Ephesians 3:20Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

For we do not know what we ought to pray for, and often we ask what is against us, thinking it useful to us.

Indeed, how much more useful it is for a fornicator to be sick and suffer from weakness than to make the temple of Christ the members of a harlot. Therefore God is able to give not only more than we ask, but also more than we understand. Sometimes we do not express our feeling in sounds, and words do not explain our thought. In silence and with inexpressible groanings we ask, as the Apostle himself says, for what we do not know and cannot express. Thus He gives us more than we ask or imply, according to the power that works in us. Just as now, not according to our merits but beyond our desires, He gives us something we did not dare to ask and did not think we deserved, even if we asked, so also in the rest He gives us what neither thought can grasp nor tongue utter.

Therefore to God Himself be glory before all things in the Church, which is pure, since it has neither blemish nor defilement. It can appropriate the glory of God because it is the body of Christ. Then glory is in Christ Jesus, because in the body of the man He assumed, to which all the members of the faithful belong, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. This glory does not concern only the present times, nor does it end in the ages to come. It remains, increases, and multiplies through all generations and unto the ages of ages, eternally beyond speech.

Blessed Jerome says: "God can grant more than is asked of Him, and by His benefactions surpass our hopes. Sometimes it happens that we do not express our thoughts. God grants even this. He grants more than this, and all according to the power that works in us. Thus to the good God be glory: first, in the Church, which is pure, and which, moreover, can receive the glory of God because it is the body of Christ. Second, in Christ Jesus, in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, and whose members are all who believe in Him. This glory is not limited to the present time and the following ages. It extends to all generations, and through the ages of ages it abides, grows, multiplies, and resounds through all endless eternity."

Before this the Apostle expressed the desire that the Ephesians be filled with every fullness of God. This fullness of God, or fullness of blessings descending to us from God in Christ Jesus, is partly depicted by the Apostle in the Epistle. It is partly expressed by him in this prayer, and the Ephesians also surely knew and understood it in part.

The Apostle now says: what I wrote to you, what I prayed and still pray for, and what you yourselves comprehend and seek, all this is great. Yet it in no way exhausts the treasury of blessings granted to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. They are incomparably greater than we can comprehend or ask. The Lord can pour them all out upon anyone on whom He is well pleased.

What has already been poured out you yourselves experience. You see it in me and hear of it being worked in the other Apostles. Do you see how it acts? In some unknown way power comes and manifests its action, either only in the soul, enlightening and purifying, or outwardly also, working miracles. This is not from us. It is God's gift. No measure can be set to it. If it were measured by our capacity, one might still determine a measure. But since its measure is God's boundless goodness and all-effectual power, who will set a measure or boundary to it? God's treasury is immeasurable, and He is ready to empty it all upon us.

With such a thought, could the Apostle fail to cry out, "To Him be glory"? "Beyond all" should mean "beyond everything." Together with "exceedingly abundantly," it expresses this: incomparably more than all that we ask or understand. "According to the power that works in us" expresses the basis for the Apostle's statement. He answers, as it were, the question: "How is it evident that God can do this for us?" "From the power," he says, "that works in us, for we never asked or expected this" (Saint Chrysostom).

"In us" means in whom? Either chiefly in the Apostles, or in all believers in the Church, so as to say: Christianity, faith in Christ, has given and gives much to all. And what it can still give has no measure. Elsewhere the Apostle says: "all things are yours" (1 Cor 3:21-22).