Ephesians Series: 1:15-22
Sunday, October 26, 2025
Peace to Live By Ephesians Series: 1:15-22 - Daniel Litton
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[Transcript represents full sermon's text]
Today we're continuing our study on the book of Ephesians. We arrive at verse 15 of chapter 1. We've already gone through an introduction in verses 1 through 14, and I think we’ve talked about a lot and got a lot into our system. And today's interesting because we are diving into the first of two prayers that the Apostle Paul has for us in this book of Ephesians.
And if we go ahead and just get into the text. Let’s go to Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 15: “For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers” (ESV).
Paul says two things, that he's heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and their love toward all the saints. Now, reading that just kind of casually, it might seem like Paul doesn't know the Ephesians, that he's heard about the Ephesians, but that's actually not the case as we went over in the introductory part of this series. Paul had spent about two-ish years or so in Ephesus, and that occurred sometime between 53 to 56 AD. So Paul is familiar with the church of Ephesus, with the people of Ephesus.
What Paul is saying today is that the Ephesians had displayed faith toward Christ, and that's obviously apparently true because the church is an established church. It's a growing church. It hasn't fizzled out. It hasn't ceased to exist. And then on the other side of that, Paul discusses their faith toward all the saints. He doesn't give us a specific one on that. He doesn't tell us specifically what the Ephesian church had done for other churches. We remember in the introductory part that the church of Colossae was very close by. That was a neighboring church of theirs. And remember I said that Ephesians as an epistle is kind of like a sequel to Colossians because it's believed that Paul wrote this epistle to the Ephesians right after he wrote the epistle to the Colossians. So they kind of go hand in hand. They are similar in many aspects.
Let's go to verse 16. “I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers” (ESV). Okay, let's pause there.
Paul demonstrates for us something that's important for all of us, and that is no matter where we find ourselves, no matter what is going on in the life journey, we have to remember to be thankful. And for Paul, in writing this text, we remember he's experiencing his first imprisonment. So for anyone to get down and out, to have the right to do that, or to try to justify that, Paul would definitely have that claim, being in prison for Christ's sake. And yet we see that in spite of that, he's thankful for the growing church in Ephesus and for the state of these believers. And that's a base foundation that we can all go back to is we can remember our conversion to Christ, whether it was as a child, whether it was as a teenager (like myself), whether it was in our 20s, whenever it was, we can go back to that and say, “Yeah, I remember the before and after.” “I remember how all new the truths felt to me.” “I remember that sense of newness, that coolness, that mind-blowingness of learning about Christianity for the first time, learning the ins and outs, being free from sin, gaining more sound relationships in Christ versus relationships we probably had in our unconverted state,” so on and so forth. We can be thankful for those things, not to mention the things we can point at in our current life situation now that we are thankful for.
And no matter what situation we find ourselves in, Paul was in a worse-case scenario situation by being in prison. Most of us are not in that kind of predicament. So we can look around us and look at nature or look at our possessions or our friendships or our career, whatever it is—we can look at that and be thankful for things that we have now in conjunction with all the stuff I just talked about. But it's important to keep that stuff in the forefront of our minds and not take it for granted. It's so easy to forget, to take that stuff for granted and not remember that all this stuff we have is by God's blessing and God's grace.
And another aspect to that I do want to mention that, again, we don't often think about, is the concept that what I've just discussed is what we see with our eyes, right? What about all the things we cannot see or don't see with our eyes yet? So we could think of our inheritance that Paul's been talking about in Ephesians chapter 1. That which is in heaven, that which is awaiting us, both materially and people-wise, because we're going to have a lot of cool friendships when we get to heaven, both people we knew during our earthly life and those of other time-periods that we didn't live at the same time as them, but we're going to have an opportunity to get to know them. Any friendships now that aren't the best that could be or have ended or whatever, that stuff will be rectified later.
That's the thing: there are even things God is doing in our lives right now through the work of his angels, through Jesus' intercession for us, the Holy Spirit's intercession for us that we can't see. We don't even know it's going on other than that Scripture tells us it is. Now, of course, things happen in our lives that break forth, that demonstrate, “Okay, you know, what I've prayed for, what I've hoped for, Jesus must have been interceding for me,”—whatever, however you want to put it together. We see answers to prayer. We see good things happen. But even if we're not, we know that based off like Romans 8:28, for instance, we know God's working for our good in the background. So it's not just what we see, but it's also things, a lot of things, that we cannot see.
Verse 17, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of him” (ESV).
