Bite 21: Paul Prays

When my beloved and I were building our house, there were so many situations where I would raise my eyebrows, shake my head, and say “I don’t know how to do that.” Well, what do you do when you don’t know how to do something? You pull your phone out and find a YouTube video, right?

Paul has given us a YouTube video in Ephesians 1:15-19 of him praying for the recipients of his letter. Want to know how to pray? Watch Paul. Listen to Paul. Then mimic Paul.

Today in our Bible Study Bite we are going to examine the words Paul prayed and what they mean. We will look his literary style and we will do a little cross referencing within Ephesians and its closest literary relative, Colossians, to get better understanding of what he prayed. We are going to limit our interpretation today to verses 15-19 so I don’t get carried away and make this too big of a Bite again. (I’m learning!)

Let’s read the section where he prays:

¹⁵ For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, ¹⁶ I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, ¹⁷ that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, ¹⁸ having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, ¹⁹ and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might

Ephesians 1:15–19 (ESV)

Why Is Paul Praying?

As we begin to examine this section more closely, right away Paul has two phrases that indicate a connection to what has been previously stated. For this reason and because. Since we’ve already considered what came before, we are prepared to answer the why’s. The recipients have been secured through the work of the trinity for salvation. Paul is moved to pray because of this truth and what he’s heard about them. First that he’s heard of their faith in Jesus and second, that they have love toward other believers. The result of these truths in Paul’s heart is that he is moved to give thanks and remember them in his prayer time.

In studying this section, I have compared the NET to the ESV right here:

Ephesians 1:16 (ESV) 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers,

Ephesians 1:16 (NET) 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you when I remember you in my prayers.

Reading the two translations, can you see what the NET did to clarify a pressing question we always have when we read such passages?

Q: How can I pray without ceasing?

A: You can’t.

But the translations, when we take them together, allow us a fuller meaning. Paul prays for these folks all the time when he remembers them. Oh my goodness! That is so freeing in my own prayer life. Now we are not applying at this point, remember, but we can comprehend the difference between watching a YouTube video of a guy who never stops praying and a guy who remembers something and takes the opportunity to pray.

What is Paul Praying?

The Details

Remembering them in his prayer involves petitioning God on their behalf. Do you see that he isn’t asking for things? Or situations? Or anything having to do with circumstances? He makes two requests. One is that God would give them information about himself (God) and that they would have the part of their hearts that sees know about themselves and their condition. That they would have insight about God and insight about themselves.

Please do not hear me say that we should not pray for material or situational aid. What I am saying is that in this particular example of prayer, Paul did not.

The Bigger Picture

We can see that Paul is praying that God would give them information and that they would know themselves, right? If we turn that around, because Paul is praying for these things, he is demonstrating his concern. He is concerned that unless God moves, the recipients will remain in their natural state: the state that they do not have truth about God and they would be ignorant of their condition. Without the movement of God, they will not have the knowledge of God’s power that they need.

So Paul prayed for their needs. And because Paul showed us true needs, so can we.

I Don’t Know What to Call This

As we examine this section of scripture, it’s important to note the timing of all of this knowledge.

• What is the hope to which he has called you.
  • Do you see that this is presented by the translators as being in the past tense? (There is some language stuff here that is more than we want to explore, but we are going to trust the translators and call this past tense.)
• What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints
  • Can you see that there is something coming in the future here? We have not yet received the inheritance in the saints–we learned from the last passage that the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance until we gain possession of it.
• What is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe
  • This power is happening every day all around us in the present, isn’t it? Whether we are able to see it, God has activity going on in our lives constantly. Part of why we need each other as believers is in order to remind each other of this power. Sometimes the day of clouds are thick and we need someone to help us see that God is still expending energy for us in the middle of it.

Noticing timing as students of the Word is a technique that will help us see God more clearly. Bible study is for the purpose of encouragement and seeing God’s perpetual motion on our behalf in the past, present, and future is truth we can declare to ourselves as well as to others.

Resisting the urge to run over to language tools (Do you realize how hard that is for me!? You are very helpful for keeping me on track.), we are going to look at cross references to give us a better understanding of how Paul used the words and phrases in his prayer.

Cross References

For the purpose of our study, we are going to turn our attention to the portion of scripture where Paul prays for knowledge for the recipients. Let’s build a little outline here to keep ourselves aware of what is being said visually.

• that you may know
  • what is the hope
    • to which he has called you
  • what are the riches
    • of his glorious inheritance in the saints
  • what is the immeasurable greatness
    • of his power toward us who believe

If you look at that, can you see a kind of triplet of what Paul prays the recipients would know? We are going to look at the components of the triplet in other places in both Ephesians and Colossians. First up, hope.

Hope

Recall that we are zeroing in on these two letters from our previous discussion here of those concentric circles. Of course, you may dig around in scripture to your heart’s content looking at all the places the word is used; I am trying in our time to both be thorough but not exhausting.

I used Logos Bible Software to do a word study and gathered images of the color wheel which gives us a visual of how the word is translated (in ESV) in the rest of scripture as well as the example uses. From the image, we can clearly see that the Greek word behind the English word hope is only translated as hope. Nice when it is straightforward. We can also see that the word is used often at 53 times in the NT. Let’s examine how Paul uses them from these verses above.

The first verse is from our text, so we have some familiarity there. The next one is Ephesians 2:12. Paul is telling his audience that at one time they were separated from Christ, basically bereft of the moorings of a people, had no hope and were without God in the world.

