Opening Spiritual Eyes (Ephesians 1:15-19)
Introduction
When we are born, we are spiritually blind. We lack the ability to perceive, understand, and then participate in spiritual truths and realities in much the same way that a blind man lacks the ability to perceive, understand, and participate in pickleball.
We often don’t think about it, but we have two pairs of eyes. The first pair is the eyes of our heads, the physical organs we use to perceive and make sense of the physical world around us. But the second pair of eyes is, as verse 18 of our text says, “the eyes of your heart.” This pair of eyes does not perceive physical realities but spiritual ones. These eyes are given to us to sense the invisible realities of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, of sin and righteousness, of salvation and damnation, of angels and demons, of truth and lies, of joy and blessedness.
While we have (most of us) retained our physical sight, we have blinded ourselves spiritually. Long ago, Israel exemplified this reality. Isaiah 42:9, speaking of Israel, says, “Who is blind but my servant or deaf as my messenger whom I send? Who is blind as my dedicated one, or blind as the servant of the Lord?” Thus, in Isaiah 59:10, they cry out, “We grope for the wall like a blind man; we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among those in full vigor we are like dead men.”
God has thus judicially blinded us. John 12:40, “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.” And furthermore, our own darkness has blinded us! “Whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:11). Furthermore, Satan has blinded us again: “In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4:4).
But, Psalm 146:8, “the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.” Speaking of a day yet future to him, Isaiah prophesied that “In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see” (Is 29:18). Jesus himself quoted Isaiah 42 in Luke 4:18, saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind…”
We who were once spiritually blind have now received our sight. Now we see things we didn’t before. Things which once confused us make perfect sense. Things we saw as foolish we now deem perfect wisdom. Things which were upside down seem right side up, and things that seemed so normal and right to us we now realize were always wrong.
And yet, while we have been illuminated, we have received our spiritual sight, it is almost as though we are like the man whom Jesus healed part way so that he said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking” (Mark 8:24). We can see, but we still need to see better. We are still wiping the gunk of our old blindness out of our eyes and continuing to see with greater clarity all that God is for us.
And that is the center of this text: it is not just an example of what or how to pray—though it is that. It is not just a first century petition of Paul for the Ephesians—though it is that. It is an ongoing assertion of this fact: what God has done and what God will do, we need to see with increasing clarity. Our eyes are open, and we need to have them opened again and again and again.
Joy and confidence in God’s work for us rests on a clear-eyed spiritual sight of it. We cannot delight in that which we cannot see. And we can only delight in God’s work to the degree that we see it clearly. And this explains a tension that we find in this first chapter. In 1:8, it says that he has lavished his grace on us “in all wisdom and insight.” And remember, we said that meant that when he lavished his grace on us, part of that grace was all the wisdom needed to understand his work and act on it correctly. Why then does Paul pray that God would give us, “The Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him” (1:17)? It is precisely because even though he has given us all grace, we still need to grow in grace.
Which gives us two main thrusts for this message. What am I aiming at? 1) We need to see God and his work more clearly that we do now. Every morning when we open up our Bibles, we need to have this in our conscious thoughts: “Open my eyes that I might behold wonderous things out of your law.” Every time we hear a sermon, we need to be thinking, “Lord, alleviate my remaining blindness. Let me see my sin that I can’t see, or the glory of Christ that’s still hidden from me, or the truth that will set me free.” And every time we pray to God, part of those prayers should be, “Lord, help us to see you and your work more clearly.” 2) Our prayers for each other should be aimed at these sorts of things. Often times our prayers are far too small. We miss amazing things because we spend our time praying for small things like more money or less pain or longer lives or greater comfort. But what if we spent ourselves praying for the kind of things that Paul prays for here? What if we were to pray things like, “Lord, help the church see who she is! Help us to grasp the depths of your love for us that stretch back to before the foundations of the world. Help us to focus all our hope on you no matter what the circumstance. Help us to understand the riches of your inheritance in the saints. Help us to know how immeasurably powerful you are.”
Thus, Paul teaches us three lessons about spiritual illumination that the eyes of our hearts might be opened more effectively: We are illuminated through prayer, We are illuminated by the Spirit, We are illuminated for knowledge.
I. We Are Illuminated Through Prayer (1:15-16)
The first lesson that Paul would teach us, he teaches us by way of example. Namely, that illumination comes through prayer. If we are going to have our eyes opened, if we are going to see God, we must ask him.