Wow. Okay. We all know, or should know by now, that we are indwelled by the Holy Spirit when we become a Christian for the first time. And that's a seal from God, that's a permanent state. The Holy Spirit indwells the church body, but he also indwells us individually. And it takes the Holy Spirit, his insight toward us, for us to understand the things from God's word inside our minds. That's why we would say a person who's not believed in Jesus yet, that person doesn't have the Holy Spirit. He or she cannot discern the spiritual things of God that he presents in our Word—all those things I just talked about being thankful for—what God's doing in the background—all that stuff. The unbeliever can't quite put his or her finger on that. Can't quite make sense of it. We can because we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
And what Paul's talking about is he wants us to have further wisdom and knowledge, right? And those are two fundamental things to our Christian faith. We want to be wise in life decisions and how we interact with others and life path decisions that we make. We always want to make sure God approves of what we're doing, that if we're going to take this job or move to this state or do whatever it is, we want to make sure that God's on board with that. And it may be sometimes that we take a leap of faith because we're not entirely sure. And God makes it evident, right? He makes it evident. “Not really digging this path you're going down, so we're going to change gears.” Sometimes it works that way. That's okay. But the point is we always want to be where God wants us to be. And this wisdom and insight comes from studying God's Word. It comes from experience as well. You can't just automatically have all the wisdom that you want from the moment you believe for the first time. Sure, the Holy Spirit aids us in that, but part of it is experiential. It's not just a straight download of all the wisdom that we could ever want. We've got to put in some effort. There's some cooperative stuff going on between God and us, us and God.
We can look quickly at Romans chapter 8 and verses 29 and 30 because they tie into what I'm talking about. So Paul says, verse 29, “For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified.” But what we can see there is we are conformed to the image of his Son. So it's a process. We would not say that's a one-time thing entirely. There are aspects of it that happen immediately, like our sealing with the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of all our sins, past, present, and future. But there's also a working out of our salvation. You can remember that verse. I'll let you find that one. But there is that sense where in Christianity, there's the one-time sanctification when we believe, but then there's the ongoing process of sanctification or growing or becoming wise and gaining more knowledge in our context of Ephesians 1.
Verse 18—let me tap back to Ephesians—“Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance and the saints” (ESV).
One thing I do want to bring us back to, and I've been a little bit guilty here of focusing on things from an individualistic perspective, but we've got to remember that a lot of this, what Paul is saying, is coming from a collective mindset. And that means that a lot of this, what we can be thankful for, what we can be hopeful for, isn't just about us individually, but it's about the church collectively with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. He talks here, “having the eyes of your hearts enlightened.” Of course, I just talked about the individual aspect of that, but there's also a sense where collectively the church wants to become enlightened. And how is that done? Well, that's done through good Bible teachers at your church, good classes, good fellowship, home groups, small groups, whatever you want to call them, those things help us to grow together. So it's not just individualistic. There is really, in Paul's context, it was likely more collective. But as we think individualistically in the United States, we just have that natural tendency to read that into the text.
So what is the heart? Paul says again, “having the eyes of your hearts enlightened.” What is this “eyes of your hearts”? I would say—this is my two cents on this. I see a difference between the mind, our physical brain, and our heart, which is in our chest. I see a difference there. I think Jesus pointed that out. And one thing we could say with this verse is it's not just about learning intellectually about the wisdom and insight from verse 17, but it's also having it within our hearts, having our hearts open up, if you will, to where we really love this—we really love God, remember, with all of our hearts, as Jesus talked about Mark chapter 12 and verse 30, Luke chapter 10 and verse 27, and I think somewhere in Matthew 22. It's about our ‘hearts’ being part of our love for God, not just our mind. As we grow into studying God's word, as we listen to Bible teachers, as we listen to ministers, pastors, as we fellowship with God through prayer and meditation, as we fellowship with our fellow Christians, we gain a ‘love’ for our Christianity. It's not just an intellectual thing. It's not like I learned math. It's like a mathematician not only has learned math, but he or she loves math, because they're a mathematician. And that's where we want to be with this.
Now, Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, the famous love chapter, if I tap over there fast. 1 Corinthians 13, verse 13, where he concludes it, he says, “so now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love” (ESV). Paul's already talked about in our message today, faith and hope. And what we need to be chief among this tripod of things is the love part. The love part is more important, arguably, as Paul says, than having faith and having love. Jesus didn't say, “and you shall have faith in the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, etc." He didn't say, “you should have hope in the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your mind…” It was, “you shall love the Lord your God.” And that's what we're going for. That's the highest place we can be.
Tapping back to Ephesians. So the second part of the verse, “that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance and the saints.” We already went over that, but this hope to which he has called you, which Paul says is the inheritance. And what does the future entail for us? Well, I'm going to pull out a book here. A good book we can read to try to understand what is to come that I like is called ‘The Real Heaven: What the Bible Actually Says’ by Chip Ingram. This is a good gathering together of what we know to be factual. This is something that can help us to have a better picture of what Paul's talking about with the hope of what that which is to come. And I myself, I also did a couple of episodes, podcasts back in the day, probably eight-ish years ago on Heaven. It would be Peace to Live By episodes 79 and 80. And so I discussed some of the things that Chip Ingram discusses in his book, and those are available as well if you want to go that route.
