"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every familya in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
"Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen." — Ephesians 3:14-21 NRSV.
Like Jesus himself, Paul’s most urgent prayers are not aimed at hardened unbelievers — “the world” — but at those who already belong to Christ. His concern is “the perfecting of the saints.” Before we trace the powerful requests of this remarkable prayer, it helps to pause and look at the people he is praying for.
Who Were the Ephesians?
The Ephesian church was made up of people who, by almost any measure, lacked sophistication, stability, and moral polish—certainly far less than members of many modern congregations. Most were poor and working class. Historically, these are the kinds of people who respond first when Christ is preached in a community.
Among them were slaves and servants, daily laborers and artisans — people whose lives brought them into constant contact with temptation at the lowest levels of society. Theft, sexual immorality, brawling, and drunkenness were familiar dangers. Gentile converts were still fighting against long‑ingrained pagan habits. Jewish believers in Gentile cities were often drawn from the poorer classes — men whose modern counterparts might crowd immigrant neighborhoods, scraping by as peddlers or secondhand traders, dreaming of something better. Crossing oceans changes the sky overhead, not the human heart.
That was the background of many in the Ephesian church. It would have seemed almost absurd to expect people with such histories — many only first‑ or second‑generation believers — to rise to any great spiritual height. But Paul refuses to think in merely natural terms. By faith, he reaches for a supernatural power — one strong enough to lift people from the very bottom of society to the highest levels of moral and spiritual excellence.
These observations are especially important for those who assume that the “higher life” is reserved for people with easy circumstances: contemplative clergy, wealthy women without children, retired businessmen with few pressures. Paul demolishes that idea. In Ephesus were slaves shaped from childhood by servile vices; artisans pressed into poverty after abandoning idol‑making; thieves and burglars, still viewed with suspicion (Eph. 4:28); former prostitutes and immoral men battling deeply entrenched lusts (Eph. 5:3, 8); and exhausted mothers raising children in cramped homes.
Yet Paul fully expects that such a church — through the cleansing power of the Spirit — will become “holy and without blemish,” a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle.
The Measure of God’s Power
Here is the true measure of the Spirit’s strength in a believer’s life: it matches the glory of the Redeemer.
Paul prays that these weak, tempted believers might be “strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit,” — to a degree equal to that immeasurable glory that surrounds God’s character. In other words, Paul is asking for exactly what Jesus called for in the Sermon on the Mount: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
Christ at Home in the Heart
Next comes this petition: “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” It echoes Jesus’ own promise: “I will abide in you.”
Paul isn’t talking about occasional visits from Christ. He means that, through the Holy Spirit, Christ would take up a permanent residence in the believer’s inner life — shaping the will, cleansing the affections, enlightening the mind, directing every energy, and even permeating the body itself. The believer becomes a living part of Christ’s body, “of his flesh and bones,” with divine life flowing continually through them.
If Christian perfection is not what Paul has in mind here, then the phrase has no meaning at all.
Rooted and Grounded in Love
Education and moral training can bring a kind of stability, but Paul sees a higher, deeper strength. Love binds the soul to God like a golden chain, giving the kind of stability seen in a planet freely circling its radiant center.
Measuring the Love of Christ
Paul prays that believers might comprehend — along with all perfected saints — the breadth, length, depth, and height of something. He doesn’t name it directly, but the next verse makes it clear: it is the love of Christ.
How do you measure love with dimensions? While the imagery is challenging, insight comes from Greek logic, which Paul likely studied in Tarsus. In that tradition, breadth refers to extension — the range of people something includes. Depth (or intention) refers to the quality and richness contained within it. Later thinkers added "protension," length to describe duration over time.
With this framework, Paul’s meaning comes into focus.
The Breadth of Love
To know the breadth of Christ’s love is to grasp how many people it reaches. When love is fully poured into a believer’s heart, it breaks through theological limits — especially the idea of a restricted atonement. The soul is irresistibly drawn toward every lost sinner as someone deeply loved by Christ.
That is why fully consecrated believers often burn with missionary passion. They venture into the darkest corners of cities, risking contagion — moral and physical — to rescue the lost. What drives them is not heroism, but firsthand knowledge of the astonishing breadth of Christ’s love.
"He left his Father's throne above;
(So free, so infinite, his grace!)
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam's helpless race;
'Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For, O my God, it found out me!"
Knowing the Length of Christ’s Love
There’s only one cure for this condition: the fullness of the Spirit revealing just how complete and enduring Christ’s love truly is. When that revelation comes, the believer knows — not just hopes — that Christ can be trusted not only now, but forever. In that moment, the soul hears the Savior say,
"Mine is an unchanging love,
Higher than the heights above,
Deeper than the depths beneath,
Free and faithful, strong as death."
Early in the Christian life, people usually can’t hear that voice clearly. Sometimes their spiritual perception is still weak; more often, they simply aren’t listening in the right direction. But when love is made perfect — when grace matures — the certainty of God’s unchanging regard takes hold of the soul. The believer becomes convinced that Christ will not abandon them unless they abandon Him.
