I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Ephesians 1-3.
There are several themes which Paul weaves in and out through this passage. I think Paul’s tendency to do this may be part of what sometimes makes him hard to understand. On the other hand, it also helps to make his points better understood once we take the effort to do so. Because Paul does not stick to one theme until he has fully explained it, we often lose the thread of what he is saying. However, these various themes are interrelated and to understand one you need to understand that it relates to others. Additionally, our finite minds cannot fully comprehend God’s truth. If Paul systematically explained his understanding of the various doctrines we might more fully understand what he was saying, but that would give us a false confidence in our comprehension of God’s truth. While I do believe that the Holy Spirit will empower us to understand God’s truth, that understanding must be tempered with a humility which comes from being confused by the seeming paradoxes involved.
Paul writes that he prays that we will understand the greatness of God’s power in us. A power that is so great that it can do more than we can ask, or even imagine, and not just more, but infinitely more. From time to time a marketing campaign will come out where they claim that their product is better than we can imagine. To which many people reply, “I don’t know about that. I can imagine a lot.” Well, in this case it is true: God’s power can do more than we can imagine by a scale that beggars how much our imagination exceeds the capacity of the marketed item. Often times when we ask God for things we not only fail by limiting what we ask for to what is “realistic”, but by asking for the wrong category of solution. Of course, we should not blame ourselves for our failure to ask or imagine what God’s power can do because it is not possible for us ask for anything that approaches the limits to God’s power. There are no such limits.
Paul explains that the power of God which works for us and through us is the same power which raised Christ from the dead. God gave that power to Christ when He put all things under Christ’s authority. That authority flows through the Church, which is Christ’s body. As Paul explains elsewhere, each and every believer is a part of Christ’s body and as such God’s power flows to us and through us. Further, as members of Christ’s body we have been united with other believers with whom the world would tell us we should be in conflict. That unity results from us being in Christ and no longer living in sin. Paul points out that being in Christ is incompatible with following the desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. Let us call on the Holy Spirit to keep us from doing so, always praying with the Father from Matthew, “I believe, help my unbelief.” In this case calling on the Holy Spirit to remove those sinful desires from us.
