Wanting More is Sometimes Good
Sometimes wanting more is a bad thing. Gideon loves carbs. He loves bread and noodles. When we had chili last week, all he’d eat was cornbread. He wanted more and more and more of it and wouldn’t eat the chili to save his life. We wanted him to stop wanting cornbread and start wanting chili. After a week of eating chili, I was ready to stop eating chili too!
Sometimes wanting more is a really good thing. You might want to exercise more to be in better shape. That’s a good thing. You might want to read more in order to increase your understanding of how the world works. That’s a good thing. You might want to serve more in the church, using your spiritual gifts to build up the body. That’s a good thing. Wanting more of something isn’t necessarily greedy. Wanting more of the right things is a good thing.
I wonder sometimes if we want more of God? Many of our spiritual lives are static, or motionless. Maybe we’ve assumed that since we’re Christians, we’re going to heaven when we die and that’s that, and that’s all that really matters. We might assume that being more spiritual than we are would make us weird and so we’re content to be in church on Sunday and ignore all things spiritual the rest of the week. We don’t want any more out of our Christianity than we’ve already got. We’re content with our cornbread and don’t see any need to eat a big bowl of chili.
But what if I said that wanting more of God is a fundamental part of our spiritual lives? What if wanting more of Christ is a basic, even necessary, part of being a Christian? The text we’ll be studying this morning tells us that Paul wanted the Christians in Ephesus to have more of God. To grow in spiritual understanding. To see God more clearly. Paul is thankful for what God has done in their lives and yet he asks God to do more.
Paul Thanks God for the Ephesians
Our text is Ephesians 1:15-19. It sounds like a hard and confusing text, but Paul is really doing two simple things. He thanks God for the Ephesian Christians (vv. 15-16), and he asks God to grow the Ephesian Christians (vv. 17-19).
First, Paul thanks God for the Ephesian Christians (vv. 15-16). Paul is thankful to God for the Ephesians’ faith in Christ. He doesn’t thank them for believing. He thanks God that they believe. Why does he do this? Because God is the reason they believed. As we learned back in 1:4-5, God chose those who would be his, a choice based on nothing but “the purpose of his will.” He didn’t choose those who he knew would choose him. He chose those whom he willed. All those God chooses will believe on God’s Son. So Paul thanks God for their faith because God is responsible for their faith.
Paul also thanks God for their love for one another. Only by God’s grace and with his help are they loving and serving one another. Interestingly, Paul congratulates them for doing something that he’ll later tell them to do even more. “Bear with one another in love” (4:2). “Walk in love” (5:2). They’ve loved each other well and they need to keep loving each other well. We also must persevere in loving and serving one another. We must not justify present or future disobedience on past obedience. May God help us to “love all the saints” for all our days.
Paul Asks God to Grow the Ephesians
The second thing Paul does is to ask God to grow the Ephesian Christians (vv. 17-19). Paul’s prayer went from “I thank you God” to “I ask you God.” Paul wanted more for this church. He wasn’t content with prayers of maintaining the status quo. He wanted God to grow this church up, to take them to places they hadn’t been, to show them things they hadn’t seen.
In the same way, we can be thankful for people and still want more for them. We should never be content to thank God for people and never ask him to do more in and through them. We should thank God for our friends and family and nation and neighbors, and then ask him to keep growing and maturing and saving and helping them know him better.
Paul’s basic request in these verses is that God would grow the Ephesian Christians in spiritual understanding. His prayer is that God would give them spiritual sight, specifically helping them see three things.
A Spirit of Wisdom and of Revelation
Notice his basic prayer for God to give them spiritual sight in verses 17-18a. He asks God to give them “a spirit of wisdom and of revelation.” What does that mean? Is he asking for a “spirit” or the “Spirit”? Is Paul asking God to give them a disposition of wisdom and revelation?
Probably not. He’s asking God the Holy Spirit to awaken them to God’s wisdom and revelation. God is the one who gives revelation, so it wouldn’t make sense to ask God to give them a disposition of revelation, to ask God to give them the ability to reveal things that would otherwise be hidden. Revelation is God’s job alone.
He also makes it clear that the God-given wisdom and revelation is for the purpose of growing in the knowledge of God. End of verse 17, “in the knowledge of him.” Paul isn’t praying for them to have more general knowledge, for God to download random knowledge to their heads. He prays that God’s Spirit might reveal the knowledge of God to his people. Paul wants the Ephesian Christians to grow in their knowledge of God.
