Jesus Christ is our creator. In order to create, you would have to exist before your creation. It is hard to think of existence before time but this is exactly the heritage of 2Corinthians 5:17 believers described in these great pages and prayers of the apostle in Ephesians.
We are in a journey from temporal creation into an eternal setting deeded those who live in God’s immortal love.
Lavished in us are riches of God’s grace whereby we participate in a plan uniting both heaven and earth, in the fullness of time, all things in Christ, Eph. 1:7cf. This doctrine and its application are travel tools to prepare us for God’s eternal glory.
Included in this grand purpose are not only the obvious material landscapes we “own” and enjoy on earth but a brand new creation within each 2Corinthians 5:17 believer. It is a Spiritual creation into a temporal spirit. This new creation within us, is even more astounding than this mortal flesh we call our body or the ether surrounding it.
God’s grace is providing access to heavenly riches through eternal love by our mortal faith. This is the theme of Paul’s prayer which we have been reviewing in Ephesians three. Love and faith are both spiritual and soul portals to discover glories preluding an inheritance awaiting our possession.
The apostle has all this in mind for these unskilled faithful Ephesian believers. Paul prays they will explore this new creation in themselves. It is not something new they possess, it is their new eternal essence, it is their identity, their “self” person. It is who we are because we are a new creation in Christ Jesus!
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him were all things created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether in earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”
This Colossians passage describes the pith of life created in the person who by faith receives the love of God in a form and fashion so extreme words are too weak to describe. This treasure within each believer is incredibly mysterious, more powerful than human imagination. No wonder strengthening is required to contain His divine resurrected person into a frail human heart as an abiding place!
This Colossians passage is also a backdrop for Paul’s prayer, as he leads toward the fullness of God. Not only doctrinally instructive, it models comportment in Christ. Paul presents personal prayer life before the Father on his knees.
Paul builds on the first chapter prayer acknowledging God’s provisions of grace and prays for wisdom and knowledge to experience their inheritance. The Ephesian church is in Christ but not realizing God’s “abiding” presence. Paul wants these faithful believers to understand and grasp their grace in Christ Jesus.
In this third chapter prayer, Paul suggests practical steps, within their grace relationship, drawing them into God’s fullness. This first step opens to the next, Christ abiding in our heart through faith and leads eventually into the “fullness of God.” This is a believer’s pinnacle experience in Christ!
Paul’s sequence of steps must be viewed within the sovereign wholeness of God’s love to us and in us, “For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source,” Hebrews 2:11. Each step leads through God’s love and our faith into fullness in Christ.
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, …
Strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being
So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith
That you, being rooted and grounded in love,
May have strength to comprehend with all the saints
What is the breadth, and length and height and depth,
And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,
That you may be filled with all the fullness of God. ”
We are the personal venue for our new created “inner being” received by faith given in agape love by the Father.
This step:
(1)Strengthened with (2)Power through His (3)Spirit in your (4)Inner being
The first three terms listed in this step are sourced in His life and are in us because we are in Him.
1. Strengthening
2. Power
3. His Spirit
This step, “strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being,” is fundamental. It focuses on God, our source for moving and having our being in him, Acts 17:28. Our capacity to “move in Him” comes from being regenerated, born with His righteous nature, 2Peter 1:4. We have access to the Father because we are created in Christ Jesus and therefore able to come “boldly” into His presence.
These first three contingencies are for existing saints, believers who already have a testimony of faith and love, Eph. 1:15, but who are also being remembered in prayer to have a “spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of (their) hearts enlightened,” Eph. 1:17. Paul is praying for believers who are “faithful in Christ Jesus,” Eph. 1:1. Our Spiritual growth is from God Himself, but includes love and faith from our inner being, see below. Love and faith nurture our inner being’s growth and produce the fruit of God’s Spirit in our life, Galatians 5:16cf.