That possibility doesn’t weaken faith; it strengthens it. It drives us to cling more tightly to the promise that we are “kept by the power of God, through faith, unto salvation.” With that confidence, we dare to ask, alongside the Apostle, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” In other words, who could possibly turn Christ’s heart away from loving us? And we answer with his triumphant declaration: nothing in all creation — neither death nor life, nor things present nor things to come — can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Mr. Wesley preached for thirty‑four years before becoming “thoroughly convinced” that perfect love “is amissible,” meaning it can be lost. That conviction shows he did not believe in a shallow version of perfection — one that appears today and disappears tomorrow. Many claim such an experience, but it ultimately harms authentic faith and paints Christ as unreliable and unpredictable. That is not the Jesus of the gospel.
Knowing the Depth and Height of Christ’s Love
Just as God uses sunlight and dust to create the full range of colors across a landscape, and water and sunbeams to form the seven colors of the rainbow, so He uses human faith and the Sun of righteousness to produce the full spectrum of Christian virtue. To know the depth of Christ’s love is to possess “the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, long‑suffering, gentleness, meekness, fidelity, patience, and temperance.” It is a spiritual constellation made of what John Fletcher called “these gracious stars”: perfect repentance, perfect faith, humility, meekness, self‑denial, resignation, hope, and charity.
Then comes the astonishing phrase: “that ye may know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” It is a divine contradiction — an inspired paradox. How can we know what surpasses knowing? Yet that is exactly what Paul means. Christ’s love cannot be fully analyzed, defined, or logically explained. It goes beyond intellectual grasp. But it can be apprehended through spiritual intuition.
Everyone who enters this depth of experience is overwhelmed by the vastness of Christ’s love. It feels limitless, like an ocean without bottom or shore. As Rutherford once said, “How little of the sea can a child carry in his hand; as little am I able to take away of my great Sea, my boundless and running‑over Christ Jesus!”
This experience is not limited to initial conversion. The Ephesians had not yet been
"Plunged in the Godhead's deepest sea
And lost in its immensity."
They were standing only ankle‑deep, in a small, sheltered bay, unable to imagine the immense and boundless waters beyond — hidden from view by ignorance and doubt. Paul’s prayer is therefore aimed at what was often called the “higher life.” This becomes even clearer in the next petition: “that ye may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Being Filled With All the Fullness of God
But his heart is on fire, and words pile up.
Logically speaking, something that is “filled” cannot be filled further. Yet Paul adds “fullness,” and then crowns it with “all,” stretching language to its limits. This is not a prayer that God would compress His infinite being into the human soul as in the incarnation, where “dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” Rather, it is a prayer for the complete set of blessings God makes available under grace — each perfect in itself and together filling the believer’s capacity.
To deny that this prayer describes Christian perfection would be as absurd as denying the daily rising of the sun. Guided by the Holy Spirit, Paul could not have chosen clearer language to describe perfect love as taught in Wesleyan theology.
Every part of this prayer bursts with Paul’s longing that believers be made perfect in love. There is nothing negative here — no mention of indwelling sin, no focus on failure. The entire aim is fullness of divine life. Everything about the prayer suggests that Paul himself lived in this experience. The urgency, the piled‑up language, the emotional intensity — all show a soul running joyfully along this higher path, not someone merely pointing the way for others.
The Climactic Doxology
This same intensity explodes in the doxology that closes the prayer:
"Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish
abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in
the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.
Amen."
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"We were studying the Epistle to the Ephesians, and had got to the end of the third chapter. When we read the last two verses, 'Now unto Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory throughout all ages;' this expression fell upon my soul like a revelation from God. He can do by his power, I said to myself, above all we ask, above all even that we can think — nay, exceeding abundantly above all! A full trust in Christ for the work to be done within my poor heart now filled my soul. We all three knelt down: and although I had never fully confided my inward struggle to my friends, the prayer of Rieu was filled with such admirable faith as he would have uttered had he known all my wants. When I arose in that inn room at Kiel, I felt as if my wings were renewed as the wings of eagles. From that time forward I comprehended that my own efforts were of no avail; that Christ is able to do all by his power that worketh in us; and the habitual attitude of my soul was to lie at the foot of the cross, crying to Him, 'Here I am, bound hand and foot, unable to move, unable to do the least thing to get away from the enemy, who oppresses me. Do all thyself. I know thou wilt do it. Thou wilt even do exceeding abundantly above all I ask.' I was not disappointed; all my doubts were removed, my anguish quelled, and the Lord extended to me peace as a river. Then I could comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. Then was I able to say, 'Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee."
This is a revision of the third part of Chapter 8 of Love Enthroned: Essays on Evangelical Perfection (1875) by Daniel Steele, completely rewritten with the assistance of Microslop CoPilot. The original chapter can be found here: ST. PAUL'S GREAT PRAYER OF THE HIGHER LIFE.
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