God’s Glorious Riches
Next year, one of my favorite shows as a kid is coming back to television, and no, it’s not Matlock. Hewey, Dewey, and Louie as well as Scrooge McDuck and Launchpad McQuack will all be returning in a reboot of the famed cartoon Ducktales.
I loved watching it as a kid and can’t wait to see what they do with it next year. One year for Christmas I even received Hewey, Dewey, and Louie dolls. Looking back, one of the most interesting characters had to be Scrooge McDuck, or maybe it was just the Duckburg society and how they handled their money. As a kid, I didn’t think anything of it, but as an adult I have to wonder, how practical is it to keep your entire fortune next to your mansion in a large building with a money symbol on it? It surely made it convenient to swim in, but I honestly don’t think I’d want to. Honestly, wouldn’t it have been more practical to get the total of your fortune in bills? That may have even made it easier to swim in.
Suffice it to say, with large building housing all of his earthly wealth, there was no denying that Scrooge McDuck was rich. In fact, there were more than a few episodes that focused around this fact. Whether it was how Scrooge made all of his money or stories telling how he lost it and subsequently regained it, Scrooge McDuck’s immense wealth was almost its own character within the show.
As we’ve been studying Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, this theme of God’s riches has been persistent. Just like Scrooge McDuck’s money bin, this idea of God’s riches has been looming since the beginning of the letter, but up to this point we haven’t been given a clear picture as to what these riches are.
When we think of riches, our mind will typically settle on an image such a Scrooge McDuck. We think of riches and we picture piles of money or big, luxurious houses and cars. However, not all riches are tangible, physical things. Someone can be rich in love, rich in wisdom, or rich in knowledge.
As we once again take a look at the book of Ephesians (Ephesians 3:14-21), Paul begins to describe the glorious riches that God has made available to us, and it’s little surprise that God’s riches have little to do with physical wealth.
Within this prayer, Paul asks for four things that come from God’s glorious riches. Like I said, these things aren’t physical things. It’s not a get rich quick scheme. Just as Paul has repeatedly spoken of spiritual things thus far, the riches of God are no different. If someone told you that believing in Christ would make you wealthy, if someone told you that if you give $100 to their ministry God will bless you with $1000, I’m sorry, but they lied to you. Nowhere does scripture say that God will give you money if trust in him, but he does promise to give to us out of his glorious riches.
The first thing that Paul prays for out of God’s glorious riches is strength. His prayer is that out of his riches God would strengthen us through his Spirit. Again, we’re not talking about physical strength. We’re not going to be imbued with God’s strength and then, like Hercules, have the strength of ten men. That’s not the strength that Paul is referring to here.
The strength that Paul is speaking of is an inner strength, granted by God’s Spirit dwelling within. It is a strength of mind and a strength of will. This isn’t a strength that you can gain by pumping iron. It’s a strength of the inner man. While our outer being decays and perishes, the inner man can be renewed and strengthened through God’s Spirit. When this inner man submits to God’s Spirit and allows him to take control, only then can we truly understand the riches of God’s strength.
It is through this strength, our faith in Christ, that Christ, the Spirit of God, dwells within us, and as Paul continues to pray, his prayer is that we would be rooted and established in the love of Christ. The three words Paul uses, dwell, rooted, established, give us an idea of depth. In fact, to dwell literally means to settle down and feel at home.
We spoke of this before. Paul’s prayer was that the church might know Christ, not a breadth of knowledge where they know facts about him but that they might have a depth of knowledge in which they truly know him. That is, an understanding and closeness that goes so deep that they might feel at home and comfortable in his presence.
As we dwell with Christ and are rooted in him, just as a tree sends its roots deep into the ground, we are rooted in Christ’s love. The roots of a tree are its source of life. They provide stability so that the tree can grow, but they also provide nourishment. Likewise, our roots must be deep in the love of Christ so that he might be our nourishment, our stability. The most important question we can ask ourselves is, “Where does my source of nourishment, my source of stability, my source of strength come from?” If there’s no power in your Christian walk, it’s because your source of nourishment, stability, and strength are coming from somewhere other than the love of Christ.
Paul continues to pray that out of God’s glorious riches we may “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge.“ The problem with having an all knowing, all powerful, all present God is that we have a hard time truly understanding him. Paul’s prayer is that we might know God’s love which surpasses knowledge. It sounds rather odd to pray that we might know something only to then continue to say that it can’t be known, but just because we can’t completely understand something doesn’t mean we can’t grasp it.
I’m a big fan of the Flash TV show, and if you’re not familiar with the comic book character, the Flash is a superhero that can run super fast. More than that, he can everything at super speed. He can move fast, and he can think fast. He can move his arms so fast that they create a tremendous amount of wind. He can vibrate his body so fast that he can separate his molecules just enough to allow him to go through solid objects.
One of the most amazing things he can do with his speed is travel through time. They’ve played around with this a bit in the TV show, but the comics are full of story arcs where the Flash has to go back in time for one reason or another. Sci-fi writers love this concept of time travel, but we as humans, living in a completely linear timeline, have a hard time wrapping our heads around the possibility of time travel. It is truly a topic that surpasses knowledge, but while we still have more questions than answers, even the least seasoned of sci-fi nerd can grasp the basics of time travel in their fictional world, and this is Paul’s prayer for us. Not that we will completely understand everything there is to know about God’s love, but that we will grasp it.
This word, to grasp, comes from the Latin word prehendere. It’s where we get our words such as comprehend or apprehend. These words both carry the idea of grasping an idea or a concept, but they differ slightly.
When we use the word comprehend we indicate a level of knowledge or understanding. Before graduating high school you had to show that you could comprehend basic algebra. You don’t have to agree with it, you don’t have to like it, but you need to be able to have a basic level of understanding.
When we use the word apprehend, we don’t typically use it in a mental sense. More often you’ll hear the word used in criminal justice. When the police track down and capture a criminal it’s said that they apprehended the person. When spoken of in the mental sense the meaning is quite similar. In contrast to comprehension, apprehension means more than just a basic understanding. To apprehend something suggest getting a hold on something for yourself. You can comprehend something like communism yet reject it as your life’s philosophy. However, to apprehend something, you go beyond just a head knowledge and take hold of it within your own life. Paul’s prayer here is that we might apprehend, grasp and claim for ourselves, how deep, wide, long, and high Christ’s love truly is.
Finally, Paul prays for fullness, “that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” This is the last and probably the most important of God’s riches, that we might be filled completely with the fullness of God. This is truly the measure of our Christian life. All too often we as Christians attempt to measure our spiritual lives by comparing ourselves to other Christians. We look at others and say, “Well, I’m better than they are,” but that doesn’t matter. Our goal is not to be better than the worst. Our goal is to be filled with Christ, and no matter how that compares with those around us, if we are not completely filled with Christ, we still have room to grow.
God has made his riches available to us, his strength, depth, apprehension, and fullness, and his desire is to fill us completely with himself. This is accomplished by surrendering our lives to him, to walk daily as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. Christ longs to live among us and within is, to strengthen us and to fill us, but we must be willing to lay down our lives for him. We must be willing to apprehend Christ’s love by faith in him. When we grasp him and claim him as our own, we are then able to grow deeper with him, sending our roots down deep within his love. Our God is faithful, and if we will seek after him, he will surely fill us and make us complete through his glorious riches.