How do you connect to God’s grace? How do you receive something from God? It’s a tricky question, because, in reality, you don’t technically do anything except receive it. My daughter and I were talking about this the other day. We were talking about receiving God’s salvation. So I explained to her: “Let’s say you want me to spin you around. What do you need to do in order for me to do that for you? You need to believe I’m strong enough to do it, and then you need to ask. God is the same way. If we want him to save us, then you need the same two things. You need to believe that he is strong enough to save and then you need to ask. And he does!” That’s how you receive God’s grace. Like Jesus said, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” (Luke 11:13).
So then, we ask a second question: how do we help others receive God’s grace? And the answer is exactly the same: trust that he is powerful enough to do it and then ask. And that is exactly what Paul does in this verse. He knows that there are still good works to walk in. He knows that there is still a worthy walk to walk in, still unity to be fostered, still truth to be taught and saints to be equipped, still the old man to put off and the new man to be put on, still sexual immorality to be left behind and true love to be embraced. Still a renewed household to live out. In other words, he knows that they see, and that they need to see more.
And that’s what he says, “For this reason, because I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention upon every prayer of mine…” He prays for the very reason that Verse 3-14 are true! They have been swept up in God’s plan from eternity past, and redeemed by Christ’s blood, and sealed with the Spirit. For this reason he prays for them.
He knows that they believe in Christ. This is what he just mentioned in 1:13—“in him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit…” So, he has heard of their faith, their belief in Jesus Christ, and he knows that on that basis they possess the Holy Spirit, are sealed with him, and that they have been guaranteed as part of the inheritance which God will one day fully redeem for himself. They are true Christians. They are real. They see.
But then he adds something else—“and your love toward all the saints.” Now, both love and saints have already been mentioned in Ephesians. Love was the sphere in which God predestined us (1:4-5), “In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ…” And from this I gather that the love which was directed toward us in eternity past then spills over through us in time to the rest of those who are members of his spiritual family. The love of the church manifests the eternal love of the Father. And saints have been mentioned in 1:1—“to the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus.” And there you have the definition of exactly what Paul says in 1:15—“faithful” includes faith and faithful action flowing from it. What does it mean that the saints are “faithful”? 1:15, they have faith in the Lord Jesus and love toward all the saints.
It was for the very reason that he heard this that he prayed for them without ceasing. He hears that they are trusting in Jesus and he hears that they are loving the saints, and concludes, “I must constantly pray for them.” And doesn’t that turn our logic on its head. We usually think, “They don’t have XYZ, therefore I must pray.” Paul’s logic is, “They do have XYZ, therefore I must pray all the more for them.” Sometimes we think that once God answers a prayer that means we should stop praying. But Paul teaches us the opposite! Receiving grace should compel us to pray for more grace!
But let’s focus on prayer. What is prayer? What do we do in prayer? Fundamentally, we do one of two things in prayer. We are either thanking him for something that he has given us, or we are asking him for something that we need. This is incidentally what Paul does here. He thanks, then he asks. And what do thanking and asking have in common? Both are done in a posture of dependence. One depends on God in relation to what we have received [thanksgiving], and the other depends on God in relation to what we have yet to receive [asking]. Which is why I believe that the fundamental posture of prayer is dependence on God. Prayer is an act of dependence, because we are either asking him for something that we don’t have and we need and can’t create ourselves—in which case we are dependent on him to give it—or we are thanking him for something he’s given to us—and what do we have that we have not received, and so what is there that we should not thank him for?
But now, look at how this applies to Spiritual illumination. Has God given the Spirit to the Ephesians? Yes. So there is a reason for Paul to thank God, and by so doing he acknowledges that they are absolutely dependent on him for blessing and salvation. And do the Ephesians still need to experience the illumination of the Spirit in greater measure? Yes! So there is a reason for God to ask God, and by so doing he acknowledges that he is absolutely dependent on God for these things.
You aren’t saved because of you! And so you should thank him for saving you. And you don’t stay saved because of you! And so you should ask him. Spiritual sight is only something God can grant. You can’t fabricate it. I can’t communicate it through a sermon. You can’t educate your way into it. But you can ask.
II. We Are Illuminated by the Spirit (1:17)
The second lesson that Paul would teach us is that if we are going to see, then God must give us the Spirit. Not only does illumination come at the request of the children of God from a good Father, but it is given to us through the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Immediately, we need to ask a question: don’t we already have the Spirit? Paul has just said in verse 13 that when you heard and believed you were “sealed” with the promised Holy Spirit. So we have the Spirit. What then does Paul mean when he says he is praying that God would give them the Spirit?
I think the solution is very similar to what we’ve already talked about. We see, but we need to see more clearly. We know the mystery of God’s will, yet we still need to know it better. We have been given wisdom and insight, and yet we also must receive the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. In other words, we receive the whole Spirit when we trust him and are born again. There is no second blessing, no more of the Spirit to receive. Nevertheless, that does not mean that the Spirit’s work is immediately finished in us. The Spirit works slowly in transforming us into the image of Christ. And I think that’s what’s meant here. We were sealed with the Spirit at the moment of our new birth—we have him, in full, no more needed. Yet, we still need to be given the Spirit to experience the full effects or ramifications of his indwelling presence.
