Ephesians 3:16Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

"That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith" (Eph 3:16-17). See with what insatiable longing he asks blessings for them, so that they may not waver. And how is this accomplished? "Through His Spirit in your inner man," and "that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." In what manner? "That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge." What the Apostle prayed for at the beginning, he asks for now also. What did he say at the beginning? "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, and enlighten the eyes of your heart, that you may know what is the hope of His calling. What are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty strength" (Eph 1:17-19).

Therefore, he says, I bow my knees before the Father, after whose likeness every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named. I ask and beseech Him to grant you the power of His glory, that is, the power to receive the lot of His majesty. I ask Him to strengthen and establish you through the Holy Spirit, because without the Holy Spirit there is no strength.

He strengthens and establishes according to the inner man, because we seek not bodily powers, but the powers of the spirit. We wish to strengthen not the outer man, but the inner man. After Christ lives in the inner man, He dwells in the chief inward part of man, that is, in your hearts.

He does not spread Himself through all his members, but lives in his rational part and establishes there His dwelling and throne. All this happens through faith, when we believe in Him. Therefore the Apostle also says that Christ dwells in your hearts through faith.

This indwelling, arising through faith, has its roots and its foundation in love. Thus all things grow and are built upon love, because we are God's planting and God's building (1 Cor 3). Since we are rooted and grounded in love, we know with full confidence of mind that Christ dwells in the inner man.

Then, together with the other saints, we begin to strive to comprehend with a receptive mind what breadth, length, depth, and height are. Not only this, but we shall desire to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. When all this exists in us reasonably and harmoniously, we shall be filled in all things with the fullness of God.

First let us consider the meaning of breadth, length, depth, and height in a bodily sense, so that through this we may pass to the spiritual. Let the breadth of this heaven and earth, that is, of the whole world, be from east to west. Let the length be from south to north, the depth in the abysses and Hades, and the height what rises above the heavens.

Some, on the basis of the words of Ecclesiastes, assert that heaven is round and moves like a sphere. But what is spherical has neither breadth, nor length, nor depth, nor height. It is equal, coaequalis, in all its parts. Necessity therefore compels us to understand by height the Angels and higher powers, and by depth Hades and what lies below it.

By length and breadth we understand the middle region between the higher and the lower. Since from this it follows that one may be near either to the higher or to the lower, those who begin to move toward what is better and heavenly, and to ascend toward the high, are called length.

What is very near the lower part and inclines toward vices is given the name breadth: "For broad and spacious is the way that leads to death" (Mt 7:13). All this can be understood perfectly in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Ascending on high, He led captivity captive (Ps 67:19), and He descended into the lower parts of the earth. After height and depth, the preaching of the Cross went out into all the earth. Thus it embraces height, depth, breadth, and length.

It is no wonder if the Cross of Christ possesses all things without exception, because even he who is crucified with Christ has the same authority. Indeed, let him first know breadth, beginning from the lower and knowing the lesser. Then let him know length, that is, those who are set upon the earth and hasten toward what is exalted and higher.

After this, let him know depth, that is, the opposing and hostile powers that wage war against us in this world. Finally, let him know height. We shall be able to ascend to the higher things only when, having knowledge of those powers, we compel them to be under our feet.

We must not think that this is the end of our labor. It is not enough that, grounded and rooted in love, we are able, possimus, to understand with all the saints what breadth, length, height, and depth are. We must also desire with all diligence to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. Then not only the simple love of Christ, but His surpassing love, will be known to us.

The end is still not attained by merely having knowledge of the surpassing love of Christ, unless we add another thing: to follow the love that surpasses knowledge. Therefore it must be noted that Christ has a great and surpassing love for knowledge, that is, for those who desire to know themselves.

These are those who meditate on His law day and night, who turn words into deeds, and who fulfill in action, manu, what they think. Whoever is such as to be worthy of possessing, through his knowledge, the surpassing love of Christ, must think of nothing except knowledge.

Thus he will be filled with every fullness of God, not only in the present age, but also in the age to come. Whoever now begins to be full in diligence through reading will afterward be more perfectly filled by God, who, by filling Himself, is the fullness of all.

But lest someone say that the Holy Spirit was given to them as apostles, while to us He is by nature uncontainable, the Apostle therefore says in prayer: "May God grant you to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith" (Eph 3:16). "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Cor 3:17). And again he says: "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His" (Rom 8:9).

According to Saint John Chrysostom, "What the holy Apostle prayed for at the beginning, he asks for now also. At the beginning he prayed, 'May God the Father give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.' And now he says the same: 'that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints.' He said. 'I bow my knees,' and not simply, 'I prayed.' By this he expressed his intense supplication for them and showed that he asks blessings for them with persistence."

According to blessed Theodoret, "God is Father in the proper and true sense. He was not first Son and then became Father. Rather, He is always Father, and Father by nature. Other fathers, both bodily and spiritual, have borrowed this name from above. He did not borrow fatherhood from another, but Himself imparted it to others."

"When the Apostle prays that God would grant the Ephesians to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit in the inner man, he desires their spirit to become so strong that the assaults of its former influencers would be to it like a speck of dust against a granite wall. He desires the spirit to abide within itself without departing, standing before God and ruling itself by God's power with unshaken firmness" (Bishop Theophan).

According to blessed Theophylact, "The Apostle desires two blessings for the Ephesians: that they be strengthened by the Spirit, and that Christ dwell in their hearts. Or he desires them to be strengthened so that they may become capable of having Christ dwell in their inner man." For "Christ the Lord dwells only in the hearts of believers who are established and do not waver in love for Him" (John Chrysostom).

