Ephesians 1:15-23: Prayers that Please the Father

The title for the new Christian society is the body of Christ. This designation goes back to 1st Chron 12 & Romans 12 which teach of the original body of the chosen people under the tribes and then concerning the character of believers.

The church is like a body to carry out the tasks Christ appoints for it and.in that instrument of service each member plays a part as a portion of the body.

Verse 15 notes that Paul did not know his readers personally (yet). The news of their faith in Christ and its evidence in active love of the members for each other has reached him while he is distant. Paul is known to have a sustained devoted ministry of prayer for his congregations, both those he knew personally and those known from a distance.

Now his prayer is that these readers may be given the insight to see the truth as Paul teaches it and to remain firm in a time when rival teachers will try to sidetrack them, as we will later see in chapters 4 & 5. The supreme teaching is the raising of Jesus from the dead, seen in verse 20 as the perfect display of divine power.

The raising of the crucified Jesus was followed by His elevation to God's right hand in the heavenly places (verse 20) where He is seated. This picture language is taken from Psalm 110: 1 ( where David testified to this seating of his Lord) and this text gave early Christians their confidence to believe that their Messiah is a full partner in the divine court. The power from this time forward was well described in Hebrews 1 :3 where we are taught that Jesus upholds all things by the word of His power.

God has given Christ the position as head of all things concerning the church on earth. The church, as "Christ's body" is the natural compliment to Christ as the head, and verse 13 teaches ·us that after we are saved we are sealed by the Holy Spirit for service.

Paul is not asking the Father to give the Ephesian Christians the Holy Spirit as it is already indwelled within them from the moment of salvation of each one but he asks for a greater spirit of fuller understanding of God and His grace. The goal of wisdom and revelation requested in verse 17 is "knowledge of Him".

Until the Lord opens them, the eyes of our heart are blind. Scriptural proof is given to us in Acts 16: 14 concerning Lydia, whose heart the Lord opened so that she might attend to the words of Paul. After conversion the Lord continues to work to give us insight into His revealed Word and to deepen our personal relationship with Him.

As Paul continues his prayer for the Ephesians in verses 18-20 he adds that he is praying for the Lord to give them knowledge of the hope to which He has called all believers in addition to knowledge of the divine character.

In scripture, hope is not a reference to uncertainty or lack of confidence in what the future will bring, rather it is another word used for confident anticipation. We have a hope that exists outside ourselves which is that Christ will surely return, as promised, and will reign over all in the sight of all. Inwardly, hope is the confidence that we will participate in the benefits of this eternity. These are the things Paul seeks for the believers in the church at Ephesus.

While we as believers do remain in hope, we also are aware that humanity violates the moral law of God consistently throwing creation at times into disorder and confusion and thinks arrogantly that this spiritual darkness will prevail.

Paul is clear in these verses that this state of affairs will not last forever. The Lord contains all things inside the boundaries of His divine rule, which is sovereign over all. Paul speaks here of the fullness of Christ filling all in all in verses 22 & 23.

God directs all things to their appointed ends in His eternal plan to make His reign evident over all things, uniting earth and heaven in one in submission to Jesus when every knee bows and every tongue confesses.

Until that moment, this reign of God is acknowledged in a special way in His church, which is the body of Christ until He returns bodily and glorified to rule here.

Because the faithful church bows to Christ willingly and now, it receives special graces and gifts not found in the outside world. Churches faithful to God's revealed Word enjoy the blessings of discipline, growth in servant love for others, the presence of the Holy Spirit, and many added gifts. These are the kinds of churches Jesus called into existence for our lives to prosper until His day of return.