There was an orphan living in England who was born to very poor, very scared parents. After much deliberation, they decided to give their child up for adoption, hoping he might have a better life than they could provide. But that child went years without ever being adopted. Other children would come and go, finding parents of their own, but this child would get passed over every single time. So he began to accept his fate, embracing the identity that he was not wanted, that he was on his own, and that any hope he had in this life would fall on him alone.
One day a visitor came to the orphanage asking specifically for that boy. The visitor introduced himself as an ambassador sent from the palace of the King, explaining that the King had made a decision to adopt this boy whom nobody else wanted. The ambassador was going to stay with the boy until the King himself came to bring him back to his own house. As you can imagine, the boy’s excitement was immeasurable. Not only had someone finally chosen to love him and welcome him, but he wasn’t being brought into just any household — he was being adopted by the King, and he felt the full joy of that. He began telling everyone what had happened to him, that he had been adopted by the King, brought into a new family, and that this ambassador was with him, watching over him and providing for his needs.
Then strange things began to happen. One day the ambassador noticed the boy wasn’t around, so he went up to his room and found him sitting in the corner, crying to himself. He asked the boy what was wrong, and the boy said, “I started to get hungry, and I’ve gone hungry before. I’ve had to go days without food, and I’m just worried that I’m going to be hungry and not have what I need.” The ambassador said, “Don’t you understand? I have the resources of the king. I can make sure you never go hungry.”
A few days later, the ambassador was walking down the street to pick up some supplies, and as he passed a corner, he saw the boy working as a shoeshiner, trying to earn pennies a day. He stopped the boy and asked what he was doing, and the boy said, “I need to make a living for myself. This is the only job anybody would give to an uneducated orphan like me, and I’m just trying to gather what I can. I’m trying to build something.” The ambassador looked at him and said, “Don’t you understand? I have the riches of the kingdom at my disposal, and those riches belong to you. You’re an heir. You don’t have to be a shoeshiner. You already have everything you need.”
A few days after that, the boy came in trying to hide himself. The ambassador stopped him and said, “Look at me,” and saw that he had a black eye. Concerned, he asked what happened, and the boy said, “Some of the other boys found out I had been adopted by the king, and they were angry with me. They’ve been threatening me for weeks, but I’ve always been on my own, so I figured I had to work this out myself. They’re bigger than I am, and when the time came, I couldn’t defend myself. They beat me up and left me on my own.” The ambassador looked at him and said, “Boy, don’t you understand? The armies of the king belong to you. His bodyguards are at your disposal. The king is coming back to get you, but in the meantime, you already belong to him. You don’t have to fight your own battles anymore.” Then, with a loving smile, the ambassador said, “You know what your problem is? You don’t yet understand who you are. You don’t understand what belongs to you. If only you could grasp that you are a child of the King.”
Now, this is a fictional story. But it illustrates the condition of many Christians living in this world today, and I dare say it illustrates the reality of many of you sitting in this room right now. We trust God for salvation. We hear the gospel and believe the truth of who we are as sinners and who Christ was as a great Savior. We bow before Him, repent of our sins, ask for His forgiveness, and receive His salvation. We believe that we are saved and that we are children of God, and we believe, somewhere in the back of our minds, that when we stop living in this world, we’re going to go to heaven one day — although we have a hard time even understanding what that means. But we have no concept of what belongs to us through this adoption we have received in Jesus Christ.
This is very much a problem we face today, but understand — it is not a new problem. Paul, writing to the Ephesians, addresses this exact issue. He’s writing to a church that has explicitly believed the gospel, confessed their faith in Jesus Christ, and even begun to live out that faith. But they are living their lives day by day as if they are still orphans and beggars in the world. Paul, loving the Ephesians and wanting them to know and understand the fullness of what is theirs in Christ, writes this letter hoping to encourage them to embrace the fullness of their identity as children of the King. As we saw a couple of weeks ago, he begins by explaining that they have been chosen by the King to be His adopted children — that despite their sinfulness, and apart from anything they did to deserve or receive it, they were chosen before the foundations of the world to be children of the King. That is their identity. If they are in Christ, if they are born again, if they have received the gospel, they are chosen children of the King, with access to the Father through the sacrifice of the Son, Jesus Christ.
