18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the boundless greatness of His power toward us who believe.
The wisdom and revelation that we talked about last week is available to all Christians and not just to the apostles, prophets. The Holy Spirit helps us, as believers, to understand God’s purpose in our lives, so that we will accept and understand the Truthfulness and Faithfulness of God, even when He doesn’t make sense to us. 1 Cor 2:12 “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. We are sometimes eager to know about God when we are really called to know God. We can work for information about God instead of obtaining a true knowledge of God through His Spirit. for information about God. We can mistake spiritual communion with God for theological facts. We believe we can improvement in religious works counts as spiritual grace, when all the while we are learning to trust in ourselves and improve or polish our flesh. The Bible says to Trust in God and lean not on our own understanding.
Those who are devoid of the Spirit and cannot accept the things of God, but those who choose to trust in God are brought to life by the Spirit through the hearing and believing of the Word of God.
We learn about God from the Word of God, as the Holy Spirit gives us insight, and we learn to know God personally as we walk with Him in our daily lives, walking spiritually through the power of the Holy Spirit. In end, philosophy says “Know yourself” whereas Christianity says “Know your God, through the Holy Spirit.”
since the eyes of your heart have been enlightened.
The word photizo means to “to give light, to light (up), to illuminate,” “to enlighten” to “bring to light”. It’s the word from which we get photography. The Holy Spirit illuminates the Word of God, showing it to be truth, and this light flows into our heart or mind. This word kardia, καρδία, “heart,” is most often used in the Bible to refer to the seat of the moral and intellectual life, from which come the will to do things, or not to do them, the emotions, or how we feel about things, and our mind, what we think about things, and our understanding. It is the very center of
Paul is praying “that God may give you the Spirit of insight and revelation in the knowledge of him, since the eyes of your heart have been enlightened, in order that you might know.…” So, Paul is praying that God may give us insight and revelation from the Holy Spirit, which is only possible because we as Believers have the Holy Spirit within us, and have already had our understanding of the truth of God and His Word illuminated by Him. This happened when we listened to the Calling of God, receiving from Him through the power of the Holy Spirit the ability to believe in Him through the illumination of the Truth of God’s Word to our hearts, causing us to hear and believe. And this enlightenment of the Holy Spirit continues to benefit us as we grow in our relationship with God through deeper understanding of who He is, so that we will know God more intimately. Why did Paul want this for us?
in order that you might know.” So that we might know, to find something out that was previously unknown to us. And what does Paul want us as Christians to discover?
what is the hope of his calling. Paul wants us to know the hope, the expectation of the calling that we have in Jesus. He wants us to have confidence in it. Not just wishful thinking. The hope of the righteous is directed toward the eternal God who protects us, and will ultimately. We have an expectation, a trust in God, and hopefully, we wait patiently for God’s outworking of his plan. Our hope is in Him, even during dark times and hurtful times, knowing that they are necessary for our growth. Rom 5:2b-5 2b we celebrate in hope of the glory of God. 3 And not only this, but we also celebrate in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; 4 and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; 5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. and the ultimate hope for us Christians is to be with our Lord Rom 8:20 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, [n]in hope 21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. eagerly wait for his coming, 24 For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not. We rejoice in this hope, which, having been brought about by God’s molding of our character, provides evidence that we are saved, that we belong to Him, and have a good reason and evidence to hope in Him! So, we can persevere in tribulation, and devote ourselves to prayer and closer relationship with Him. In fact, in Gal 5:13, Paul refers to God saying 13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Cooperating with God’s plan to sculpt our lives, knocking off the rough edges, so that we look more like Jesus, changing our characters to abound in grace and love, as He does makes Him able to fill us more with all hope, and joy and peace. We as Christians have a hope in God who is Good and is Eternal Col 1:5-6 5 because of the hope reserved for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel 6 which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth; So, we understand God’s goodness and grace and love toward us as we look back at the cross, and believe in what God has already done for us by sending Jesus to die there for us, taking our place, dying the death that we deserved. We can trust therefore that He is not holding out on us, that Rom 8:32 32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? We can trust His promises. Titus 1b-3 for the faith of those chosen of God and the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness, 2 in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago, 3 but at the proper time revealed His word in the proclamation with which I was entrusted according to the commandment of God our Savior; Our hope looks back at the cross, seeing what Jesus has done for us, seeing God’s grace toward us in saving us, changing our behavior, so that we look continually for the hope of our final redemption, our salvation from the presence of Sin when Christ returns for us. We can put our trust in God that He will fulfil this hope because we have been called, saved, elected by Him already before the foundation of the world. We have been chosen by the Father to be His, because He has saved us and adopted us into His family.
What Is the Wealth of His Glorious Inheritance in the Saints
Now Paul calls our attention to the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints. The word here has the idea of “abundance, riches, or wealth.” Remember that it’s a glorious inheritance, because it’s God’s inheritance, where glory refers to the reflection of the essence of God’s being, the weight of His reputation, the summation of all God’s wonderful, good attributes of His Character. So Paul is praying that God give us an understanding of our status as God’s very glorious inheritance. We have a wealth of Glory in that WE are His Wealth of Glory. We are of great value to God—we are rich in glory and we are the riches of His Glory.
1:19 and what is the boundless greatness of His power toward us who believe.
Third, Paul prays that we will understand the vast magnitude of God’s great power and that God has put this power into effect for the advantage of all believers. The idea here is that God will use the great might of His arm to defeat the enemies of God’s people. And God has shown that great power in defeating Satan at the Cross. God has placed Jesus over everything in defeating all of the plans of the enemy to condemn all of humanity due to sin, by defeating sin and death on the cross.
And God will similarly defeat all of the enemies of God’s people at the proper place and time according to His plan, according to “the might of his power”. God has put his vast power into effect for our benefit, and we will see the outworking of that power as we live our lives according to His plan.