Rooted and Established in Love
Posted by Shannon on December 6, 2007
Today, I turned in my final paper in my Introduction to New Testament course. As one of my friends pointed out a few minutes ago, we are now 3 hours into our seminary career. I had to follow with only 89 more or so to go. Way to put things into perspective. Yay, me!
Today’s final was on our spiritual reflections regarding a passage in the New Testament. In other words, it was to be a mini-sermon of sorts on a passage of our selection. I chose a passage that was used by my church in North Carolina this summer as the motto for the youth mission trips in Ephesians 3:14-21. Here the Apostle Paul writes on why it is important for Christians to be strengthened by the love of God. But there is so much reality in this passage that I never saw before - the importance of faith communities in building up and supporting fellow Christians and letting Christ be at the center of our inner self.
Here is the article. I offer it partly because I’m glad the semester is coming to a conclusion, but also because I feel that we all need to hear the message of Christ’s daily strengthening for our lives.
What is true Christian love? What does it mean to let Christ be at the center of our lives? These are perhaps two questions that I have wrestled with the most in my short time in seminary and they both flow out of a desire to better understand the calling God has placed before my life and to better serve God. In wrestling with these questions, Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:14-21 speaks loudly. Here Paul appears to offer encouragement in this prayer, but also seems to speak at what true Christian love looks like and, as well, what it means to allow Christ to be at the center of our lives.
Before grappling with the spiritual realities of this passage, it’s important to examine the historical and literary context. Even though there have been questions among scholarships in the past century, authorship of Ephesians has generally been attributed to the Apostle Paul. Within this view of Pauline authorship, there are several views on when the epistle was written. Some argue that the letter was written in Ephesus in 55, some argue for Caesarea in 58, or even during Paul’s Roman imprisonment around 60.Peter O’Brien argues in his book The Letter to the Ephesians, that the most likely date for authorship was during Paul’s Roman imprisonment, but in 61 or 62.Regardless, Paul is believed to have first arrived in Ephesus at the end of his second missionary journey in 52 where he preached in local synagogues before leaving to go to Jerusalem. He would return a year later and stay for two more years.At the end of these journeys, Paul had established a strong community of Christian believers in Ephesus.
The letter appears to have a literary relationship with Colossians. Some have argued that the two letters were written at the same time and tackle similar issues. In Colossians, Paul addresses a specific problem, while a specific problem is not mentioned in Ephesians. The problem in Colossians is that of Christians feeling belittled or disqualified from life. In Colossians, Paul is attempting to bring encouragement to these Christians through his words about Christ’s love. Ephesians can be seen as a continuation of this encouragement, but to a larger audience. Paul’s prayer takes on the nature of an intercessory prayer, in Ephesians 3:14-19, for encouragement that makes three requests – granting, strengthening, and being filled to the fullness of God. The last two verses of this passage is a doxology.Within these prayer requests, the spiritual reality of Ephesians 3:14-21 comes to life.
It doesn’t take Paul long – just a few words – to speak about the reality of our relationship with God. In Ephesians 3:14, Paul writes “I bow my knees before the Father.” Kneeling is a traditional form of praying to God in today’s culture, but in Paul’s time standing was the more customary position for prayer.By kneeling, Paul is saying that we must humble ourselves before the Lord and submit ourselves to the will of the Father.By using the term Father for God, Paul shows that we are to have an intimate and personal relationship with God while giving him dignity and authority as the head of the family of believers.This aspect of God as Father is used 42 times by Paul, eight in this letter alone.