After finishing that introduction, Paul begins to pray for them, and he records this prayer — and I thank God that he did. In this prayer, he brings out three things he wants the Ephesians to know and understand, three things meant to help solidify their identity. Paul’s desire is that this prayer will lead them into a deeper understanding of who they are, and can I just say, as your pastor this morning, this is my desire for you as well. I have prayed this prayer over this congregation this week, because I want you to get what Paul is describing here. I’m afraid that too many of you are still living like beggars and orphans. You know you’re saved, you know you’re going to heaven, but you spend your days as if you are spiritually impoverished. I want you to live in the riches that have been made available to you through your adoption in Christ, and I want to show you these three points of Paul’s prayer and how they are very real for you today — how they can change your life by God’s grace.
Paul Praises God for Their Faith
The first point Paul makes in this prayer is to praise God for the faith of the Ephesians. Notice what he says in verses 15 and 16: “Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers.” Before Paul ever asks for anything, he stops to thank God for the faith and love being displayed in Ephesus, and there are several things we need to appreciate about this.
First, this helps us understand that Paul is not writing to an unbelieving audience curious about Christianity. This is not an apologetic letter, not an attempt to make a case for Christianity to unbelievers the way Romans does. Ephesians is a book for those who are already saved. Paul is telling them, in effect, “I have heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus” — meaning they have already professed belief in the gospel, heard it preached, been convinced of what they heard, made their profession, and been baptized into the family of Christ. They are, by public profession, part of God’s body.
Not only have they made a public profession, but they are already displaying the fruits of that profession in their lives. Notice again: “after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints.” These are not Christians who signed a card, went through the motions of baptism, and joined a church with no evidence of change in their lives. These are believers who made the profession, received the baptism, and entered the family of God, and whose lives are already beginning to show the fruit of inward transformation — showing love to the body of Christ, which is one of the most prominent marks of someone who has actually been born again.
Think about it: the church is such a strange entity. It’s a bunch of people who don’t have anything in common — coming from all different walks of life, social levels, professions, and cultures — coming together and loving on each other in the name of somebody they’ve never met. That doesn’t make sense to somebody who doesn’t have that person living inside of them. There are people who come into the church for whatever social, financial, or strategic benefit they can get from it, treating it like a country club or a networking event or a “get out of hell free” card, without any real desire to be part of the body or to love the body. You’ve all met these people — they’ll be the first to get involved, but they sure do cause a lot of problems along the way. But people who have the Spirit living inside of them have a special kind of love for God’s people, and the Ephesians were displaying exactly that kind of love. They didn’t just make the profession — they were living the profession, showing love to other people.
We need to realize Paul is writing to people who, both by their profession and by their testimony, are genuinely born-again believers in Jesus Christ who have the real deal. And Paul stops to thank God for their faith and for the love they are displaying — which is important, because Paul does not beat them down for what they don’t have or don’t understand. He lifts them up for what they do have and do understand. Nobody gets mad at a three-year-old for not understanding advanced algebra; we thank God when that three-year-old can start to say their ABCs. We get excited for where they are, at the level they’re at.
And I want you to know this morning, as your pastor speaking to this church, that I thank God we have a church full of real believers. There are people in this body with real and profound testimonies of how God’s grace reached them right where they were, and I thank God I get to be a part of this church. I thank God for each and every one of you, because as I look around this room, I see a room full of people who not only profess a faith, but I watch the way you love on each other. I watch the way you pray for each other. You care about each other, and that’s one thing I’ve heard from people who visit and eventually join this church — they say they love it because it’s not just a church, it’s a family. You may not be big in number, and honestly, that’s okay — that’s actually kind of a good thing. But the love you have for each other is real, and I thank God we get to be part of a church like the one in Ephesus: professing faith, having faith, showing love. What a wonderful thing that is.