So Paul doesn’t mean “give” in the sense that he gives us something we didn’t have before. Rather, he means “give” in the sense of re-experiencing his saving power in a new way or applied to a new facet of life. He means the further realization of what it means to have the Spirit living inside of you. Paul is praying not that they would be given something they don’t have, but that they would experience a further manifestation of what you do have.
And right there you have a great definition of sanctification, don’t you? We are holy, and yet we must become more holy, even as we make progress toward perfect holiness. We are wise through our understanding of the gospel, and yet we must become wise through the continuing work of the Spirit, even as we make progress toward perfect wisdom. We have revelation, and yet the Spirit must still through the Word reveal things about God and his plan to our hearts, even as we look forward to the revelation which he will make to the whole world at his return. We have knowledge of him, and yet we must grow in our knowledge of him, even as we anticipate fully knowing him.
And this comes through the Spirit of God. 1 Corinthians 2:10–16 is very similar in thought. READ AND EXPLAIN.
In other words, it is through the text of Scripture—those things taught by the Spirit of God in words which the apostles speak—that the Spirit subdues our hearts. Now, put that on a collision course with what Paul is saying in Ephesians and you get this reality—God gives the Spirit to subdue our hearts to the text of Scripture in response to our prayers for it.
What do you pray for, when you pray? 2 Kings 6:15-17 tells the story of how an army of horses and chariots had surrounded the city during the night. And Elisha, when he saw it, was afraid. And so, Elijah prays for him: “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” There were spiritual realities that surrounded Elisha, but he couldn’t see them, and so he didn’t live in light of them. He was afraid of the human army because he couldn’t see the much larger and more powerful spiritual army which surrounded them. And so Elijah asks that the Lord would open his eyes. And that is what Paul is praying for here: spiritual vision. We fail to act the way we should in light of our spiritual blessings precisely because we can’t see them. And we need God to give us the Holy Spirit and enliven wisdom and knowledge in us and to “enlighten the eyes of our hearts.”
III. We Are Illuminated for Knowledge (1:18-19)
So, we are illuminated through prayer, we are illuminated by the Holy Spirit at work in us. But what are we illuminated for? What purpose? Which is the third lesson that Paul would give: God gives us spiritual sight that we might know something.
Now, what kind of knowledge are we talking about? It could refer to intellectual understanding or experiential understanding. And of course you need both. God is at work in the formation of our minds. Sometimes we can draw too harsh of a distinction between the two in a well-intentioned attempt to avoid heady, merely intellectual knowledge that puffs up. In other cases, people are so averse to the hard work of thinking that they discourage hard, rigorous study to salve their own conscience by degrading those who rightly recognize its importance.
But when we do that we inadvertently acknowledge the opposite error: a merely experiential Christianity which is driven not by truth but by subjectivity. Sometimes that subjectivity takes the form of emotionalism, which is easily manipulated by charismatic leaders. Other times that subjectivity takes the form of the exaltation of human ideas, which are touted as true for no other reason than they were said with passion and persuasion. Still other times, it takes the form of the virtual worship of human authorities—whether individuals like the Pope or structures like creeds and confessions—due to their trappings and history. But they are all the product of subjectivity—knowledge of Christ and his works divorced from the rigorous study of his word.
The reality is that we need both. We need to know these things intellectually, but as we come to know them intellectually we must experience their reality and power in our souls. And again, we are drawn back to the necessity for God to do this work in us and for us by his Spirit. Which again brings us back to the need for prayer.
What are we to know? Three things: Hope, Riches, and Power
Hope. “…what is the hope to which he has called you…” Hope in the Bible is not a wish. It is a certainty caught in the tension of not yet being reality. Hope is less like wishing the Vikings would win the Super Bowl and more like a child looking forward to birthday cake at their birthday party. We have a great hope! And what is that hope? I think it was again articulated in the verses above: v10, “uniting all things in Christ,” v11, being made God’s inheritance, v13, the “promise” which the Holy Spirit guarantees, v14, the full redemption of the possession of God through our resurrection from the dead and our reigning with Christ on the earth. Those things are certain, and we anticipate them.