Love and faith are spiritual portals to the fullness of God. These two elements, identified in this prayer, are the result of our divine strengthening and His power through the Holy Spirit. Strengthening is essential for the (κατα οικοs) dwelling of Christ within us with agape love to absorb His transending knowledge enabling faith. Our grasp of agape love is within reach since our inner being is contained within the riches of God’s grace and care.
Our maturity in grace depends on faith choices made in ‘’our inner being.’’ It is God’s power working in us, so that, we can express God’s life (‘’manifested’’) in our mortal flesh, Romans 8:11, 2Corinthians 4:11, or as Henry Scougal put it, The Life of God in the Soul of Man. Faith choices effectively enlarge our love and faith capacity, growing both God’s grace and our knowledge, 2Peter 3:18. Faith is our soul’s expression, by a choice of will, but our option to make choices depends on God’s strengthening, His power and His Spirit within us.
These three terms apply directly to our ‘’inner being,’’ which is Paul’s fourth term in this step. A seamless continuity of love between God’s provisions (first 3 terms) and our inner being (4th term) is filtered through faith choices.
The last and fourth term listed on this step, is the object of His love and our new identity because we are now in Christ which is the preamble to the first three terms.
4. Our inner being.
An inner being infers an “outer being.” It is also a term we find in scripture, 2Corinthinas 4:16 (ESV). By looking at our outer being, we learn what our inner being is not. Scripture often uses a negative to help us understand the positive.
Our outer being is where our personal culture lives. It is were our values are stored along with our world view. Our outer being is a combination of self esteem, desires, dreams and fears. It is our interface with this physical world and the spiritual darkness ruling this worldly cosmos.
We might say our outer being is the combination of soul and body. It contains reason, our heart’s passion and our will to do as well as our innate cravings of lust.
Our outer being is cluttered with life’s things. It is where human wisdom reigns with boundaries for reason, tangible realities and definitive thought. It is where collective culture creates independence and political arrangements for social order and government control.
This is a natural life of a person not re-created in Christ Jesus. A natural man, or outer being, is Spiritually dead!
On the other hand, our inner being is Spiritually alive. It is Christ Jesus resident in our mortal vessel providing life and love in us through His resurrection.
The believer is wrapped in a body of flesh and encompassed in a natural soul but born again with an incorruptible seed, 1Peter 1:23, with an identity no one can snatch out of the Father’s hand, John 10:29. Paul tells us, “But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him,” 1Corinthians 6:17. John put it this way, “…as he is (Jesus Christ) so also are we in this world,” 1Jn 4:17c. This seems too incredible to be true but in God’s declaration of truth, His word, it is well-defined. This life, created in us, is the same resurrected Savior’s life described in our Colossians passage:
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him were all things created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together…”
It is Jesus Himself, His divine person demonstrating His agape love toward us, dying in our stead, gifting His life in us so that His resurrection power is accessible to drive our soul into this same oneness, to be one with Him just as He is one with His Father, Totally Incredible!
O’ the love that drew salvation’s plan!
O’ the grace that brought it down to man!
O’ the mighty gulf that God did span
At Calvary!
God re-created man as a spiritual being with a capacity to commune with God Himself. This was God’s intention and it is the reality for us, His elect, who are 2Corinthinas 5:17 believers in the body of Christ.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote about Jesus walking on earth in the flesh as the living word of God. He was Jesus the Christ, God made visble in human flesh.
Paul did not meet Jesus in the flesh but Spiritually on the road to Demascus. He didn’t write about the physcial Jesus the diciples saw in the flesh, Jesus the Christ. Paul wrote about Christ who was Jesus. He wrote about Christ Jesus rather than Jesus Christ.
Paul wrote about the divine Christ living in our flesh rather than the Jesus who lived in His own flesh. Paul’s learning was from Jesus also, but it was the living ressurrected Jesus inside of himself. Today, Jesus continues to live, but in us. Jesus lives in us! This is the mystery hidden in God for ages, Christ in us, Colossians 1:27!