God’s Power is For Us

Scripture — Ephesians 1:17-20 (NRSV)

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.

Devotion

According to Ephesians 1:19-20, the power of God was at work when God “raised [Christ] from the dead.” The resurrection of Jesus was not, as some would argue, a poetic way to express the victory of goodness over evil or a myth dreamt up by the first Christians to dress Jesus up as divine. Rather, the resurrection was something that actually happened. It was experienced by the earliest followers of Jesus as a real, historical event. They did not witness the actual resurrection, of course. Rather, they encountered the resurrected Jesus who, much to their surprise, had conquered death. His tomb was empty, not because his body had been stolen, but because death could not constrain the risen life of Jesus.

Ephesians 1 says that the very power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to us. This does not mean, however, that we can control this power. The power of God is not like the Force in Star Wars, something we can learn to manipulate. Rather, we have access to God’s power because God dwells in us and among us through the Holy Spirit. God determines how divine power will be used in our lives. As we make ourselves available to God, the Spirit fills us, transforms us, and empowers us to participate in God’s work in the world. Whether we’re feeding the homeless, preaching sermons, guiding a startup, painting a house, or teaching a class of high school seniors, the Spirit of God is at work in us if we are open and willing.

Paul focuses on “the immeasurable greatness of [God’s] power for us who believe” (1:19). Today, notice that one little word, the seemingly unimpressive word “for.” If you were to dig down into the original language of this phrase, you’d find that “for” translates the Greek word eis. Then, if you were to look up this word in a Greek-English dictionary, you’d find a wide variety of options for translation, including: “into, in, toward, to, for the purpose of, for.”

What is Paul trying to say about the relationship between God’s power and us by using the Greek word eis? Many commentators see an emphasis here on the location of God’s power. It is “in us.” Later in Ephesians, Paul will say explicitly that God’s power is working “within us” (Greek en hemin; 3:20). In his letter to the Romans, Paul explains that this power is the presence of the Holy Spirit “living in” us (Rom 5:5). So, there’s no question about the fact that God’s power is indeed in us.

But the use of eis in Ephesians 1:19 points not so much to the location of God’s power as to the fact that God’s power is for us. It’s for our benefit; it’s for our salvation, it’s for our empowerment to participate in God’s work of redemption. Not only is God’s power given to us through the Spirit, but also God’s power is consistently working to help those of us who belong to God. The more we know God, the more we will know that God’s incomparably great power for us, for our good as well as for the good of all things.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the High Calling archive, hosted by the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Why the Resurrection Matters So Much.