Ephesians 3: 20-21 (superabundance of God)

            Summary:  Paul continues in his prayer here by proclaiming that God is able to more than we can “ask” or even more than we can “think”.  It is important that Paul gives all glory back to the father before concluding this prayer.

Note: The church, as referred to in v.21, pertains to a unified body, not separate beings.

Note: The word Paul uses for abundantly in v.20 is huper-ek-perrisou, the first part of the word, huper, maintains the idea of over or beyond, ek denotes origin (whence proceeds an action), perrisou is translated over abundant, so all together this word can be translated ‘superabundant’.

Timeless Principle: This two verse masterpiece as written by Paul should be noted by every laborer.  Paul is claiming something big.  He is claiming that God is big enough to do all that we could ever ask.  But God’s endless power doesn’t end there.  In fact, not only is He able to do more than we can ask, He also is able to do more than we can think about or imagine; an incomprehensible God doing incomprehensibly more than this restricted human mind can grasp.  This is evident and has been evident since the creation “of the Earth and the things that have been made, so we are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20).  God has clearly shown us his majesty from the beginning of time, this evidence can easily be examined when one looks out into the night sky only be humbled by the depth of the universe. 

The word Paul uses in this text for abundantly is especially intriguing; it’s almost as if he could not think of a word to describe the abundance of God.  He takes a word that means overly abundant and slaps a couple prefixes on it to help his dilemma of trying to describe a self-existing authority with words that are only appropriate for a fleeting human being.  The word he uses literally means superabundant, or overly-exceedingly-abundant. Paul had an idea of what God can do without having an idea of what God can do.  This paradox is how we should perceive the perplexing reality of God’s power.  We, like Paul, should remember the one who can do abundantly more despite our inability to grasp what more is. 

            Perhaps even more perplexing to us than God’s ability to do more is what Paul claims next.  He states that God does all these wondrous things according to what?  Answer: “the Power at work within” who?  Answer: “us”.  Paul is referring to the saints in Jesus Christ here as the “us”.  Rewind: so if Jesus Christ has changed your heart for his glory and made in your place a new man to replace the old, then you are included in the “us”.  This might lead you to essentially one question.  What does that mean for the saints in Christ?  It means, to be put mildly, that the power that created it all is the same power that works in the believer.  This is an astonishing fact.  The greatest power ever conceived (known to us only because God has made it known to us) lives and works within us, those called out of darkness by God himself through his son’s bloodshed.  May we never belittle the Spirit which we have been given because it can and, take careful note of this, will do superabundantly more than we can imagine.