From that example, we have a dramatic picture of what the opposite of having hope is. We could rephrase it in the positive:

….remember that you are now together with Christ, reconciled to the commonwealth of Israel, friends to the covenants of promise, having all hope and with God in the world.

This is not a replacement for a translation, but I want to consider the opposites of what it looks like to have no hope. It’s like I took a photograph and reproduced it with crayons. A rough image to cement the photo in my mind.

Let’s start a list of what we’re learning about this word hope.

• The hope brings to Christ
• The hope provides a people
• The hope causes God with-ness

The next time Paul uses the word in Ephesians, it looks like he is holding up hope as an example of how the body of Christ is one with the Spirit. He says in 4:4, “There is one body and one Spirit–just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call–“

In this example, Paul is equating hope with their call. The two go together. Which makes sense with our passage because Paul wants them to know what is the hope to which he has called them. He’s called the audience and the call is that hope.

• The hope brings to Christ
• The hope provides a people
• The hope causes God with-ness
• The hope is the call

Now we will turn to Colossians 1:5 which is part of the parallel passage to the one we are currently studying.

⁴ since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, ⁵ because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, 

Colossians 1:4-5 (ESV)

Here Paul lines up the hope that is waiting in heaven as what they heard previously in the gospel. Let’s add that.

• The hope brings to Christ
• The hope provides a people
• The hope causes God with-ness
• The hope is the call
• The hope is heard in the gospel

For the sake of brevity, we are going to move along to the last example in Colossians 1:27.

²⁷ To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 

Colossians 1:27 (ESV)

In this usage, Paul uses the phrase “the hope of glory” to modify the phrase “Christ in you”. Let’s write it down.

• The hope brings to Christ
• The hope provides a people
• The hope causes God with-ness
• The hope is the call
• The hope is heard in the gospel
• The hope (of glory) is Christ in you

When I look that list over, what seems apparent to me is that someone without hope is on the outside, estranged. With hope, that person is on the inside; they are a member of a group. Part of Paul’s prayer is that we would know this about our position.

Let’s keep plugging along and look at the cross references to riches.

Riches

Below is the color wheel from Logos Bible Software and the corresponding verses from Ephesians and Colossians.

From the wheel, we can see the word is translated 18 of the 22 times as riches. The remaining 4 uses are translated as wealth. The first verse we will examine is Ephesians 2:7 (ESV):

…so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

If we take a moment to outline this verse, there is a lot here about riches.

• the immeasurable riches
  • of his grace
  • in kindness
  • toward us
  • in Christ Jesus

It’s almost listed for us there, but let’s be thorough and go ahead and list what we learn about riches properly.

• there are riches of God’s grace
• there are riches in kindness
• there are riches toward recipients
• there are riches in Christ Jesus

Next we will look at Ephesians 3:16 (ESV):

¹⁶ that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being

It seems like Paul tells us frequently about how these riches get lavished on the recipients in their spiritual lives. If we look at the context of the verse, Paul is praying again–he’s bowing his knees and making request of the Father on their behalf again. Let’s add to our list what we learn.

• there are riches of God’s grace
• there are riches in kindness
• there are riches toward recipients
• there are riches in Christ Jesus
• there are riches of God’s glory
• the riches can grant recipients to be strengthened with power
• the riches can grant recipients to be strengthened through his Spirit
• the riches can grant recipients to be strengthened in their inner being

Looking at the verses in Colossians, I don’t think they shed much light on what we are trying to learn, so we will stick with the list we gathered in Ephesians. To summarize what we’ve learned in this list, I see the trinity as a whole possesses these riches and that they are spent on the recipients. Paul prays that we would know this about God and his activity toward us.

Continuing on, let’s look at cross references for greatness.

Greatness

How interesting! This word is only used one time in the NT. Here is the color wheel for it:

The list will be pretty short, won’t it?

• greatness is immeasurable
• there is greatness of power toward believing recipients
• there is greatness of power according to God’s great might

As we continue to study this word, we may find that there isn’t enough usage of it to learn much from it. Not that it isn’t important, but without a certain saturation in scripture, we can’t derive doctrine from it. Sound doctrine. It’s true you can make scripture say whatever you want, but as students of the Word, that is NOT our objective.

From this verse though, we can see that there is a lot of energy moving on the behalf of the recipients. Can you see all the different words for energy that Paul uses? Greatness, power, might, even the word working. Truth from this verse shows us there is effort, labor put forth on our behalf. This is part of Paul’s prayer of what he’d like us to know.

Wrap Up

So far it looks like a good video of one way to pray, doesn’t it? We haven’t finished interpreting the section, but we have a level of understanding that would allow us to biblically pray like Paul right now. Because the reality is, if God doesn’t move, the recipients will remain in their nature state of ignorance about God and themselves. The recipients will remain and so will we and those we love. Let’s put what we’ve learned into practice. I will pray here and you pray there.

Our Bible Study Bite for today is to take what we learn in our study and not just nod at it and be satisfied with the box getting checked. Let’s practice what we learn. In the process of learning, I’ve found the more ways I can work with a topic, the better I learn. For me to learn (and remember), I need to see it. I need to hear it. I need to touch it. In this case, I need to taste it, in a sense. When I write/utter what I learn, it’s another way for it to get cemented in my mind.

Paul’s prayer is for knowledge. Our prayer for others should be too.

Next time we will explore dictionaries and see what else we can learn.