As we begin to know God, His work, and His eternal plan which He purposed in eternity, we begin to realize that the light in the book of Ephesians is abundant, high, and special. We need to realize one thing before the Lord: in the book of Ephesians, God caused Paul to pray two prayers. One prayer is found in chapter one, while the other is found in chapter three. The prayer in chapter one is basic, while the prayer in chapter three is for the building. In chapter one, Paul prayed that we would realize our relationship with the Lord. In chapter three, he wanted us not only to realize our relationship with the Lord, but also our relationship with the church. Now we will speak on Paul's prayer in chapter one.
In verse 17 Paul prayed, "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him." Why did Paul want the believers to have a spirit of wisdom and revelation? He wanted them to have it in order to know the following things:
(1)"The full knowledge of Him" (v. 17). This is to know God Himself.
(2)"The hope of His calling, and what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints" (v. 18). This refers to God's eternal plan and the accomplishment of His plan. God's calling is for us to be His sons. These sons are His inheritance. God's calling was made before the foundation of the world. In the coming eternity, He will have an inheritance in the saints, an inheritance that is full of the riches of glory. In eternity past God made a decision, and in eternity future God will gain a result. These two things added together make up God's eternal plan and its goal. Paul was trying to make known to us the eternal plan of God.
(3)"The surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe" (v. 19). This refers to the kind of power God uses today to reach His goal and accomplish His plan. Today this is related particularly to our relationship with Him and His eternal plan. We have to know these few things, and we must receive revelation before the Lord concerning them.
Paul asked God to give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation to know these three things. The first is to have "the full knowledge of Him." How wonderful it is that we can have the full knowledge of God.
While Paul was in Athens, he passed by an altar, upon which was inscribed, "TO AN UNKNOWN GOD" (Acts 17:23). In the minds of the Athenians, there was no way to know God. They could not know God by their mind or by their philosophies. They could hypothesize and speculate, but they still did not know God. This is like some men today who say that there is a God with their mouth, but who do not know Him.
Before the Lord Jesus died, He said, "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Him whom You have sent, Jesus Christ" (John 17:3). He showed us what eternal life is. Eternal life is just the knowledge of God. The Ephesian saints knew God already; we cannot say that they did not know anything about God. They definitely knew God, because they had eternal life already. But Paul prayed in his first prayer that God would "give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him." While the Athenians did not know God at all, this prayer reveals that a Christian, who has received eternal life and who has known God initially, may still not have a sufficient knowledge of God.
Immediately after we believe in the Lord, or a few years after we believe in Him, we cannot say that we do not know something about God. Yet we often depend very much on our mentality or our feeling to support us in our journey. We know a little about God. But other than the little that we know, we very much depend on our thoughts and ideas. If we do not have these thoughts and ideas to support us, we feel that our knowledge of God is not that sure and our reasonings not that sound. Therefore, we often need the support of our mind in maintaining our Christian walk. It seems that when we reach an impasse in our reasoning or in our doctrines, we cannot go on without the help of our mind. At other times, we need feelings, feelings of warmth, feelings of joy, and feelings of exuberance. We need these feelings in addition to our knowledge of God before we can go on.