But let's keep it moving. Verse 19, “and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” (ESV).
Wow, so 19 and 20 there. A lot going on, right? So, God's great power toward us. Well, all of us who are Christians have already experienced that, right? We've already experienced our conversion. Even if we were converted as a small child, we've still grown up in our faith. But a lot of us came from lives we weren't too proud of, from pasts we weren't too proud of. We know the great power of God working on our behalf. Collectively, for the church, we've seen God use pastors in great ways to spread his message, to help a lot of people. Remember, Jesus said, “Greater works than these.” So some people will do greater work than Jesus himself did. We have a plethora, a list far and wide of humans who have done that, of pastors who have done that. Recently at the church I attend locally here, they showed us a big long video. That was the message that day. There was no sermon. It was just a message on missions and what the church has accomplished through going on these little missions trips. And the people that have felt called to do that, that have that gifting, have gone and done that. And it's been incredible. Some of the work was small, but some of it was more on the bigger scale. But it goes to show—it showed us, what God is capable of doing. And that's just one example of all kinds of things. We know God heals people individually. He answers their prayers. I mean, we can go on and on about things that we could point to in our lives. Got this job, found the right person to marry, whatever, we can look at those things and say, “Wow, God used his great power toward us for those things.”
But really, God ultimately demonstrated his great power with the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus went to the cross, gained victory over Satan, died for our sins, and was buried in what? He rose after three days of his body and the grave. His spirit had descended to another area, but he was reunited with his physical body. So that is tremendously powerful. There's no other God we know of, no other religion, no other human that can do that, that has that power. That’s chief power. That's amazing stuff. We saw that in John chapter 11, when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. It's totally mind-blowing when you consider it logically, when you consider it intellectually.
Now, we have to be a little bit careful in reading this verse, because I just mentioned Satan and how Jesus gained victory over Satan. But after the resurrection, Satan doesn't cease to exist, right? He lost the war. He lost. He had Jesus put to death, thought he was doing the right thing to accomplish his purposes. It totally backfired; God totally reversed it. Satan lost all authority. But, Satan still exists. The fallen angels still exist. And unfortunately, as we are all aware of, they accomplish bad things in this world. And we have to be careful with this verse that we don't use it to try to breathe life into something or to magically change to use some magical thinking that something's going to change that probably isn't going to change because that's just not the way that this particular situation has gone.
On individual cases, people die and people get hurt. God works good out of those things, but we can't say because of this verse, because “of the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.” We can't say, “Well, man, I'm never going to have another problem again. I'm a Christian now. Everything's going to go my way. Everything's great. Satan doesn't exist for me. Can't touch me,” etc. I mean, sure, we believe God protects us. Absolutely. But there's also a part we play with our free wills and so on and so forth. Just don't want to take this verse and get an unrealistic expectation of the future. Remember, Paul just called it a hope. He didn't call it, “We have it now.” The things that are going to be ours, we have to get to them. And that journey of getting to them is going to include some unpleasant things, some unfortunate things that Satan may try to do against us. You know, we may sin ourselves. We may screw up. So we are aiming for that which is good. But I just want to point that thing out there, that caveat, I guess. I just want to point that out because I don't want us to start thinking in incorrect ways.
We can look at a few verses in conjunction with this. Colossians (remember Ephesians and Colossians being tied close together), Colossians 1:29, Paul says, “For this I toil, struggling with his energy that he powerfully works within me” (ESV). That verse is unique because it shows both sides of the coin. Paul says, “For this I toil,” right? So that's the negative side, the hard side. I mean, it's positive in that Paul's working towards something good, but he uses the word “toil,” which kind of insinuates some unpleasantness. And then he says, “struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” And I think that verse encapsulates what I'm trying to say is that it's not all roses and cherries from the moment we believe. And I'm sure most of us understand that, but especially for newer believers or just people wanting this, that, or the other. It’s good for us to bring it back to our remembrance.
And if we go to John chapter 17 in Jesus's High Priestly Prayer. I want to particularly note verse 15. Jesus said, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world,” he’s talking about his disciples, “but that you keep them from the evil one” (ESV). So again, if it was automatic that we were kept from the evil one, then why does Jesus have to pray that? What's the point? He would have said something along these lines. “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but I thank you that you are going to keep them from the evil one.” Nah, he doesn’t say that.
Ephesians 1 and verse 21, continuing along. Well, let's back up. “When he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places,” verse 21, “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come” (ESV).