"According to the riches of His glory." If by glory one understands the boundless perfections of God in their inexhaustible fullness, then "according to the riches of glory" means according to the overflowing fullness of essential perfections in God.

According to St. Gregory the Theologian, this also served as the impulse for the creation of the world. Yes, God created all things and provides for all things because He is immeasurably rich in all things and loves to enrich all.

Or "according to the riches of glory" defines the measure in which he desires the granting of spiritual blessings to them. From a small giver it is fitting to be content with little. From a greater giver it is fitting to expect more.

The Apostle asks that God grant them what he asks in a measure as great as His glory, that is, most abundantly. "That He may grant you, as one who is rich and desires to be glorified" (Theophylact), so that the gift be not beneath His glory.

"With might." This is understood in various ways. Some take it as strongly, powerfully, firmly. Some understand it as supernatural power given by the Holy Spirit. Others take it as moral strength raised up by the Holy Spirit.

The last two may be joined into one, and perhaps this will express the Apostle’s thought more directly. The riches of glory point to the sources of God’s mercies. Might through the Holy Spirit points to the manner of their outpouring.

"The Holy Spirit gives power" (Theophylact). "One cannot be established in good except by the power of the Holy Spirit, with the help of the grace of God" (Chrysostom).

For all is from God, who "has both ineffable riches and immeasurable power" (Theodoret).

"To be strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man." The first object of the prayer concerns that with which life in Christ Jesus truly begins.

"To be strengthened," krataiōthēnai, comes from kratos, dominion. From this comes autokrator, sovereign. It means to take dominion into one’s hands and, since this is in the inner man, dominion over oneself.

It means to become sovereign within, to enter into inward self-rule. What is this self-rule, and why is it desired before everything else?

Let us call to mind the structure of human nature. Having fashioned the lower part of human nature in a special way, distinct from the making of the other creatures, God breathed into man’s face the breath of His divine life.

This is man’s spirit, the highest side of our nature. In it are consciousness and free rationality, with the workings of the fear of God, conscience, and dissatisfaction with anything created.

The purpose of the spirit is to be in God and to raise everything to God, all that is in man and around man. For this purpose authority over the lower parts of human nature was given to it.

Receiving strength from God, in whom it lives, the spirit draws the soul into the same life. It draws in the soul with its reason and sciences, the products of reason, with its will and undertakings, and with its taste and arts.

It also draws in the soul’s lower powers, imagination and memory. It draws in the body with its needs, and brings the reflection of the same life upon all its outward arrangements.

When this takes place in a man, he is a true man, a man corresponding to his norm and his idea. Here he is plainly master over himself and over all that is in him and around him.

Yet it is also clear that he receives such sovereign power from God, because he has surrendered himself to God and lives in Him. This life is characterized by the fear of God, sincere conscientiousness, and estrangement from everything created.

Let the spirit separate from God, and this power will be taken from it. Then it can no longer govern the impulses of the soul, the needs of the body, or outward contacts.

It is handed over to be torn about by psychic and bodily desire and by external worldly vanity, though all under the appearance of self-delight.

Compare these two orders of life, and you will see that the first lives wholly within itself before God. The second is wholly outside itself, with forgetfulness of God.

This latter order of life becomes extremely worse when passions enter it. Rooted in selfhood, they permeate all the soul and body, and give everything there an evil direction, contrary to the spirit, or to the fear of God and conscience.

This direction does not build up, but destroys, and thereby makes man still more external. This latter man is the man in the fall, outside the order in which he was placed at creation.

God did not wish to leave the fallen man in the fall, and He arranged for him a way of rising from the fall. The Son of God was incarnate, suffered, died on the cross, rose on the third day, and ascended into the heavens.

Having ascended, He sat at the right hand of the Father. By this ascent He opened the path for the descent to us of the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit, having descended through the apostles, came to dwell in the Church of God through the Holy Mysteries. The Spirit of grace passes everywhere and awakens all human spirits to spiritual life.

The rays of awakening grace fall directly upon man’s spirit and enliven its natural movements: the fear of God, conscience, and dissatisfaction with created things.

Through this action a man comes to himself for the first time. He enters his inner house from the distraction in which he had wandered until then. This action compels him to reflect.

When matters turn favorably, after reflecting, he resolves no longer to give himself over to diversions. He resolves to live within himself according to the promptings of the fear of God and conscience, with self-denial.

For this resolution, the grace of God, which until then had acted from without, enters within through the Mysteries. It makes the human spirit, which was weak, powerful.

Consciousness and freedom now pass entirely to this side. An inner life before God begins in man, a life truly free and rationally self-active.

The needs of soul and body, and the demands of outward circumstances, no longer distract him. On the contrary, he begins to direct them as the Spirit grants.

As a sovereign, he sits upon the throne of the heart and from there gives commands concerning how each thing is to be and how each thing is to be done.

Such self-rule begins from the first moment of the inner change and the indwelling of grace. Yet it does not appear in perfection all at once.

Former rulers often break through. They not only produce turmoil in the inner city, but often lead the ruler of the city himself into captivity.

Such things happen often in the beginning. But the power of intense zeal, constancy in attention to oneself and one’s work, and prudent patience in labors for it make them more and more rare.

This happens with the help of the grace of God. Finally the spirit becomes so firm that the assaults of its former influencers are to it what dust is to a granite wall.

The spirit remains within itself without going out, standing before God. By the power of God it rules itself with unshaken firmness.

This is precisely what the Apostle desires for the Ephesians when he prays that God grant them "to be strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man."