Jesus the Messiah is risen! He is risen indeed!
What a glorious day it was when our Savior and Lord conquered death. “God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him” (Acts 2:24).
The Apostle Paul had the resurrection of Christ in mind when he wrote his letter to the Ephesians. Here we find how Paul prayed for Christians. And here we also find a model prayer for us. Wondering how to pray for yourself? Or for other believers in your local church and around the world? Look no further than Ephesians 1:18-20.
18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.
Paul asks God to open their spiritual eyes so they would experience three incredible gifts provided by God: hope, an inheritance, and power. The third truth is the focus of this post because Paul describes this power as “the mighty strength (God) exerted when he raised Christ from the dead.”
Have you ever considered what it took for God to raise Jesus from the dead? Power! This is the power that only God has, for it is “incomparably great” (v. 19), or as the ESV renders it, “immeasurable.”
God’s strength is beyond measurement. It is off the charts. It is “boundless” (NASB).
We serve a mighty God. He created everything from nothing by speaking the universe into existence.
“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host. . . Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him! For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (Psalm 33:6, 8-9).
This same God raised the body of Jesus to life. That was no small feat!
But there’s more . . .
Please note two words in Paul’s prayer that jump off the page and into our hearts: “for us” (v. 19). God’s power is for our benefit or “toward us” (ESV). God wants his power to be something that we not only read about and marvel at and be blown away by; in addition, he wants us to know that his power is what he exercised to raise us from the dead on the day we first repented and believed in Christ.
Just a few verses later, Paul says this about the working of God’s incredible power for us and toward us:
“You were dead in your trespasses and sins . . . But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:1, 4-7).
The same power that raised Jesus from the grave is the power that God used to bring us out of the state of spiritual death. God “made us alive with Christ” and “raised us up with Christ.” Becoming a Christian is a demonstration of the immeasurable, boundless, mighty strength of God, exerted on our behalf so we could receive the life of God and believe in Jesus.
Before coming to Christ for salvation, we were the living dead. Alive physically, but spiritually, a corpse. Because of our “trespasses and sins,” we were dead. And therefore it should come as no surprise that the Bible also describes the non-believer as blind (2 Corinthians 4:4) and deaf (Luke 8:10) – unable to see, hear, or respond to the truth of the gospel. How can we? We’re dead.
But thanks be to God, “because of his great love for us” and because he is “rich in mercy,” God takes the initiative and breathes the breath of his life into us.
Aren’t you glad he did?
This is what Paul prayed for the Ephesians . . . that they would “know 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” (Ephesians 1:19-20 ESV).
Do you know this power? Have you experienced this wonderful gift? If so, Easter Sunday is the perfect time to offer to God a prayer of praise and thanksgiving that “you have been raised with Christ” (Colossians 3:1).
Rejoice, Christian, rejoice, for Christ is risen from the dead, and so are you!
If you find anything in this post beneficial, please let me know by leaving a comment below.
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