Okay, wow. As I just alluded to, God gained victory, Jesus gained victory over Satan, when the whole process of the cross took place. And if we go to Matthew, right at the end of Matthew, we’re super familiar with it. Jesus says in chapter 28, verse 18, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (ESV). So that's the end result of Christ's accomplishment on the cross. We can even go further back than that, all the way back to Psalms. And let's look at Psalm 8 and verse 6. This is a Psalm of David. This is a prophecy. “You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet” (ESV). Part of that has already taken place, but the second part of that, we're told that that will come after the Battle of Armageddon. And there are different verses we could cite for that. We could consider Acts 1—whatever. There are different places that's found.
And what I'm talking about with this victory of Jesus over Satan at the cross, if you want to dive into that, there is a good theological book that I would recommend. And let me pull it up in my Amazon Kindle app. And so it's called ‘Christus Victor’ by Gustaf Aulen. This book explains different theories on atonement and even talks about, obviously, the Christus Victor view of atonement, where the emphasis is on Christ defeating Satan, and the emphasis is not on what is traditionally found, commonly, in Evangelical churches, the Penal Substitutionary Atonement. I don't want to get into any of that today, but that is a little aside, I guess, if you will, if that's something you want to dive into.
Going back to Ephesians then, and we're going to try to wrap this up. What that goes to show us, and really this goes without saying, is that Jesus Christ is the Head. He's the God, and all these other gods in the world from these other religions aren't the true God. Demons get involved in those other religions. There's demonic power. God might try to work and help people in other religions. He certainly does. But the point is that the real, the true God is Jesus Christ. It's not that there's a plethora of gods, and at the end of the day, just believe in whatever god you want. That's not the way it works. Jesus is the God. And when you find Christ, you have found the ultimate truth that you can find. And as Paul's been talking about, it's an incredible thing.
And verse 22, “And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all and all” (ESV).
We just were talking about how everything, all authority, was given to Jesus. Satan lost when Jesus died on the cross. Remember, in the temptations of Jesus in Matthew chapter 4, Satan said to Jesus that he could give him all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would simply bow down and worship him. Well, at that time, that period of time, Satan could have done that. But now he can't because he lost through the cross, and all that authority now belongs to Christ. That's the worldly aspect of it. And then there's also the aspect of Christ as the head of the church. And this can be a—I mean, I don't know that it's a super big debate with Christians—but perhaps, but Jesus Christ is the head. It's not the Apostle Paul. It's not the Roman Catholic Pope. It's not anybody down here that is the head. It's Jesus Christ. And I'm not saying that to dog on Catholics. I'm sure there are many Catholics who would totally, if not all, hopefully agree with that.
But who is this church? Well, in this context in Ephesians chapter 1, Paul is saying that this is the church collectively in the world. This isn't the church of Ephesus. This isn't Paul's denomination. This is the church collectively. And we call that the universal church. So everyone on the earth that's a true born-again Christian is part of the universal church. So that includes Roman Catholics. That includes Eastern Orthodox Christians. That includes, like myself, Evangelicals. That includes Anabaptists. Those who have aligned themselves with the truth in not a weird way, those who have believed in Jesus and had the born-again experience, we would say that within all those groups, there are born-again Christians. Now, it doesn't mean everybody in any of those groups is a true born-again Christian. We know that's not true; there are pretenders no matter where you go. You can't escape it. It's the nature of the world.
Paul says, Christ fills, he says, “which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all and all” (ESV). That concludes this prayer from the Apostle Paul. It's not a direct prayer. It's not like where he stopped and specifically prayed, but he's basically talking about what he prays about. And the point of this, the point of all these things Paul's talking about, the point of Paul's prayer is Christ’s fullness will be in all of us. Since Christ is God, since Christ is the chief example for us, since he didn't sin during his life, since he loved God with his whole being, and he gave us not only the Gospels, but all the other books in the New Testament, Paul's saying that, and of course some of those books didn't exist when he was writing this, but the point is, he wants Christ to fill each and every one of us to be the way to be the way he was. Not because Christ’s domineering, not because he's selfish, but because he was sin-free. And he lived in the best relationship possible he could with God while on the earth, he experienced, while certainly Satan did things against him, he experienced a life that was sin-free, that was correct.
John chapter 17 and verse 25, “O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them” (ESV). And that's what he wants for all of us. He wants us, as we study, as we learn things, that we gain that wisdom and knowledge. But chief of all, even over the hope, that we gain the love. Even over the faith, that we gain the love for God that he had, which we just saw there in John chapter 17, that we gain that love with God first, but also with our fellow Christians, and even that we demonstrate that love to those in the world.
And the beautiful thing about this is if you're not a Christian today, you can believe in Jesus Christ. You can believe in what he accomplished on the cross. You can put your faith in his sacrifice on the cross for all of your sins and his resurrection from the dead. And you can hold your faith in that and come into relationship with God, the real God, the Triune God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. You can be indwelled by the Spirit of God, sealed, and have a personal relationship and begin this transforming journey, this journey of faith, hope, but ultimately love, as we live out our lives and prepare, think about, for that which is to come.
