On My Knees for You

When I write that I "bow my knees" (Ephesians 3:14), hear that this is not my ordinary posture — a man of my people stands to pray. To bend the knee is to be undone, to kneel before a Father too great to face standing. And the word I reach for at the end, "strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being" (Ephesians 3:16) — the inner being is the hidden self, the part of you no one sees and no chain can reach. I do not pray that your circumstances soften; I pray that Christ take up residence in that inmost room and make it his home.

I take up this same thread when I tell you that Christ "dwells in your hearts through faith" and roots you in love (Ephesians 3:17) — for I have prayed it elsewhere too, that you would be filled with the knowledge of his will (Colossians 1:9-11), and I have marveled that the same power which raised Jesus from the dead is at work in us who believe (Ephesians 1:19-20). And when I speak of being renewed in the inner man though the outer wastes away, that is the same hidden strengthening I ask for you (2 Corinthians 4:16).

I wrote this from chains, in prison for the sake of these very Gentiles (Ephesians 3:1). They were once far off, strangers to the covenants, and a wall of hostility had stood between Jew and Gentile for ages. But God had made the two one in Christ, and I had been given the astonishing task of announcing it. So I do not grieve over my imprisonment — I bow my knees. I want these newly-gathered people, of two peoples made one household, to grasp that they are not second-class in God's house but loved to the full measure.

You may ask: he prays we would "know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge" (Ephesians 3:19) — how can a man know what surpasses knowing? Is that not a contradiction dressed as a prayer? I meant it as I wrote it. There is a knowing that measures and masters a thing, and Christ's love will never be measured or mastered — its breadth and length and height and depth (Ephesians 3:18) run past every reach of the mind. But there is another knowing, the knowing of a man held in arms he cannot fathom. You will not exhaust it; you will only ever be filled by it. Go back and read that I ask this "with all the saints" — it is not grasped alone.