The Power of Christ's Amazing Love

 

Ephesians 3:14–21

 

Subject: Love for our Church Family

Relevance: The Spirit helps us experience God as the potent demonstration of the indwelling Christ as we submit to Him. He makes continuous and genuine Christian expression possible by enabling us for supernatural Christian living, loving, and laboring so that our Father is glorified.

Theme: We need the Holy Spirit’s supernatural strengthening for Christlike loving to the credit of our Father. Beloved, this is a prayer for strength to love each other.

Introduction: 

Noting that positionally the Gentile and Jewish believers are “one new man” as the body of Christ in Ephesus (Eph. 2:15), Paul now prayed that they may be united experientially. Paul had been affirming the unity of this local church prayed that the Ephesians would be strong inwardly through Christ's Spirit.

Message:

I.               The Power of Christ’s Love (Eph. 3:16)

A.    Fortified—“Strengthened” (Eph. 3:16)

                                                    i.     Paul prayed for the Ephesians to be “strengthened” by the Spirit, indwelt by Christ, and filled with all the “fullness” of God’s uniting love.  What “love” are we to be “rooted and grounded” in?  No, it is not the love of God, or even love for God. It is love for one another as fellow members of the family of God! It is in the context of loving relationships within the church family that we experience, through one another, the depths of God’s love.  It is through such commitment that we understand and grow in the fullness of Christ’s love.  We likewise must desire that we might genuinely know and experience Christ’s love and thus exhibit it toward each other.

B.    Force—“Might” (Eph. 3:16)

                                                    i.     The Holy Spirit (a person) provides power for a lifelong process to make us more like Christ (2 Cor 3:17-18). When we receive Christ by faith, we begin an immediate personal relationship with God. The Holy Spirit works in us to help us become like Christ. He aids in prayer (Rom 8:26-27; Eph 2:18; 6:18); he inspires us to worship (Eph 5:18; Phil 3:3); he shapes our character (Gal 5:22-23).

                                                  ii.     Furthermore, the Spirit unites the Christian community in Christ (Eph 2:19-22). He can be experienced by every believer, and he works through all (1 Cor 12:11; Eph 4:4). As such, the Spirit constantly provides us with the moral power to stand for Christ and to serve him. We access this power through prayer, worship, and yielding.

C.    Focus—"Inner Man” (Eph. 3:16)

                                                    i.     Spiritually strong and empowered in “the inner man”. This spiritual part of man is where God dwells and works. Christians have a regenerated inner being that can be renewed and strengthened day by day with power through his Spirit (2Cor. 4:16).  It is this inner power that makes him succeed.

                                                  ii.     Our spiritual faculties can be controlled by God, and we must exercise them and grow in the Word (Heb. 5:12-14). When we yield to the Spirit letting Him control the inner man we succeed in living to the glory of God. This means feeding the inner man the Word of God, praying and worshiping, keeping clean, and exercising the senses by loving obedience. Certainly, our best interactions should be with each other!

                                                iii.     Spiritually energized to live morally, to be a witness, and to remain unified with other believers is the task! We get strength from the powerful Holy Spirit who raised Christ from the dead (Eph. 1:19-20). We are energized for ministry (Eph. 3:7), and to defeat Satan in battle (Eph. 6:10-11). How do we gain access to this power? Christ returned to glory and sent the Spirit from heaven to indwell and empower His people. It is not necessary for us to "work something up." The power must be sent down. We gain power in prayer. If you want power to live, make prayer a greater priority. When you pray, you will experience God’s renovating power.

Conclusion:

All this is possible only because God is more than able to do immeasurably more than all we could pray for or even imagine possible, because it is according to His power that is at work within us as believers.

Please keep uppermost in mind that this concerns our perception of God’s love, not whether he loves us or not. While the choices we make will affect that perception, there is nothing a believer can do to remove themselves from it. Romans 8:35–39 reminds us that nothing, absolutely nothing, in heaven or on earth can separate us from the love of God.