Growing in spiritual knowledge is more than gaining information about God. It’s not less than that, but it’s so much more. I can know all the facts there are to know about Suzy and not enjoy being in her presence. God isn’t interested in, or honored, when we merely increase the amount of information we know about God.
Eyes of Our Hearts Need to Be Enlightened
Growing in spiritual wisdom and revelation is therefore seeing and enjoying God for who he is. This is why Paul uses the language of the “eyes of our hearts” in the next phrase (v. 18a).
This is Paul’s way of describing what will happen when God gives the Spirit of wisdom and revelation to his readers. He’s using this image to describe the work of the Spirit within us to help us understand God. It’s the “eyes” of our “heart” that need to be enlightened, opened, informed, and instructed. We need to see things at the heart level, at the level of our will and affections and attitudes.
We need to see and experience God in our hearts. This is what David meant in Psalm 34:8, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!” A verse that Peter quotes in 1 Peter 2:2-3, “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk…if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
Growing in spiritual knowledge means growing in our rational understanding of who God is, but it also means growing in our spiritual understanding of him. We must “taste” and “see” God. We must experience his goodness at the level of our affections. The person who does this is the person who is truly growing in their relationship with God. As Jonathan Edwards says, “He that has perceived the sweet taste of honey, knows much more about it than he who has only looked upon and felt it.” There’s a mysterious but real way that we must taste the goodness of God.
Spiritual Blindness Because We Love Darkness
Paul is asking for God to grow Christians in their spiritual understanding by helping them see what they can’t see on their own. This is, by the way, what happens when we become a Christian as well. Paul later says that we’re born with spiritual blindness (4:17-18). And Jesus says that we actually love the darkness. John 3:19-20, “Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”
Jesus is saying that we don’t just fall prey to evil and darkness but that we love darkness. We’re not victims of darkness, we like it. We like things that God hates. We love doing things our way rather than God’s. We enjoy the things God has made far more than the God who made them. We do bad things because we “hate” the light of God. We can’t stand if when anyone tells us what to do, especially if it hinders our unbridled pursuit of pleasure. So we’re not just hindered from seeing the light of God, we’re opposed to it. We’re spiritually blind and we like it.
Before anything can be done about our condition, we must first understand that our problem is deeper than we’ve ever realized. The Bible describes our condition in terms so severe in order to teach us that there’s no way we can fix ourselves. It says that we aren’t just imperfect people but rather that we’re people who love the darkness of doing things our way instead of God’s. We love the darkness of finding pleasure in anything and everything but God. And our willful blindness is an offense to the God who created us, which is why his judgment is coming (5:6).
We Need New Hearts
This means that our problem is a heart problem, not a behavior problem, not a lack of religion problem, not a lack of education problem, not a mental health problem. Our hearts are bent on loving darkness not light. The solution, then, is that we need new hearts.
This is exactly what Jesus died in order to secure for all who trust in him. Ezekiel 36:26, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Jesus’ blood ratified the new covenant and secured all of its promises for everyone who trusts in him. One of those promises is a new heart.
And with a new heart comes new spiritual eyes that see the dirtiness of our sin and the glory of God’s grace in the gospel of Jesus (2 Cor. 4:4. 6). God gives new hearts to all who look at Jesus with faith (Jn. 3:14-15).
God Wants His People to See More
We’re saved when God opens our spiritual eyes and we grow as Christians as God continues to open our eyes. The Ephesian Christians had believed the gospel, so they’d seen the glory of Jesus and the darkness of their hearts. But in our text Paul is praying for them that they would see more. In the gospel, they’d seen the glory of God, but they had more to see.
God wants his people to see more of him. How does he do that? He does it through the Holy Spirit giving us more spiritual understanding. Theologians call this “illumination.” J. I. Packer defines illumination like this, “Illumination is…the applying of God’s revealed truth to our hearts, so that we grasp as reality for ourselves what the sacred text sets forth.” Only God can show us more of God. And there is always more to see.
As I’ve said, this “seeing” starts before conversion as the Spirit starts to show us the truth about Jesus, our sin, and God’s judgment (Jn. 16:8-11). But the Spirit continues to illuminate the truth of God for us after we’re converted. He does this work as we prayerfully and diligently study the Word of God. As Packer says, “The way to benefit fully from the Spirit’s ministry of illumination is by serious Bible study, serious prayer, and serious response in obedience to whatever truths one has been shown already.”