- Daniel Litton
Today we're continuing our study on the book of Ephesians. We arrive at verse 15 of chapter 1. We've already gone through an introduction in verses 1 through 14, and I think we’ve talked about a lot and got a lot into our system. And today's interesting because we are diving into the first of two prayers that the Apostle Paul has for us in this book of Ephesians.
And if we go ahead and just get into the text. Let’s go to Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 15: “For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers” (ESV).
Paul says two things, that he's heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and their love toward all the saints. Now, reading that just kind of casually, it might seem like Paul doesn't know the Ephesians, that he's heard about the Ephesians, but that's actually not the case as we went over in the introductory part of this series. Paul had spent about two-ish years or so in Ephesus, and that occurred sometime between 53 to 56 AD. So Paul is familiar with the church of Ephesus, with the people of Ephesus.
What Paul is saying today is that the Ephesians had displayed faith toward Christ, and that's obviously apparently true because the church is an established church. It's a growing church. It hasn't fizzled out. It hasn't ceased to exist. And then on the other side of that, Paul discusses their faith toward all the saints. He doesn't give us a specific one on that. He doesn't tell us specifically what the Ephesian church had done for other churches. We remember in the introductory part that the church of Colossae was very close by. That was a neighboring church of theirs. And remember I said that Ephesians as an epistle is kind of like a sequel to Colossians because it's believed that Paul wrote this epistle to the Ephesians right after he wrote the epistle to the Colossians. So they kind of go hand in hand. They are similar in many aspects.
Let's go to verse 16. “I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers” (ESV). Okay, let's pause there.
Paul demonstrates for us something that's important for all of us, and that is no matter where we find ourselves, no matter what is going on in the life journey, we have to remember to be thankful. And for Paul, in writing this text, we remember he's experiencing his first imprisonment. So for anyone to get down and out, to have the right to do that, or to try to justify that, Paul would definitely have that claim, being in prison for Christ's sake. And yet we see that in spite of that, he's thankful for the growing church in Ephesus and for the state of these believers. And that's a base foundation that we can all go back to is we can remember our conversion to Christ, whether it was as a child, whether it was as a teenager (like myself), whether it was in our 20s, whenever it was, we can go back to that and say, “Yeah, I remember the before and after.” “I remember how all new the truths felt to me.” “I remember that sense of newness, that coolness, that mind-blowingness of learning about Christianity for the first time, learning the ins and outs, being free from sin, gaining more sound relationships in Christ versus relationships we probably had in our unconverted state,” so on and so forth. We can be thankful for those things, not to mention the things we can point at in our current life situation now that we are thankful for.
And no matter what situation we find ourselves in, Paul was in a worse-case scenario situation by being in prison. Most of us are not in that kind of predicament. So we can look around us and look at nature or look at our possessions or our friendships or our career, whatever it is—we can look at that and be thankful for things that we have now in conjunction with all the stuff I just talked about. But it's important to keep that stuff in the forefront of our minds and not take it for granted. It's so easy to forget, to take that stuff for granted and not remember that all this stuff we have is by God's blessing and God's grace.
And another aspect to that I do want to mention that, again, we don't often think about, is the concept that what I've just discussed is what we see with our eyes, right? What about all the things we cannot see or don't see with our eyes yet? So we could think of our inheritance that Paul's been talking about in Ephesians chapter 1. That which is in heaven, that which is awaiting us, both materially and people-wise, because we're going to have a lot of cool friendships when we get to heaven, both people we knew during our earthly life and those of other time-periods that we didn't live at the same time as them, but we're going to have an opportunity to get to know them. Any friendships now that aren't the best that could be or have ended or whatever, that stuff will be rectified later.
That's the thing: there are even things God is doing in our lives right now through the work of his angels, through Jesus' intercession for us, the Holy Spirit's intercession for us that we can't see. We don't even know it's going on other than that Scripture tells us it is. Now, of course, things happen in our lives that break forth, that demonstrate, “Okay, you know, what I've prayed for, what I've hoped for, Jesus must have been interceding for me,”—whatever, however you want to put it together. We see answers to prayer. We see good things happen. But even if we're not, we know that based off like Romans 8:28, for instance, we know God's working for our good in the background. So it's not just what we see, but it's also things, a lot of things, that we cannot see.
Verse 17, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of him” (ESV).
