Since this is a beautiful blessing that Paul prays over the believers at Ephesus I just wanted to post this blog here today at the start of 2025 as something for us to reflect upon and look to as we begin a new year….

Paul starts off by saying that since you are believers I am going to say this prayer of blessing for you. He’s not saying it to everyone, he is saying it to believers - those who were given faith to believe in Jesus as their Saviour, those made awake efficaciously to faith. And he writes that they also love the saints - the set apart and called to faith ones. Now here I want to define what the word love is - I’ve put an extended explanation of it in the Glossary that I included below - but here Paul writes two things: 1) that they love each other in a godly way - that the people at Ephesus were loving each other as they pointed each other to God’s objective truth as they were looking to it themselves. Godly love is not a man-focused thing, it’s not a man’s glory thing, it’s not an unthinking loyalty-type thing. It’s being the recipient of everything that He did and living in worship as a response to that and pointing each other to that joy (which, I will just add, includes saying no). And 2) it says that they loved the saints - called out and set apart ones by God. It doesn’t say local church. It says saints - the believers, the universal church - any one who possesses faith, not just professes faith. The invisible church, not the visible church. Paul speaks about this in Romans 9 when he says that there was a true Israel, which was the spiritual remnant = those who had been given faith, and a physical Israel. It is not the local church that is talked about here, it is the believers, the universal church.

So then Paul goes on to say that he always remembers them in his prayers and this is what he prays over them:

“That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.”

Look at that beautiful passage! That is a rich blessing, let me tell you. Let’s break it down a bit…

So his prayer is that the Heavenly Father (again, similar to a previous post says, he is showing that we pray to the Father through Jesus), the Father of glory (He who is all glorious, the One who is full of glory), would give them eyes to see Him more and more through the Spirit, that they would have the wisdom and the knowledge of God that comes through the Spirit who guides God’s people into the truth of Him, and that they would have this sight of God as the eyes of their hearts are opened and enlightened to see this more, by His doing.

And then Paul lists a bunch of things that they would joyously see:

• 1. What is the hope to which He has called you - God the Father, the Almighty, all-sovereign, all-knowing God, sent His Son to die on the cross for His people and, as has been mentioned in previous posts, it was a sufficient and complete sacrifice. What God has spoken out about His plan of redemption and salvation, it was completed. It did not return back to Him unfinished. Christ did the work that was necessary for His people and because of this, because He is sovereign and Christ’s work is sufficient, we can know that we are held in mighty and sovereign hands and that the promises He has made to His people will happen and will not be surprisingly interrupted or canceled or thwarted in any way. This is the hope that His people have. When we face hardships, when we are struggling, we can know that we are sojourners in this land, that though the physical may be impacted, the spiritual will not. We will be changed, we will grow in Christlikeness. And we can worship Him in joyful response to all of this work that He has done and it will lead to a life of worship that does not need to be loud or look for attention, but that rests in Him. The light of His glory shines out as we look to Him in awe, and we are delighted in that because He gets the glory alone. We know we are small and we know that it is His work within us, He who is our Hope and Help.
• 2. What are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints - Oh, and do we have riches! Riches unending and riches glorious beyond words. As we are found in the true Son, the Beloved, we are adopted as children, we are seen through Christ and changed to be as we are already seen as being, He sanctifies us, He changes us, we desire what our Head desires for we are the Body, we are left the Spirit as a seal to dwell within us to teach us and guide us in truth and conviction, we will not die but live eternally before the beauty of His glory. I could go on and on, but this is astounding already in just these words alone!
• 3. What is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe - He opened our eyes to see Him and make us alive when we were dead. And for us who have faith, His power is at work within us to change us, to grow us, to show us His glory, to teach us of Him and we can know the joy that is found in living in awe of this beholding! That same power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at the right hand of God the Father in heaven is at work in our lives. Do you comprehend that? Through the Spirit at work within us to sanctify us, to teach us, to convict us. Through the work of Christ that was according to the plan of the Godhead. This powerful authority - WAY more powerful than any human power or ruler or world kingdom, WAY more powerful than any powerful human being that you could think of, way WAY more powerful than our little selves - God the Father raised Christ from the dead and seated Him in a position abundantly higher than anyone else from now until forevermore and this power that did this is at work in our lives and was at work in our salvation. Woah!

And then Paul ends with these verses: “And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

So, what does this mean? In continuation of Christ being lifted up above all other names and rulers and authorities, similarly God the Father also put all things under His feet. He is the absolute authority, He is sovereign, because Jesus is God. That sometimes gets lost in people’s discussions about Jesus because they want to focus on Him being man so that, in their focus of wanting to be like god or their own saviour, they can be like Him. But Jesus was God - He lived a perfect life for us, His sacrifice was sufficient because He was perfectly Divine. He came in the form of man, so that He could go to the cross in our place, but He was absolutely God. When it comes to speaking about His people this is significant because it is highlighting His Lordship, especially as it goes into the topic of the church. He is the Head of the church - the universal church, remember. Not the pastor. The pastor is not the head, the pastor is a sheep like everyone else. Christ is the Head. And all of those who have been given sight to see through eyes of faith are His body. We are covered by His royal robes of righteousness, we are found under the umbrella of His work as our propitiation, we are filled with the Spirit that He left for His people as He ascended to His throne. And, because of this, we can be certain that we will be changed because the body does not do things apart from the Head or the brain, the branch does not bear different fruit than the Vine - He will change our desires to be according to the joy that He desires for His people. But it not only says this, it also says another wonderful thing: we are submissive to Him. I know some people don’t like this word, but let me tell you, how this word is meant to be used (not like how the world uses it) makes it a beautiful word. Let’s take a look…