There is always more to see. Think of one of your favorite places to go and sit and rest and think and relax. Maybe a favorite beach or the mountains or your back patio or your neighborhood park. You’ve sat there dozens of times, but each time you go you see something new. When I sit in the arbor at my mom’s house, or on by brother’s front porch, places I’ve sat hundreds of times, I always see more. Trees change, birds come and go, clouds form, the sunset is different every time. With God there is always more to see.
Seeing Hope
Paul’s prayer is generally that God would give them spiritual sight. But he continues by asking God to help them see three specific things (vv. 18b-19). He wants them to see the hope of God’s calling, the glory of God’s inheritance, and the greatness of God’s power.
Paul wants them first to understand the hope that God’s calling gives them. For Paul, God’s calling is connected to hope. Its future oriented. God’s call in the past gives us hope for the future. If God has called us once, he’ll call us again. Our future is secure because of our past.
Hope for Paul isn’t how we usually use the word hope. It wasn’t an uncertain expectation that things would work out okay. It wasn’t wishful thinking. Hope for Paul was a firm conviction that God would come through for his people. Paul’s readers had this hope (1:12), but Paul prays that the Spirit will open their spiritual eyes so that they might see it more clearly. Do you see the hope in God’s calling you?
Seeing Glory
Paul next wants them to see the glory of God’s inheritance (v. 18c). Paul prays that God would help them understand their status as God’s glorious inheritance. Last week we saw that we have an inheritance in Christ (vv. 11-14). Here Paul says that even God has an inheritance – his people, “the saints.” God gets something from God! God inherits the countless millions who belong to Jesus. And his inheritance is “glorious.”
God is the “Father of glory” (v. 17). But Paul says here that believers too are glorious and we’re rich in glory. God, in his grace, has placed his glory on his people. God’s people are of great value to God. All those in Christ are rich in glory and are God’s inheritance.
Seeing Power
Then Paul asks God to help them see the greatness of God’s power (v. 19). Paul prays that they understand the magnitude of God’s power for all believers. He could’ve just said “the greatness of his power.” But he says “the immeasurable greatness of his power.” Why? In order to emphasize the enormous size of God’s power. It cannot be measured. It has no dimensions.
In the Marvel superhero movies, there’s always a battle between powers and we wonder who’s more powerful: Thor or Loki? Captain America or Iron Man? The Hulk or Thor? But in reality, we don’t have to wonder who’s the strongest. There’s no one stronger than God. His power is unmatched and cannot even be challenged.
Paul’s purpose in saying this is to tell us that God’s power is for us, “toward us who believe.” God’s power is at work in us and through us. We feel weak, but in God we can be strong because his power is “toward us.” In him, we have strength to face every trial, every pain, every opposition, every stronghold of sin, and every attack of the Enemy.
Fighting Through Prayer
Paul prays that the Ephesians church understands and sees the hope and glory and power they have in God. They need help seeing again what they’ve already seen. So Paul is fighting for their growth in God. And he’s fighting through prayer.
Are you fighting for more sight through prayer? Are you praying for people to grow in spiritual understanding? Or are you content to just thank God for people and pray generic prayers for blessing and safety? There’s power in intercessory prayer, when we intercede for people’s spiritual good, when we ask God to meet deep spiritual needs in the hearts of those we pray for, rather than remaining stuck in the realm of physical needs.
There Is More, Oh So Much More
Paul is thankful for what God has done in the Ephesian Christians and he prays that God would do more. For all that God had done for the Ephesian Christians, they had not arrived. They still had further to go and more to see. We also, though God has done so much for us, have further to go with God.
Wanting more of God isn’t a bad thing. It’s not greedy or selfish. It’s what we were made for. We were made to enjoy and savor the God who made us, to grow in our understanding and love of him, to “taste and see that he is good” (Ps. 34:8). This is the essence of the Christian life.
By God’s grace, many of us have been given eyes to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And by God’s grace, we’ll see more of what we’ve already seen. There is still so much to see. As my evangelism professor at Southwestern Seminary, Dr. Roy Fish, used to say, “You only see a little of the ocean from the shore, but out over the dim horizon there is more, oh so much more.”