Look at these words — "able to do far more abundantly." What He can do goes beyond all our words and all our thoughts. It is not a question of what we are able to do; God is making known what He is able to do. His resources are infinite.
The wording is exact. The verse does not say all we can ask, and one writer says that is deliberate:
He does not say, above all that we can ask or think. The Holy Spirit takes particular care not to say so. Notice the difference between what we do ask and what we can ask and think. There is no limit to what we may ask, except that God is above anything we can ask of Him. And He loves to hear us asking more and more. He would train us in asking more abundantly.
The verse names the standard by which God acts: power at work inside believers. Writers link this to the earlier prayer in the letter. There, the same power worked for us:
The great thought in the first prayer is the power that worked for us. Here, it is the power that works in us. There, it was a power that worked in Christ, and raised Him from the dead, and which worked in us and raised us up with Him. Here, it is the same power, but now it works in a practical way.
People often quote this verse and leave off its closing clause:
This brings out the force of the prayer. It is not a prayer for head knowledge of the great truths of God's calling. It is a prayer that we would take hold of them ourselves and enter into them… The power works in us. God is able to do far above all that we ask, and even above all that we think of asking. He does it according to that power. How often people leave out that last clause of the verse!
God's resources have no limit. His power is already inside us. So if Christian life feels narrow, the limit lies somewhere else:
"According to the power at work within us, God is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think." God works in us to fill us with all the fullness of God. If we are restricted, if we are, so to speak, hampered or shackled, this cramping of spiritual life and energy is in ourselves, not in God. We cannot exhaust the stores of His grace or power.
The power is already given, so the work is not to get it but to use it:
He sets no limits to the fullness of blessing, except the fullness of God! So we can be sure that the power working in us is able to do far above all we desire or think. We have the power; we do not have to get it.
The verse ends a prayer and begins praise, and writers apply it directly to how boldly we come to God:
Everything God gives to Christ is yours, so I must praise Him. Can I be silent? Why not lift your voice to Him who is able to do far more abundantly above all you ask or think? We cannot expect too much.
There is also a searching side to this. Great promises meet small faith, and one writer answers that with an honest question to ourselves:
"His precious and very great promises." Are we to deduct fifty per cent from them, and think that God cannot mean as much as He says? It is not so at all. He has spoken in complete sincerity. We know very little about how deep unbelief runs in all of us… When we ask God for something, it does us real good to stop and ask ourselves: "Do I believe that God will give me what I ask for?"
- Above — God can do more than what we say to Him, and more than what we hope for without saying it. His resources have no limit.
- Above asking — the text avoids saying "all we can ask." God trains us to ask more and more, so growing requests are part of the answer.
- In us — the power that raised Christ once worked for us; now it works inside believers in a practical way.
- Not in God — we cannot use up His stores of grace; when spiritual life feels cramped, the limit is on our side, not His.
- Already ours — we have the power; we do not have to get it. So the fitting response is bold asking and praise: we cannot expect too much.
to him be glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages. Amen).
Paul ends his long prayer for the Ephesians with praise. The last word is not about what we receive, but about what God receives — and where He receives it.
These closing words show what the whole prayer was driving toward. Our blessing is real, but it is not the goal.
The Apostle closes his prayer with a beautiful ascription of praise to God. So the great end in view is not simply our blessing, however greatly we shall be blessed, but God's eternal glory. The church, though formed in time, belongs to eternity. Planned in eternity, before time began, it will be for the glory of God through eternal ages yet to come.
Why should God take His glory in the church? Because the church is not our achievement but His own work.
Here we learn of the eternal display of God's glory in the church. Not one of us had any part in the forming of this wonderful vessel that will display God's glory for eternity. It is His creation, just as Ephesians 2:10 says, "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus." That workmanship shows the wonders of the divine wisdom and skill. Only such wisdom could design and produce a vessel to set forth God's glory. In the eternal day every creature in the universe will admire that glory.
The verse does not stop at "in the church." It goes on: "and in Christ Jesus." Without those words the church has no glory of its own to give.
What a blessing and a wonder that the Father's glory will stand secure in the church for ever. The church has a great place in God's plans. Here is a vessel conceived in divine wisdom, secured in divine love, and formed in divine power. It is there to display divine glory. But the glory the church displays is in Christ Jesus, for the church is nothing and has nothing apart from Christ.
Older translations render that phrase "by Christ Jesus." Read that way, it marks the route the praise travels.
Is it not in relation to Christ in Manhood in connection with the Assembly that we have the expression, "Unto Him (God) be glory in the church by Christ Jesus"? Does it not suggest that glory will always reach the Father through the Son?
Older translations end the verse with "world without end." A more literal reading of the Greek helps define which "age" is meant.
In Ephesians 3:21 we find, "unto all the generations of the age of the ages." Here no one would doubt that eternity is meant. It may define which "age" is meant when aion stands alone: it is the "age" of the ages, the age in which all ages are summed up.
That raises a further question. Does the church itself last that long, or only the believers in it?
The Church, the bride and body of Christ, has eternal qualities... the believer who now belongs to the Church of God will always belong to the Church of God... The closing verse of the third chapter says, "To Him be glory in the Church, by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages." Here the verse speaks of the Church as still existing as the Church "throughout all ages." Nothing can be clearer.
Verse 20 promises God's power at work in us. The praise that follows has an address — and it is not the world.
God is "able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us." What then? "To Him be glory in the church throughout all ages." It is just what we might expect. Notice that it is in "the church" or assembly — not the world. That will come one day under the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ; but in the present state of things it is in the church.
One thing gets in the way now: what we look at when we look at ourselves.
It is "to all generations of the ages of ages." This would include the present time too... We are so quick to think of ourselves in the light of what has gone wrong among us. But we have the privilege of thinking of ourselves in the light of these magnificent thoughts of God about us. If we viewed ourselves more this way, there would be glory to God now.
- Aim — The end of Paul's prayer is not our enrichment but God's glory; our blessing is the means, His praise is the point.
- Vessel — The church is God's own workmanship, planned before time began. No one helped make it, so no one can claim its glory.
- Channel — "In Christ Jesus" is not decoration. Apart from Christ the church has nothing, and glory always reaches the Father through the Son.
- Duration — "The age of the ages" is the fullest word for eternity. The church runs right through it, still the church.
- Now — "All generations" includes this one. See yourself by God's thoughts, not by what has gone wrong, and God has glory today.