Wow. Okay. We all know, or should know by now, that we are indwelled by the Holy Spirit when we become a Christian for the first time. And that's a seal from God, that's a permanent state. The Holy Spirit indwells the church body, but he also indwells us individually. And it takes the Holy Spirit, his insight toward us, for us to understand the things from God's word inside our minds. That's why we would say a person who's not believed in Jesus yet, that person doesn't have the Holy Spirit. He or she cannot discern the spiritual things of God that he presents in our Word—all those things I just talked about being thankful for—what God's doing in the background—all that stuff. The unbeliever can't quite put his or her finger on that. Can't quite make sense of it. We can because we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
And what Paul's talking about is he wants us to have further wisdom and knowledge, right? And those are two fundamental things to our Christian faith. We want to be wise in life decisions and how we interact with others and life path decisions that we make. We always want to make sure God approves of what we're doing, that if we're going to take this job or move to this state or do whatever it is, we want to make sure that God's on board with that. And it may be sometimes that we take a leap of faith because we're not entirely sure. And God makes it evident, right? He makes it evident. “Not really digging this path you're going down, so we're going to change gears.” Sometimes it works that way. That's okay. But the point is we always want to be where God wants us to be. And this wisdom and insight comes from studying God's Word. It comes from experience as well. You can't just automatically have all the wisdom that you want from the moment you believe for the first time. Sure, the Holy Spirit aids us in that, but part of it is experiential. It's not just a straight download of all the wisdom that we could ever want. We've got to put in some effort. There's some cooperative stuff going on between God and us, us and God.
We can look quickly at Romans chapter 8 and verses 29 and 30 because they tie into what I'm talking about. So Paul says, verse 29, “For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified.” But what we can see there is we are conformed to the image of his Son. So it's a process. We would not say that's a one-time thing entirely. There are aspects of it that happen immediately, like our sealing with the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of all our sins, past, present, and future. But there's also a working out of our salvation. You can remember that verse. I'll let you find that one. But there is that sense where in Christianity, there's the one-time sanctification when we believe, but then there's the ongoing process of sanctification or growing or becoming wise and gaining more knowledge in our context of Ephesians 1.
Verse 18—let me tap back to Ephesians—“Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance and the saints” (ESV).
One thing I do want to bring us back to, and I've been a little bit guilty here of focusing on things from an individualistic perspective, but we've got to remember that a lot of this, what Paul is saying, is coming from a collective mindset. And that means that a lot of this, what we can be thankful for, what we can be hopeful for, isn't just about us individually, but it's about the church collectively with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. He talks here, “having the eyes of your hearts enlightened.” Of course, I just talked about the individual aspect of that, but there's also a sense where collectively the church wants to become enlightened. And how is that done? Well, that's done through good Bible teachers at your church, good classes, good fellowship, home groups, small groups, whatever you want to call them, those things help us to grow together. So it's not just individualistic. There is really, in Paul's context, it was likely more collective. But as we think individualistically in the United States, we just have that natural tendency to read that into the text.
So what is the heart? Paul says again, “having the eyes of your hearts enlightened.” What is this “eyes of your hearts”? I would say—this is my two cents on this. I see a difference between the mind, our physical brain, and our heart, which is in our chest. I see a difference there. I think Jesus pointed that out. And one thing we could say with this verse is it's not just about learning intellectually about the wisdom and insight from verse 17, but it's also having it within our hearts, having our hearts open up, if you will, to where we really love this—we really love God, remember, with all of our hearts, as Jesus talked about Mark chapter 12 and verse 30, Luke chapter 10 and verse 27, and I think somewhere in Matthew 22. It's about our ‘hearts’ being part of our love for God, not just our mind. As we grow into studying God's word, as we listen to Bible teachers, as we listen to ministers, pastors, as we fellowship with God through prayer and meditation, as we fellowship with our fellow Christians, we gain a ‘love’ for our Christianity. It's not just an intellectual thing. It's not like I learned math. It's like a mathematician not only has learned math, but he or she loves math, because they're a mathematician. And that's where we want to be with this.
Now, Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, the famous love chapter, if I tap over there fast. 1 Corinthians 13, verse 13, where he concludes it, he says, “so now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love” (ESV). Paul's already talked about in our message today, faith and hope. And what we need to be chief among this tripod of things is the love part. The love part is more important, arguably, as Paul says, than having faith and having love. Jesus didn't say, “and you shall have faith in the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, etc." He didn't say, “you should have hope in the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your mind…” It was, “you shall love the Lord your God.” And that's what we're going for. That's the highest place we can be.
Tapping back to Ephesians. So the second part of the verse, “that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance and the saints.” We already went over that, but this hope to which he has called you, which Paul says is the inheritance. And what does the future entail for us? Well, I'm going to pull out a book here. A good book we can read to try to understand what is to come that I like is called ‘The Real Heaven: What the Bible Actually Says’ by Chip Ingram. This is a good gathering together of what we know to be factual. This is something that can help us to have a better picture of what Paul's talking about with the hope of what that which is to come. And I myself, I also did a couple of episodes, podcasts back in the day, probably eight-ish years ago on Heaven. It would be Peace to Live By episodes 79 and 80. And so I discussed some of the things that Chip Ingram discusses in his book, and those are available as well if you want to go that route.