So, in marriage, a man leads his family in servant leadership. He points to the beautiful relationship between Christ and His Bride in this. What did Christ come to do? He “came not to be served but to serve.” A man is supposed to serve his wife and she is the recipient of that serving. He gives and she is the receiver of that giving. Do you see that? Christ came and He did everything for His people. He lived the life they couldn’t live, He died in their place, He paid the cost for their sin, He brought His perfect sacrifice before the Father, He rose again to declare that it was finished, He left His Spirit to guide His people, He poured out His grace upon His people who He had come to die for. Christ did all the work! Christ served His people. He lay down His life for her. He didn’t come to be served. So what man can say to serve him or that he must be served when the Son of God didn’t even do that? The man is to serve his wife, to initiate conversation with her, to know her, to be involved in her life, to walk beside her, to inquire about her emotional and mental and spiritual life. Again, like a previous post talked about, a man’s main focus is not to just care about money and doing his work stuff and not being around for his spouse - that is a completely external thing. God never promised His people material possessions or what the world has said means success or blessing. God promised His people what is most important - Him, the joy in seeing Him and His glory and knowing Him. Our biggest success is not wealth, it’s not getting the house with the white picket fence that could be here one day and gone the next, it’s not being so focused on work that servant leadership (what is primary in pointing towards Christ’s relationship with the church) is neglected. And our biggest need is not food or shelter (at least not how the world defines it), our biggest need is Him. Again, God’s focus is not external, it is internal. The biggest thing that Christ came to do was not give His people more money or help the Jewish people overthrow the Roman Empire. He came for the people that He had been sent to die for from before the foundation of the world for their SPIRITUAL life - internal. When a man leads in a way that looks to God, who the woman and man are both submissive to, and points to the relationship between Christ and the church by serving his wife, being involved in her life, inquiring about her, knowing her, initiating conversation and decisions and plans and teaching and training up the children with her (if there are any) that they might become functioning godly adults - this is servant leadership.

But it also says one other thing further on in Ephesians 5 - the man is to look at his wife as though they are one, as though she is part of himself. So, not only does this mean that he will respect her and value her mind and begin conversation with her as they think through what is the wisest thing biblically for them to do that they might worship God and live in light of His objective truth, but this makes the above point about serving by saying it a little differently. If you are a functioning adult man, what would you have to do - well, you'd want to clean your clothes and house and make your meals and so on and so forth. This would just be part of your everyday life, right? Well, in a home where the man is the servant leader of the household, and the woman is under his headship, why would the thought be that the man stops doing these things and is served in these areas. If he would be doing those things for himself as an adult man, why would this stop when he gets married? Shouldn’t it continue, with the both of them now in mind, just as it continues for the adult woman? There is an understanding with servant leadership that he will serve his spouse, he will lay down his life (not just physically, please note this), he will see them as one (again, not just physically, but also understanding her as much as she knows herself, and vice versa, and seeing her as that connection to himself). It says in Ephesians 5 that Christ nourishes and cherishes His Body - how does He do this? He cherishes His Body in His love for them, His coming for His exclusive Bride to die on the cross for them, by growing them and sanctifying them. And how does He nourish them? By His word. Not through physical food and shelter as the world acquires it, because He never promises this for His people and, sometimes, by His own doing, He removes these things, in varying degrees, that His people will see His glory and how He alone is the source of their hope (ie. take a look at Paul’s life). A godly man who is looking to Christ and under submission to Him and desiring to point to Christ’s relationship with His Bride - which is the utmost purpose of marriage - is one who cherishes his wife as a treasure from God, valuing her mind, seeing this exclusive relationship as a joy, helping her grow in relationship with God and nourishing her as he points her to God and speaks with her about God’s word. This is a man who is taking care of his family with what is most important for their lives (and will leave the most lasting legacy) - that which is most important to God: Himself. And what woman would not be amazed by such love? What woman would not joyfully receive such giving and delight in being under such wonderful leadership by a man such as this? This is submission as it should be talked about. We are in submission to Christ in such a way. He did absolutely everything, He desires our joy, He desires our growth for our good, He came for His exclusive Bride so that she would know such love, we are found in Him and in union with Him as His body that we would be transformed and see more of Him for our greatest joy. To be under such Lordship is a delight for a Christian! Our response to being under such Headship is awe and wonder! Do you see the difference and the beauty?

These words of blessing are astounding and I pray that this year would be a time of seeing more of Him, of seeing more of the amazing beauty of being in submission to Him, in seeing that He is sovereign and we are small and that there is great rest and hope in this beholding. May you have a joy-full 2025.

