A Wondrous Prayer
Ephesians 3:14–21
To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. Ephesians 3:19

If Christ’s love surpasses knowledge, how are we to grasp or know it? Although we cannot exhaust the love of Christ by our knowledge, we can nevertheless know this love truly. It is the same with the knowledge of God generally. We cannot know exhaustively, but we can know truly. So although, in the same way, we cannot know all of Christ’s love for us, we can know that what we perceive as Christ’s love is truly love. The love of Christ that we know at the beginning of our Christian life is the same love that we will know (though more fully) at the end. And we are to grow in our awareness of that love, particularly through the routine hardships, sufferings, and persecutions of life.

The most audacious part of the prayer is that believers may be filled with all the fullness of God. By the phrase “fullness of God,” Paul seems to be praying that we (and all other Christians) may be filled up to or unto all the fullness that is in God himself.

How can this be? Here is the highest rung of the ladder, the highest step of the stairs. We are to be filled with all God’s fullness, an infinite thing. But then, we have all eternity (an infinite time) to be so filled. I think Paul is praying that we will be filled and filled and filled and filled and filled—and so on forever, as God out of his infinite resources increasingly pours himself out into those sinful but now redeemed creatures he has rescued through the work of Christ.

I do not know how God is going to do that, and I will tell you something interesting: even though he talks about it, I do not think Paul understood it either. I say that because of the benediction that immediately follows this prayer. It is “to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us . . . ” (v. 20). When Paul says “we” he includes himself. He is saying that even he, the great apostle, cannot fully understand or even imagine all that God is going to do for us. But Paul does know that God can do it. And not only is God able to do it, he is able to do it “immeasurably,” which means indefinitely.

My mind stops at that, and I think that is where Paul’s mind stopped too. Beyond that top step on the staircase is infinity. It remains only to say, as Paul does, “to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever. Amen” (v. 21).

Taken from Come to the Waters by James Boice ISBN 9798887790954 used with permission from P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg NJ 08865

Scripture quotations are from the ESV (the Holy Bible English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.