Paul Prays for Deeper Understanding
But Paul doesn’t stop with praise for where they are. He goes on to pray that God will take them to deeper levels of understanding. Read with me in verses 17 through 19: “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power.”
Paul is speaking to born-again believers — people who’ve got the goods, whose testimony and lifestyle are testifying to real change within them. But at the very same time, Paul recognizes that there are levels of understanding they have not yet attained. While they profess faith in Jesus Christ, and while they are faithful to that testimony in the way they walk and live, their mentality, their emotions, and their decisions all testify to the reality that there are truths they have not yet comprehended. They’re saved, they’re loving, they’re growing — but there are riches already theirs that they’re not yet taking advantage of. So Paul tells them, in effect, “I thank God for what you do have, but I don’t want you satisfied with where you are. I want you to be hungry and to keep growing in the things of God, so that you can reach new levels of understanding, new levels of blessing, new levels of power and hope and joy and excitement in the things of God.”
I used to love this when I worked at Chick-fil-A — it’s stuck with me all these years later. In the back of the restaurant, we kept a quote from Truett Cathy hanging on the wall that said, “We are content, but never satisfied.” Contentment is a fruit of the Spirit. It’s being thankful for what God has given us, being grateful for where we are, appreciating what God has done to bring us to where we are, and we are called in Scripture to be content with what God has provided. But we are never called in Scripture to be satisfied with where we are spiritually. In fact, the Bible tells us again and again that we are to remain hungry and thirsty at every stage of our Christian growth. We are to be content, we are to be grateful, but we are never to be satisfied — because when we get satisfied, when we’re no longer hungry or thirsty, we stop growing.
Just like our physical growth in this life, there is a spiritual growth that is supposed to be happening in us. Paul is telling the Ephesians, “You are born again, you are showing fruit, you are growing, but there are levels of your faith you have not yet seen that I want you to see.” He says there is hope to be had. He wants them enlightened in the eyes of their understanding — not just knowledge, but knowledge that becomes wisdom. He wants them to have spiritual revelations of truths and realities already present in their lives.
He prays that the eyes of their understanding will be enlightened so that they may know what is the hope of their calling. Folks, how many of us need hope today? Hope as we face a broken world and a broken society. Hope as we face sicknesses and trials and financial burdens and issues with friends, family, and co-workers — we need some hope to keep us going. And how many of us have spent days and weeks wanting that hope but never feeling like we have it? Do you realize that hope is a gift you receive at the moment of salvation, and that it does not come and go? The hope of your calling, the hope of what you have in Jesus Christ, the hope of the eternal reward that lies ahead of you — that is not something that’s only there when you feel it. It never goes away. Nobody can take your hope from you. The problem is that we don’t always have the spiritual eyes to see it, and so Paul prays that God will give us that understanding of what is ours in Christ, so that we will have the hope of our calling.
He continues: not only the hope of this calling, but “the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.” Earlier, in that illustration about the King of England, we talked about how he has palaces, planes, cars, wealth, money in the bank — he can buy whatever he wants, do whatever he wants, go wherever he wants. There is no resource he lacks; if he decides he wants something, he can have it. But that is one king of one nation, and even his life is still limited. Folks, we are the children of an eternal King, not just the king of one earthly kingdom. We are the children of the King of the universe — the One who framed the stars, who put the gold in the ground that we mine and search for, who created all wisdom and all knowledge, who has all power and all glory. There is nothing, literally nothing, that is not at His disposal, and He has chosen you to be His child. Do you think there is anything you need in this life that He cannot provide? Any spiritual debt He cannot pay for you? Any trial you can face that He cannot provide the resources for? Any temptation you’re facing that He does not have the ability to overcome? We are the children of a rich and powerful King, and Paul knows that and lives that out. But he understands that the Ephesians have not yet grasped the depth of what belongs to them, and while they’re saved and walking with the Lord and trying to serve Him, they are lacking the power and resources that could already be theirs, if only they would understand that it already belongs to them.