But let's keep it moving. Verse 19, “and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” (ESV).
Wow, so 19 and 20 there. A lot going on, right? So, God's great power toward us. Well, all of us who are Christians have already experienced that, right? We've already experienced our conversion. Even if we were converted as a small child, we've still grown up in our faith. But a lot of us came from lives we weren't too proud of, from pasts we weren't too proud of. We know the great power of God working on our behalf. Collectively, for the church, we've seen God use pastors in great ways to spread his message, to help a lot of people. Remember, Jesus said, “Greater works than these.” So some people will do greater work than Jesus himself did. We have a plethora, a list far and wide of humans who have done that, of pastors who have done that. Recently at the church I attend locally here, they showed us a big long video. That was the message that day. There was no sermon. It was just a message on missions and what the church has accomplished through going on these little missions trips. And the people that have felt called to do that, that have that gifting, have gone and done that. And it's been incredible. Some of the work was small, but some of it was more on the bigger scale. But it goes to show—it showed us, what God is capable of doing. And that's just one example of all kinds of things. We know God heals people individually. He answers their prayers. I mean, we can go on and on about things that we could point to in our lives. Got this job, found the right person to marry, whatever, we can look at those things and say, “Wow, God used his great power toward us for those things.”
But really, God ultimately demonstrated his great power with the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus went to the cross, gained victory over Satan, died for our sins, and was buried in what? He rose after three days of his body and the grave. His spirit had descended to another area, but he was reunited with his physical body. So that is tremendously powerful. There's no other God we know of, no other religion, no other human that can do that, that has that power. That’s chief power. That's amazing stuff. We saw that in John chapter 11, when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. It's totally mind-blowing when you consider it logically, when you consider it intellectually.
Now, we have to be a little bit careful in reading this verse, because I just mentioned Satan and how Jesus gained victory over Satan. But after the resurrection, Satan doesn't cease to exist, right? He lost the war. He lost. He had Jesus put to death, thought he was doing the right thing to accomplish his purposes. It totally backfired; God totally reversed it. Satan lost all authority. But, Satan still exists. The fallen angels still exist. And unfortunately, as we are all aware of, they accomplish bad things in this world. And we have to be careful with this verse that we don't use it to try to breathe life into something or to magically change to use some magical thinking that something's going to change that probably isn't going to change because that's just not the way that this particular situation has gone.
On individual cases, people die and people get hurt. God works good out of those things, but we can't say because of this verse, because “of the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.” We can't say, “Well, man, I'm never going to have another problem again. I'm a Christian now. Everything's going to go my way. Everything's great. Satan doesn't exist for me. Can't touch me,” etc. I mean, sure, we believe God protects us. Absolutely. But there's also a part we play with our free wills and so on and so forth. Just don't want to take this verse and get an unrealistic expectation of the future. Remember, Paul just called it a hope. He didn't call it, “We have it now.” The things that are going to be ours, we have to get to them. And that journey of getting to them is going to include some unpleasant things, some unfortunate things that Satan may try to do against us. You know, we may sin ourselves. We may screw up. So we are aiming for that which is good. But I just want to point that thing out there, that caveat, I guess. I just want to point that out because I don't want us to start thinking in incorrect ways.
We can look at a few verses in conjunction with this. Colossians (remember Ephesians and Colossians being tied close together), Colossians 1:29, Paul says, “For this I toil, struggling with his energy that he powerfully works within me” (ESV). That verse is unique because it shows both sides of the coin. Paul says, “For this I toil,” right? So that's the negative side, the hard side. I mean, it's positive in that Paul's working towards something good, but he uses the word “toil,” which kind of insinuates some unpleasantness. And then he says, “struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” And I think that verse encapsulates what I'm trying to say is that it's not all roses and cherries from the moment we believe. And I'm sure most of us understand that, but especially for newer believers or just people wanting this, that, or the other. It’s good for us to bring it back to our remembrance.
And if we go to John chapter 17 in Jesus's High Priestly Prayer. I want to particularly note verse 15. Jesus said, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world,” he’s talking about his disciples, “but that you keep them from the evil one” (ESV). So again, if it was automatic that we were kept from the evil one, then why does Jesus have to pray that? What's the point? He would have said something along these lines. “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but I thank you that you are going to keep them from the evil one.” Nah, he doesn’t say that.
Ephesians 1 and verse 21, continuing along. Well, let's back up. “When he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places,” verse 21, “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come” (ESV).
Okay, wow. As I just alluded to, God gained victory, Jesus gained victory over Satan, when the whole process of the cross took place. And if we go to Matthew, right at the end of Matthew, we’re super familiar with it. Jesus says in chapter 28, verse 18, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (ESV). So that's the end result of Christ's accomplishment on the cross. We can even go further back than that, all the way back to Psalms. And let's look at Psalm 8 and verse 6. This is a Psalm of David. This is a prophecy. “You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet” (ESV). Part of that has already taken place, but the second part of that, we're told that that will come after the Battle of Armageddon. And there are different verses we could cite for that. We could consider Acts 1—whatever. There are different places that's found.
