Trinity
16
Eph
3:13-21
9/20/15
When you watch a coal train go by on
the Union Pacific line just east of us here in Marion, you are seeing some
impressive power. Trains on this line have two engines on the one end of the
train, and single unit on the other end that is being operated remotely by the
engineer. Each of those engines is about
4,000 or 4,400 horsepower, so when you see a coal train go by, you are watching
about 12,000 horsepower pass you.
Diesel engines replaced steam
engines for many reasons – but at the root of all of them was the bottom
line. Diesel engines were simply cheaper
to operate. They required less maintenance and servicing than steam engines. They were also more flexible – and therefore
less expensive.
Each steam engine had a certain
amount of maximum horsepower it could produce.
If you needed more power, then you needed more engines. However, each of those engines required a two
man crew in order to operate them.
Diesels also have a maximum horsepower that each engine can
produce. Here too, if you need more
power, then you need more engines. But
the big difference with diesels is that all of the engines can be connected to
each other in a way so that one engineer
can run them all together as if they were
a single engine. The cost savings of not needing multiple crews is
tremendous.
Because you can put together as many
engines as you need, it’s not hard to see a truly awesome amount of power on
one train. So when my dad, Matthew and I
were out in the Altoona, PA area in August we saw coal trains with three
engines on the front and four engines on the end. All told, there was 24,000 horsepower on
those trains. When they are all at full throttle and working hard, you can
almost feel the power throbbing off of them.
In our epistle lesson this morning
the apostle Paul tells the readers not to lose heart because of the way Paul is
suffering as a prisoner for Christ on their behalf. So that they may be able to do this, the
apostle expresses a prayer that they may be strengthened with power through the
Holy Spirit in their inner man. Paul’s
language about power causes us to reflect upon what he says in this letter about
how the power that raised Christ from the dead is at work in us through the
Holy Spirit.
Paul wrote the letter to the
Ephesians from prison. We know all about prisons in southern Illinois – and of
course what we have what has been a very well known federal one just south of
us here in Marion. However ancient
imprisonment was different from the modern version. In the Roman world imprisonment was not a
punishment. Instead, a person was
imprisoned while they were waiting for a final judgment. Once this was done they left the prison as the
punishment was enacted: a person might be executed, or sent to workin the salt
mines, or be sent into exile.
Paul was in prison because of the
Gospel. But he begins our text by writing, “So I ask you not to lose heart over
what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.” The imprisonment of the
apostle was discouraging. But Paul draws
a conclusion from what he has just said and tells them they should not be
discouraged.
The reason is that it had been
granted to Paul “to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of
Christ.” He had been called to reveal
the mystery “that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and
partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” God had done this
in Christ, and in the verse just before our text Paul tells the Gentiles that
it is because of Christ that they have confident access to God. He speaks of
Christ as the One “in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through
our faith in him.”
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians confronts
us with two different ways that we fail in the Christian life. The first is
rather obvious. We do lose heart. We lose heart at the suffering that we see
our fellow Christians experiencing around the world – especially in the Middle
East. We lose heart when we see ways
that the basic ordering of creation that God has provided regarding marriage
and sex, is coercively denied.
But there is another way present as
well. And that is apathy. Paul has just
finished describing how God has graciously revealed through the apostle the
mystery “that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and
partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” The Gentiles – and that’s you – were
separated from God. They were not part
of God’s people Israel. But in his
grace, by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and through the water and the
Word of baptism, God has now made you a part of his people. You have inherited eternal life. You are saved.
Our reaction to this can be rather
ho-hum. We take it for granted that we
are included in God’s people. Frankly, we often take it for granted that we
have received God’s salvation. And this
shows up in the way we live. Sometimes
sin is not really something that we struggle against. Instead we view the Gospel as a kind of
insurance policy against the sin that we commit.
This is certainly not how the
Christian faith works in the life of a believer. It doesn’t despair. It isn’t apathetic. And so in our text Paul expresses a prayer
for the believers. He says, “For this
reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and
on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you
to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner man.”
Paul says that his prayer is that
the believers will be strengthened in their inner man with power through the
work of the Holy Spirit. It’s not hard
to discover the source of this power. It
is God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead.
In the first chapter of this letter Paul writes about the “immeasurable
greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his
great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and
seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.”
The apostle says that God’s power
has been displayed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul’s prayer in our text is that this power
will be at work in the believers through the Spirit. He writes, “that according to the riches of
his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in
your inner man.”
It is the Spirit who does this, and
because of you have been baptized, you know that you have received the
Spirit. In fact, Paul says in this
letter that you have been sealed with Spirit and that you have received the
Spirit as a down payment. He writes in
the first chapter, “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the
gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised
Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire
possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”
You have been sealed with the Spirit
– the Spirit who causes you to be strengthened in the inner man with the same
power by which Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. The power of Christ’s resurrection is at work
in you through the Spirit.
But
this power is a funny thing. It does everything and it does nothing. It does nothing and it does everything. It
does everything in order to save you because it is through the work of the
Spirit that you receive Jesus’salvation. It is through this powerful work of
the Spirit that you are in Christ. But this power does not cause you to do
anything in order to be saved. In fact
there is nothing that you can do. Paul
says in this letter, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this
is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no
one may boast.”
This power does not cause you to do
anything in order to be saved. But because
you are in Christ – because this power is present and at work in you – you now
do everything in order to serve and help others. For Paul goes on to say, “For we are his
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
The continuing source of this power is the
means by which the Spirit creates and sustains faith – the Means of Grace. When
we are receiving these means, we are receiving the Spirit. And when we are receiving the Spirit we are
receiving the power by which we do not lose heart. We are receiving the power by which know the
Gospel to be the breathtaking gift of salvation. We are receiving the power by which we serve
our neighbor and contend against the ways that sin and the old man seek to lead
us away from God’s will.
In chapter three Paul shares with
the Ephesians that though they are Gentiles – like you – God has made them “fellow
heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus
through the gospel.” But after sharing
this fact and praying that they may be strengthened with power through God’s
Spirit in their inner man, he goes on to write, “Now this I say and testify in
the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of
their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life
of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of
heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality,
greedy to practice every kind of impurity.”
Yet Paul then turns right around and reminds
the Ephesians that this does not describe them.
I should not describe them because of Christ’s power that is at work in
them. He says, “But that is not the way
you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in
him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old man, which belongs to your
former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be
renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new man, created after
the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
To put on the new man is to return
to what the Spirit has done to and for you in baptism. It is to return in faith to the power that
Paul speaks of in our text – the power of Christ’s resurrection that is at work
in us through the Spirit. This is the
power by which you can serve your neighbor. This is power by which you can
contend against sin. And don’t
underestimate this power. Because as Paul says at the end of our text: “Now to
him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think,
according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in
Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
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