"14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
20 Now 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, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen."
Ephesians 3:14-21
Paul's prayer in these verses must surely be one of the most profound and moving in all Scripture; for sheer depth and richness it could hardly be surpassed in its beauty and significance. First of all we must see it in its proper context. We have pointed out earlier that chapter 3 begins with the phrase 'For this cause I, Paul ...', then goes off at a tangent from 2-13 before returning to his intending theme in 14 with a repeat of the words 'For this cause I, Paul ...'. The prayer that follows, therefore, is linked directly with the last words in 2:21, 22, about the church being 'an habitation of God through the Spirit'. This explains the reference in 17 about Christ 'dwelling in your hearts by faith' and being 'strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man' in 16, and being 'filled with all the fullness of God' in 19. What riches there are in this prayer for our study! By way of introduction we should note three things: first of all, the comprehensiveness of range in the prayer, in the fact that the entire holy Trinity is involved in this mighty work of grace - Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith; strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; and filled with all the fullness of God. It is a wonderful, if sobering, thought to realise that all the powers of the Godhead are involved in making us what we ought to be. Secondly, what we have said about the 'tangent' in 2-13 has real significance for our study now, and lends weight to what the prayer contains for us, in this sense: we spoke about the Church being a 'spectacle' to principalities and powers (3:10), showing forth the manifold wisdom of God. And if this is so, then the Church had better be worth seeing and worth looking at. This surely explains the burden upon the Apostle's heart that God's people should enter fully into their inheritance, and be all they ought to be.