Not only the hope, not only the inheritance, but verse 19: “and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power.” We have a powerful God — a God who has split seas, a God who brought a worldwide flood by the sound of His voice, a God who spoke galaxies into existence, a God who buried armies without the Israelites ever having to lift a finger, a God who drops giants in their tracks, a God who can speak and make hurricanes vanish. And that God looks at you and calls you son and daughter. So what are you facing that you feel inadequate for? What feels bigger than you? What feels like too much for you to handle? Be reminded this morning that the God who is rich, the God who is powerful, the God who is never afraid and never scared, loves you and chose you and has called you to be His child. Do not be afraid. Do not be overwhelmed. Do not fear for how you will make ends meet, because He has already made the ends meet. He has everything you need, and it is available to you — not sometime in the distant future, but right in this very moment. Praise God for a rich, powerful God who loves us and calls us His children.
Paul Points To Christ
But the last thing Paul does is point us to the Christ who makes all of this possible. Look at verse 20, still speaking of that power described in verse 19: “Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.”
Paul is saying that we need some evidence of the power available to us, some assurance of the hope and inheritance that has been made available to us, so he points us to Jesus Christ. God, by His power, was able to raise Jesus up from the dead — nobody else can do that. He raised up the One who was crucified, the One who suffered, the One who took your sin and nailed it to a tree, and He rose from the dead and showed His victory and His power over all the forces of evil and over all the powers of mankind. God revealed how great, how big, and how powerful He is in the resurrection of Christ. Not only did Christ rise from the dead, but He ascended to a heavenly throne where He is seated at God’s right hand — a place of honor above every other name, above every other power, above every other spiritual and earthly force. All of it is so far below Him that it must bow down to behold Him. God did all of that by His own power.
What Paul is reminding us of this morning is that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, the same power that placed Him in heavenly places, is yours. It has been bestowed upon you by the blood of Jesus Christ and by the working of the Holy Spirit. What am I telling you this morning, Christian? I’m telling you that you are already victorious today. Whatever trial you’re facing, you have the power to overcome. Whatever temptation you’re facing, God has the power to crush it and destroy it. Whatever loneliness you’re feeling, God has the comfort to come in and embrace you in it. Whatever you’re going through, God is big enough to deal with it. You are not alone. You are not left to your own devices. You are not left to fight your battles on your own, or to pursue righteousness without God’s help. If you need it, He’s got it, and it has already been entrusted to you through the inheritance of His Holy Spirit.
But we don’t understand that, and therefore we don’t live out of it. For years, we have watched the church lose its power and lose its ground, and we’re all looking around at each other wondering who’s not getting it right. Here’s the truth: we believe on God for salvation, we believe we’re going to heaven one day, but we spend most of the rest of our lives living in our own power, our own wisdom, our own understanding — and then we wonder why God’s not showing up. Here’s the gift I’m extending to you today: you don’t have to live another day in your own power, because the power of God has already been offered to you.
How Do We Get There?
As we bring this to a close, you might be thinking, “Justin, that sounds great, but how do I actually have that? I don’t see that kind of universe-shaking power in my day-to-day life. How do I have that kind of Spirit-filled power and confidence and joy and hope?” You get it the same way Paul got it, and the same way the Ephesians got it. You go to God and say what Paul said: “I cease not to give thanks and to make mention in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.”
It’s not something you get from picking up the right devotional. It’s not something you get by perfecting your prayer routine or by trying hard enough. This kind of depth and power and wisdom only comes when we humble ourselves before God and say, “God, I need it. I don’t have it, and I want You to give it.” It’s there. It’s available. It can change your life, and it can bring people through those doors to be born again and transformed by the gospel. But it only comes when we become humble and hungry enough to say, “God, I need it, and only You can give it.”
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