And what I'm talking about with this victory of Jesus over Satan at the cross, if you want to dive into that, there is a good theological book that I would recommend. And let me pull it up in my Amazon Kindle app. And so it's called ‘Christus Victor’ by Gustaf Aulen. This book explains different theories on atonement and even talks about, obviously, the Christus Victor view of atonement, where the emphasis is on Christ defeating Satan, and the emphasis is not on what is traditionally found, commonly, in Evangelical churches, the Penal Substitutionary Atonement. I don't want to get into any of that today, but that is a little aside, I guess, if you will, if that's something you want to dive into.
Going back to Ephesians then, and we're going to try to wrap this up. What that goes to show us, and really this goes without saying, is that Jesus Christ is the Head. He's the God, and all these other gods in the world from these other religions aren't the true God. Demons get involved in those other religions. There's demonic power. God might try to work and help people in other religions. He certainly does. But the point is that the real, the true God is Jesus Christ. It's not that there's a plethora of gods, and at the end of the day, just believe in whatever god you want. That's not the way it works. Jesus is the God. And when you find Christ, you have found the ultimate truth that you can find. And as Paul's been talking about, it's an incredible thing.
And verse 22, “And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all and all” (ESV).
We just were talking about how everything, all authority, was given to Jesus. Satan lost when Jesus died on the cross. Remember, in the temptations of Jesus in Matthew chapter 4, Satan said to Jesus that he could give him all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would simply bow down and worship him. Well, at that time, that period of time, Satan could have done that. But now he can't because he lost through the cross, and all that authority now belongs to Christ. That's the worldly aspect of it. And then there's also the aspect of Christ as the head of the church. And this can be a—I mean, I don't know that it's a super big debate with Christians—but perhaps, but Jesus Christ is the head. It's not the Apostle Paul. It's not the Roman Catholic Pope. It's not anybody down here that is the head. It's Jesus Christ. And I'm not saying that to dog on Catholics. I'm sure there are many Catholics who would totally, if not all, hopefully agree with that.
But who is this church? Well, in this context in Ephesians chapter 1, Paul is saying that this is the church collectively in the world. This isn't the church of Ephesus. This isn't Paul's denomination. This is the church collectively. And we call that the universal church. So everyone on the earth that's a true born-again Christian is part of the universal church. So that includes Roman Catholics. That includes Eastern Orthodox Christians. That includes, like myself, Evangelicals. That includes Anabaptists. Those who have aligned themselves with the truth in not a weird way, those who have believed in Jesus and had the born-again experience, we would say that within all those groups, there are born-again Christians. Now, it doesn't mean everybody in any of those groups is a true born-again Christian. We know that's not true; there are pretenders no matter where you go. You can't escape it. It's the nature of the world.
Paul says, Christ fills, he says, “which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all and all” (ESV). That concludes this prayer from the Apostle Paul. It's not a direct prayer. It's not like where he stopped and specifically prayed, but he's basically talking about what he prays about. And the point of this, the point of all these things Paul's talking about, the point of Paul's prayer is Christ’s fullness will be in all of us. Since Christ is God, since Christ is the chief example for us, since he didn't sin during his life, since he loved God with his whole being, and he gave us not only the Gospels, but all the other books in the New Testament, Paul's saying that, and of course some of those books didn't exist when he was writing this, but the point is, he wants Christ to fill each and every one of us to be the way to be the way he was. Not because Christ’s domineering, not because he's selfish, but because he was sin-free. And he lived in the best relationship possible he could with God while on the earth, he experienced, while certainly Satan did things against him, he experienced a life that was sin-free, that was correct.
John chapter 17 and verse 25, “O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them” (ESV). And that's what he wants for all of us. He wants us, as we study, as we learn things, that we gain that wisdom and knowledge. But chief of all, even over the hope, that we gain the love. Even over the faith, that we gain the love for God that he had, which we just saw there in John chapter 17, that we gain that love with God first, but also with our fellow Christians, and even that we demonstrate that love to those in the world.
And the beautiful thing about this is if you're not a Christian today, you can believe in Jesus Christ. You can believe in what he accomplished on the cross. You can put your faith in his sacrifice on the cross for all of your sins and his resurrection from the dead. And you can hold your faith in that and come into relationship with God, the real God, the Triune God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. You can be indwelled by the Spirit of God, sealed, and have a personal relationship and begin this transforming journey, this journey of faith, hope, but ultimately love, as we live out our lives and prepare, think about, for that which is to come.
- Daniel Litton