In Ephesians 3:14-21 Christ is revealed as the Settler in the hearts of the saints. In this passage Paul prays that God the Father would strengthen us according to the riches of His glory with power through His Spirit into our inner man, that Christ may make His home in our hearts through faith, that we may be full of strength to apprehend with all the saints the universal dimensions of Christ and to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ, that we may be filled unto all the fullness of God. Following this prayer, Paul praises God: To God be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all the generations forever and ever.
Ephesians 3:14-16 records Paul’s prayer to the Father for the believers in Ephesus: “He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man.” The apostle’s prayer in 1:15-23 is that the saints would receive revelation concerning the church. Here in 3:14-21 his prayer is that the saints would experience Christ for the church. This requires us to be strengthened into our spirit.
In verse 16 the word strengthened is modified by four phrases: according to the riches of His glory, with power, through His Spirit, and into the inner man. First, we are strengthened according to the riches of the Father’s glory. Glory is the expression of God. John 1:18 says, “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” There is glory in the Son’s declaration of God, for the declaration of God is the manifestation of God, which is glory. When the Lord Jesus expressed God on earth, God’s glory was manifested.
All the families in the heavens and on earth express God to some extent. As they express God, there are the riches of His glory. The apostle prayed that the Gentile believers might experience God in a full way according to the riches of His glory, that He might be expressed through the Gentile believers by their experiencing Him in a full way.
What then are the riches of God’s glory? The riches of glory in Ephesians 3:16 are related to every family in verse 15. Every family is an expression of God to a certain degree. Because the Father is the source, the origin, of every family in the heavens and on earth, every family is His expression. The family that expresses the Father the most is the family of the believers. Therefore, Paul prayed to the Father that we might be strengthened for the purpose of expressing Him to the uttermost.
We are strengthened also with power. This power is the power that is referred to in 1:19-22 and that raised Christ from the dead, seated Christ at the right hand of God in the heavenlies, subjected all things under Christ’s feet, and gave Christ to be Head over all things to the church. Such power operates in us (3:20), and with such power God strengthens us for the church.
It is through the Spirit that the Father strengthens us. He strengthens us by the indwelling Spirit. This does not mean that the Spirit is not with us or that the Spirit will come down from the heavens to strengthen us. The strengthening Spirit has been with us since He regenerated us. He is still within us. Through this indwelling Spirit, the Father strengthens us from within.
Ephesians 3:16 also says that we are strengthened into the inner man. The inner man is our regenerated spirit with God’s life as its life. It is our spirit regenerated by the Spirit of God (John 3:6), indwelt by the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:11, 16), and mingled with the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 6:17). In order that we may experience Christ unto all the fullness of God, we need to be strengthened into the inner man. This implies that we need to be strengthened into our spirit through the Holy Spirit.
It is very difficult to remain in the spirit. We are accustomed to going out from the spirit, not to going into the spirit and staying there. According to our experience, we can testify that we are not inclined to stay in the spirit. Because it is so easy for us to get out of the spirit, we need to learn to remain in the spirit. Whenever we stay in the spirit, we are strengthened, but whenever we go out from the spirit, we are weakened. This is the reason we need the Father to strengthen us into our inner man so that we may remain in our spirit. The more we are strengthened, the more the parts of our inner being are brought back into the spirit, into our inner man.
We need to be strengthened in order to stay in our spirit and not be distracted by thoughts regarding so many things. In order to pray without being distracted, we need to be strengthened into our inner man. Oh, how we need to be strengthened so that our whole being may come back to the inner man and stay there! We need to be strengthened so that our whole being may be brought back to our spirit.
We all need to follow Paul in being strengthened into our inner man. When Paul bowed his knees to the Father, he was so strong in his inner man that nothing could shake him or disturb him. Because his whole being was in his spirit, nothing outward could trouble him. We also need to be strengthened to such an extent that nothing will be able to carry us away from our inner man. We need to practice praying to the Father that He would strengthen us with power through His Spirit into our inner man. We should experience the Father’s strengthening us into our inner man every day by spending time with the Lord in prayer.
In Ephesians Paul tells us that our inner man needs to be strengthened and that we need to pray at every time in spirit (3:16; 6:18). The secret we need to learn is to exercise our spirit constantly so that our spirit can be strengthened. If we learn to exercise our spirit constantly, we will live not in the old man but in the new man, and we will live not in the outer man but in the inner man. The way to exercise our spirit constantly is to pray and contact the Lord unceasingly (1 Thes. 5:17). Others may not see that we are praying, but in fact we are praying because at all times and in all things we are exercising our spirit to contact God.