And we are “called” to this hope. This is the only time this word is used in the first half of this letter. The next time it appears is in 4:1: “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” We will get into greater detail about what this means when we get to chapter 4, but here it is sufficient to note that call here does not just mean “offer.” It means “summons.” God has not merely offered us an inheritance, the promises, the rull redemption of the possession, but he has “summoned” us into those things through a call which is effective. God’s word does what it commands. He says “Let there be light, and there is light.” He says, “Lazarus, come out,” and Lazarus comes out. He says, “Shepherd Bible Church, become my inheritance,” and we are. That’s the calling he’s talking about.
But the lesson here is that the Spirit needs to open our eyes to see and know this hope. If we search our lives, we find that we very seldom think of the future ahead of us. We do think of the future, but only in the short term. “What’s for dinner? What shall I wear? When is the paycheck? How much money in retirement? Where shall we go for vacation?” But we do not think in the long term: “What will the new heavens and the new earth be like? What will it be like to have a new body? What will change in me and in the world when sin is gone? What will international relationships be like when Christ is king? How shall the end of the ages unfold?” We need the Spirit’s help to think in this way.
Riches. The second thing we need to know is “what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.” In other words, you need to know something about God’s inheritance—that it is glorious. Remember in verse 11, it said that “we have been made an inheritance.” That is, by being chosen and redeemed and sealed, we have become God’s peculiar possession, his chosen, precious, and special possession. Thus, the saints are God’s inheritance. So, when Paul prays that we would know what are the riches of “his inheritance in the saints,” he is saying that we need to know something about the church.
The church is magnificently important. One of the unfortunate losses of protestant theology is that it tends to shy away from the church due to the abuses of the Roman Catholic church. But we need not lower the New Testament’s teaching on the church simply because the Popish church has abused the doctrine. The church is incredibly important. The church is the saints, and the saints are God’s inheritance, and God’s inheritance is glorious, and that glorious inheritance consists in riches.
Did you know that when you look around on a Sunday morning you are looking at the riches of God? This says something about how much God prizes the church. And it also tells us something about how much you should prize the church as well. We shouldn’t get legalistic and start demanding that everyone always come to everything and never have balance and all that. But I think that when this vision of what the church is starts to grip our hearts, we will be irresistibly drawn to it. How easy comes the service of one who understand that the church is God’s wealth and inheritance! How quickly we are to lay down ourselves for God’s own inheritance!
And perhaps the reason why some do not commit to the church, join a church in membership, and get involved in the life of a church is precisely because they need to experience a spiritual eye-opening by the Holy Spirit. We stagnate in our service because we fail to see what the church really is—the very inheritance of God.
Power. The third thing Paul prays that we would know is “the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might.” This really begins the thought which lasts to the end of the chapter, so we’ll just introduce it. We need to know the greatness of his power.
There are four words for power in this verse:
· Dunamis – Potential power, the ability to do something
· Energeian – Active power, power at work, power in motion
· Kratous – Subduing power, sometimes translated “dominion” or “rule.”
· Ischus – Inherent power, power personally possessed power.
Thus, putting it all together, God’s power is that power which he personally possesses, which has the ability to do anything, which he actively uses to bring about the subduing of all things. And all for your sake. Because this power is “towards us who believe.” God possesses the ability to do whatever he wants. And when we begin to contemplate him, we get a sense that he really can do it. And then he gets to work in history and puts his power to use. And in the course of the use of his power, it becomes obvious that he can indeed do anything.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we need to come back to the main thrusts of this message. First, what do you pray for, when you pray? First of all, do you pray at all? If you don’t, you are demonstrating that you do not believe yourself to be dependent on God. But then, when you pray, what do you pray for? Do you pray for the kinds of things that Paul is praying for here? Or do we occupy ourselves with small and ultimately insignificant things? Or, even better, do we frame our small and ultimately insignificant struggles in light of the grand and eternal truths that the Bible teaches us? I encourage you: spend much more time this month praying that the Lord would open your eyes and the eyes of this church to know our hope, to know our riches, and to know his power, and see how he answers your prayers!
And secondly, we need to see God and his plan more clearly than we do now. None of us has arrived. None of us is perfectly clear-eyed. We always need to see. We must follow the example of Elijah and pray that the Lord would open one another’s eyes. Then, we should expect to experience constant eye-opening truths, both in our understanding of them, and in the wisdom it takes to live them out.
Our family tries to get down to Florida every summer for vacation. We stay in a condo by the sea, and every morning the sun rises over the horizon line. It starts as a glimmer of purple, then broadens into deep reds and oranges, then into bright pinks and yellows, and eventually into beautiful clear blue skies. And that is like our experience. We start with a glimmer of the horizon, knowing that something glorious is over the horizon. And gradually, as the Lord gives the Spirit, we come gradually into a more beautiful and slowly warming understanding of his plan. May God give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, that the eyes of our hearts might be enlightened to know all he has done for us.