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GLOSSARY:

I wanted to spend some time discussing the term LOVE. We need to define it because it is getting muddled in current church discussion.

For a Christian, there is a type of priority in our lives, or a hierarchy, when it comes to our relationships regarding love:

• 1. Our love for God would be primary and this is known as worship to Him. This is a very different kind of love than human and human love, because, obviously, He is God and we are not. And so, when we talk about certain words or terms we have to look first at who it is directed towards and who was doing it. Things like worship and reverence and grace. Worship is only directed toward God, and terms like grace have very different meanings in relation to God doing it (ie. we are not able to give someone grace as God gave us grace - we are not dying as a perfect sacrifice in order for them to saved, and so on)
• 2. Love between spouses is an exclusive love, and the only love that is covenant-based between humans BECAUSE it is to point to the relationship between Christ and the church. Side note: why this is so important to mention is because it shows the efficacy and sufficiency of Christ's work on the cross by saying it is life-long - if you are truly a Christian, you will be transformed and renewed, you will be held fast in His hands, the plan of salvation will not be thwarted by any man (including you), you will be glorified.
• 3. There is love between believers (i.e. your friends or extended family that are part of the universal church)
• 4. And then there is general love that is the common respect that you show to people in your daily life, like to your unbelieving neighbours or your co-workers and so on.

They are all different in some ways. But ultimately it shows a few things to us as we look at this. Firstly, as I’ve said, it shows a level of priority in a life. For a Christian, it should be: God, your spouse (and because they are under your household as dependents, your young children would come next, which I will explain momentarily), your independent children/siblings/parents/friends who are believers, and then independent children, siblings, parents and friends who are unbelievers.

In the Bible it highlights how dependent children have a different relationship as they are under the father’s household. They are trained and taught to be a functioning adult (Ephesians 5) until they reach adulthood and while they are there they are to listen to and obey their parents who are teaching them the things of God rightly, but this relationship, which is not covenant-based, ends, at adulthood. Jesus, while an adult during His ministry, said to Mary in Matthew 12 “who are my mother and brother? All of these are my mother and brother.” The physical family comes to the same level as the spiritual family if they are believers and the relationship changes to become one of friends in the body of believers (if everyone are believers). As dependent children, though, it says that the kids are to be taught by their parents, fathers specifically leading this, and not every father, and that they should listen and obey their parents, not every parent. They are under submission to their parents - a joyful response to parents who are pointing them rightly to God - but that relationship changes when they reach adulthood and especially when they get married and are given away to become one with their spouse and come under the leadership of the husband. If they are still remaining under their individual fathers at that point instead of becoming one under the headship of the husband, they would have three heads in the mix of that relationship which is not a biblical portrait of headship (we are under one head = Christ). As the Bible says, a divided house will not stand, and if we are under both our fathers and our husband we have three heads and this does not point to our relationship with Christ and His Bride (i.e. one head and one exclusive Bride).

The second thing it shows is that there are two things that permeate all the relationships apart from our relationship with God. 1) We are respectful of the people we are interacting with and 2) love for the Christian is pointing to God’s objective truth as your standard. BUT we have to understand that there are ways of doing this when it comes to believers and unbelievers. We cannot put a love directed toward unbelievers as the same as love between believers. The Bible teaches this, that love directed toward unbelievers is respectful, of course, but we cannot put Christian things on them. When we were in sin, and identified as sinners as it says in Ephesians 2 (important point to note that here we are identified as sinners, not when we become Christians - now we are found in Christ) we loved sin, we did not want God to be God, even our “good” things were done with wrong motivations, and we did not have the Spirit’s power at work within us. We can live our lives before them and say “I am not doing this or that” or “we do this and that”, but we cannot say that they have to do that because they are as we were before we were brought to faith. We did not want to live under God and we could not do things in a way that was right before God because we were separated from Him. But, as we behold Him and live our lives in awe of what He has done, amazed that He even saved us with how deserving of condemnation we were, His glory reflects off our worship-full faces and they may ask for the reason for the hope that we have. We live differently before them and He does the shining.

But loving someone across all the human to human interactions is you looking to the objective truth that God desires for His people. And between believers this is a delight to do - we look together at this objective truth that we are also looking to ourselves because all of us know that this is our greatest joy. With love between Christians it is a delight to see God as God, and for Him to get the glory, and to see our smallness, and to cherish His sovereignty, and to delight in all of the work that He did.

Loving someone in this way may be seen as unkind by some, however, because you may have to walk away from things, you may have to say that you are not doing particular things for the health of your marriage or parenting relationships in order to do them in a godly way, but it is indeed loving. Loving someone is not just going along unthinkingly with someone. Loyalty is not loving. You can be loyal to a gang or the mafia. Being truly loving to the gang members (if you happened to become a Christian while you were still a member) is saying that you are not going to stay in the gang (not that they have to stop being the gang), rather than saying you are going to be loyal and stay in it. Do you see what I mean?

I could explain even more but I think that I will end here for now. But it is helpful to understand the definitions of the words that are being said in conversation.