The Apostle Paul now moves from the vertical to the horizontal, thinking more about human beings than God. This focus will not last for long, though. It never does.

With each verse, I am giving you my ‘straight’ or ‘by-the-book’ translation of the text from the Greek New Testament, and straightaway behind that I am providing you with what I call my ‘loose’ rendering that is faithful to the text yet strives for vernacular rather than technicalities. But first, if you’re interested in starting at the beginning, here are the relevant links:

Now, let’s get started, shall we?

Verse 15

All this to say, I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints.

As it relates to all this, I kept hearing about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints.

I love how Paul tries very hard to segue naturally from whatever it was you may have decided the theological tour de force of 3-14 was into a kind of, ‘now about you’ kind of thing. You might translate it, ‘Anyhoo, I heard about what was going on with you and your faith in Jesus…’ The original language is just two words that could mean ‘through this’ or ‘because of this’. Old school would have this be substantively understood for ‘reason’ or ‘thing’. ‘Because of this thing’ or ‘For this issue’. However you do it, it is an awkward break from the revelry of deep theological insight to, ‘now about you and some of the reason I am writing you.’

‘Anyhoo, I heard about what was going on with you and your faith in Jesus…’

We addressed in an earlier post as we were just beginning down the Ephesians 1 trail. We addressed then the oddity of Paul saying ‘he heard about them’ but the book of Acts teaches us Paul spent three years in Ephesus, the longest place he ever stayed anywhere. At that time we speculated if this might be evidence that Ephesians was a kind of circular letter not necessarily just intended for Ephesus. I told you then there were other reasons. I told you we would do that later. Later is now. Here are your basic options.

1. It was not written by Paul, but by someone else in Paul’s name.
2. It had been several years, at least five or six, since he had actually been in Ephesus, therefore what he is hearing about is recent activity.
3. The church, especially the leadership, had changed and though the same body not the same people.

I reject out of hand the first option, and though I understand the third one, I tend to favor number two–it had been a while and now he is hearing about their expression of faith and love. These folks in Ephesus had recently done something that impressed Paul.

Verse 16

I never stop giving thanks for you, making sure to remember you in my prayers

I never stop giving thanks for you, so much so I make it a point to remember you in my prayers

You can easily tell there is not much difference in these two renderings, as the verse is pretty straight forward in whatever language you put it in. Paul is thankful for them, and that thankfulness leads him to pray for them. There are two things that spring to mind, though. First, the idea of prayer and memory should cause us to think of Jesus’ words about communion — ‘do this in remembrance of me.’ Memory is a key act of worship, and as we see with Paul’s memory, also an important part of ministry and community. Sometimes we can’t help but forget because we are frail and weak creatures but sometimes our forgetting comes from laziness and sin. Forgetting can be a sin, which is why meaningful acts of worship will always call us to remember, remember who God is and who we are.

A second thing that comes to my mind is exactly how did Paul remember all these people? I am assuming he had these kinds of contacts all over the Mediterranean world. Did he have a list? I like to think Paul had a prayer list and that when he hands people over to the devil it means he has scratched them off the list. I’m looking at you, Hymenaeus and Alexander (1 Timothy 1:20)!

My point is, I can’t believe he left it to chance or was capricious about it. He would have had some sort of system to his prayers, some method of remembering who to pray for and when — Monday was Ephesus, Tuesday was Philippi, Wednesday was Corinth, etc…

Verse 17

so that the God of our Lord Messiah Jesus, the Father of Glory, may give you a wise spirit, a revelation of knowledge of him,

because I want the Father of Glory, the God of our Lord Messiah Jesus, to give you spiritual wisdom, revealing a knowledge of him,

The sentence continues from the thought he began in verse 16. In verse 16 he says he’s praying, now he begins to tell us what he is praying. It sounds like two things, one being wisdom, specifically a spiritual kind of wisdom or maybe a wisdom that flows from spiritual maturity and the second then is knowledge of God. Giving spiritual wisdom and revealing knowledge of him. In the original language, Paul has put the word for spirit and the word for wisdom side by side, creating a kind of compound word, ‘spirit-wisdom’. I feel like I need more spirit-wisdom. Maybe someone out there is praying for me to have it.