After humbling himself before God and indicating the intimate nature of our relationship with God, Paul enters into the heart of the prayer. In verse 3:16, Paul writes to become “strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit.” Our inner self, to Paul, is that aspect of our lives that is “accessible to God but which, in the case of the person under the law, is ultimately in bondage to the powers of the flesh and sin.”[13]We need to be strengthened through the love of God, to be empowered by his spirit and love, so that we may be able to withstand those temptations that hinder our relationship with God. This isn’t something that just occurs when we feel especially burdened by the troubles of life. Instead, we need to come to the Father daily, seeking his love and renewal in our being.Paul adds to this in the next verse, 3:17, where he writes ‘that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith and that you are being rooted and established in love.” The strengthening of our inner self continues in this verse. Here Paul tells the reader why it’s important to be strengthened by the spirit. As O’Brien writes, “To be empowered by the Spirit in the inner person means that Christ himself dwells in their heart.” The key here is to have faith and a relationship of trust with Jesus Christ.
When that relationship of trust occurs, then the fullness of being “rooted and established in love” can occur. Love is at the center of the Christian relationship either with Jesus or with others. It is to be the foundation, or the root, of our walk with Christ in which all other aspects of faith grows outward from. Lincoln writes, “Love is to be seen as God’s love embodied in Christ and meditated by the Spirit, but also as the power that moves believers to love others with no expectation of reward.”
When we’ve been empowered by the Spirit and have Christ living within our inner selves, then we are able to comprehend the spiritual nature of 3:18-19. Paul writes, “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” What Paul is writing here is that a true understanding of Christ’s love comes not just in our individual walk, but through our faith communities, whether in our churches or in small group experiences. In these communities, we are strengthened and cared for by the love of Christ through other believers.Paul follows this with another expression of Christ’s love using a hyperbole to express the extent of Christ’s love. It is endless. It knows no bounds.Paul is writing that we may understand Christ’s love for us,so that we may be filled by the fullness of God. That we may seek all that God has for us found in its divine fullness in Christ. By living our lives towards his will, we walk daily along the path of a new life even as we have already been united in the death, resurrection and exaltation of Christ.
Paul closes his prayer with a doxology in 3:20-21. At the heart of this doxology is Paul’s praise to God who is “able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.” In the last verse of the passage, the words church and Christ Jesus appear together. Paul is showing that the church is an important element of God’s grace and it is his realm where his wisdom is made known to the world. However, this grace and ultimately God’s glory cannot be removed from the love of Jesus Christ. It is through him that we are able to acknowledge God’s presence in our lives and have that love and strengthening that Paul desires for our lives through God’s love.
In discussing how Ephesians 3:14-21 impacts my discipleship, I return to the questions that I have wrestled with this semester – what is true Christian love and what does it mean to let Christ be at the center of our lives. Christian love is about being in community with others and sharing in the love of Christ. This has been where some of the biggest joys and growth in my life have occurred. In being in community with other believers, strengthened by their prayers and presence in my life, I was able to see healing from past hurts and pains and see truly the “breadth and length and height and depth” of the love of Christ. My renewal from God came in letting go of pain and allowing Christ to be at the center of my life and allow his presence at the center of my being heal and strengthen. I yearn for more of a community of believers in my life who are praying for each other and seeking God’s presence and will for our lives, similar to what I’ve had. With that, and even though I am in seminary, I still struggle with letting Christ be at the center, so verse 3:17 takes on a bigger challenge to trust in Christ more each day and his purpose for me here away from my friends and the comforts of a comfortable and loving community.
As for the community, Paul’s prayer is a prayer for encouragement for those whom feel that they have no hope. What better prayer for society today than the one found in Ephesians 3:14-21? This prayer in Ephesians speaks to those whom feel they have nothing and no one cares or loves them. In a larger sense, it speaks to a culture that has fostered and promoted the worst one can imagine. Paul writes that Christ’s love is bigger than any problem that someone is going through in their lives. All that is needed is a willing heart that allows Christ to come in and begin to work to strengthen his lost child or community. This is a message that the church needs to convey more. That no one is too far removed from the love of Christ. Instead of pushing people away or turning our backs on someone, the church should encourage those who struggle through these words by Paul. Through love and encouragement, we can begin to intercede in the lives of the hopeless and the communities at large so they may experience the fullness of Christ’s love and allow him to work to transform our inner selves.