Think on it, though, and it becomes not two things but one thing for a knowledge of God is the only path toward spiritual wisdom. We might understand it as spiritual maturity. He is praying for them to be grown-ups, and act like it. The time to behave like spiritual babies is over, he is praying for them to grow up.

We can’t leave this passage without mention of the great Arian problem here. Arius was a condemned heretic who taught Jesus was a secondary, created being by God rather than the eternal word. For modern reference, his view was not too different from Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses. Arians used this verse to push the case — ‘The God of our Lord Messiah Jesus’ to mean Jesus worshipped God just as we do, ergo he is a secondary being.

That kind of hermeneutic may be riveting, but it fails in at least three ways. First, it fails to consider the entire witness of scripture which teaches us Jesus is eternal and he is God. One would have to reject the Fourth Gospel’s opening lines to embrace Arianism: ‘In the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and the word was with God.’ Second, it fails in that it stretches this single phrase, which Paul is thickly stacking, to where Paul doesn’t intend it to go. This ‘The God of our Lord Messiah Jesus’ is more about affirming to a people in a cultural pluralism that the God he is referencing is the God of the Old Testament, not a philosophical god of the Greek intelligentsia nor is it a pagan god of the pantheon. Third, Arianism fails to understand that the Trinity, three personalities and one God-substance, work in such perfect harmony that they are one yet each has a specific role, and in the role of savior Jesus became submissive to the will of God — the Triune God of which he is part — all the way to the cross. Submission, in the kingdom of God, does not mean lesser.

Verse 18

having enlightened the eyes of your hearts to know what is the hope of this call, what the riches of his glorious inheritance are among the saints.

illuminating the eyes of your hearts so you know the hope of his call, the fabulous riches of our inheritance to all the saints.

What strikes me most about this verse is the mixing of what we would understand the internal organs of the body do. We think of our hearts as ‘feeling’ organs although most of us understand the heart is a pump and what we often refer to as our heart is actually an emotional response based upon a lot of things going on biologically, not the least of which are hormones, serotonin, and a much more. So when a person says ‘my heart hurts,’ unless they are having a medical cardiac episode, they mean there is distress in their soul, in their feelings.

By contrast we think of the brain, or the mind, as the place where we know things. Our brains think, remember, plan, scheme, and do all sorts of wonderful things related to knowledge.

Paul is aware of this difference, as well. He will at times talk about the renewing and transforming of our mind, and he will likewise mention the anguish of the heart. So he knows that difference, even if he might use different words. But here he prays for their hearts to enlightened, and he even talks about the eyes of the heart. He wants them to think with their hearts.

The word is not ‘opened’ — he is not praying for the eyes to be opened, but to have enough light to see. Their eyes are already opened, because they have given themselves to Messiah Jesus. He wants this to happen so that they may know — to know with the heart as well as with the mind — about our future inheritance.

Paul is praying for them to feel what they already know. We might call that the eighteen-inch journey from head to heart. Praying others make that journey is not a bad idea. He is not praying about salvation, but spiritual enlightenment.

Paul is praying for them to feel what they already know.

Verse 19

and what the exceeding greatness of his power, according to his might and strength, working among those of us who are believing.

and more, the exceeding greatness of his power working among us believers by his might and strength.

This sentence is clear in its intent, isn’t it? It connects itself wit verse 18 as what Paul is praying, and spiritual enlightenment means understanding something about God. What is that something? To describe it, he stacks one word on another.

No one word should be focused on too much here because the blessed apostle has grabbed the entire lexicon of words to make one point. He is praying for the Ephesian Christians to realize how big and powerful and strong God is. And that big, powerful, strong God is stronger, bigger, and more powerful than language can communicate.

Before we wrap up, please indulge me for a little word play. The ancient Greeks thought of ‘working’ or ‘energy’ power as a kind of actual power, something active right now, whereas dunamis power is more about potential power. A sleeping horse is dunamis. A running horse is energy. Both have power; one is at rest and the other is motion.

God is both.