God's Word For You is a free Bible Study site committed to bringing you studies firmly grounded in the Bible – the Word of God. Holding a reformed, conservative, evangelical perspective this site affirms that God has provided in Jesus Christ his eternal Son, a way of salvation in which we can live in his presence guilt free, acquitted and at peace.

 
 

THOUGHTS FROM EPHESIANS

19 GOD'S INCOMPARABLE POWER

A meditation on Ephesians 1:19

 

God's power is 'incomparably great' [Ephesians 1:19] – it is beyond comparison because there is no other power in heaven or on earth that can come anywhere near it. Like God himself there is nothing up there on that level that we can say 'God's power is like this.' Like God himself, his power is one of a kind. Read Isaiah 40:18,25.

Paul states that God's power is 'for us who believe'. This is an amazing and totally comforting thing. This awesome, incomparable power is on our side. It is active for us. It is not against us. All that God did in and through the incarnation and life of Christ, and through his death and resurrection was done for us, with us and our eternal well-being in mind. All the defeat of sin, death and Satan that his power achieved was done for us. All the amazing work of regeneration, redemption and renewal – all of the power of God that brought this about … was active for us.

Paul prays that we will continue to know this power of Christ increasingly. It is not that Paul prays that we will have this power available to us as our personal power, but that we will understand the greatness of God's power active for us in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Paul further describes this power of God active for believers as 'like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given …' [Ephesians 1:19-21].

This same power of God that raised Christ from death to life, from weakness and defeat to extreme glory and victory, is active for every believer. It is this same power of God that has raised the Christian believer out of spiritual deadness and separation from God into newness of life and permanent acceptance into the very presence of God [Ephesians 2:1-7]. Nothing of our own ability or works achieved this – but only the life-giving, incomparable power of God.

Because our salvation is entirely the result of the power of God active for us, it is also entirely a gift of his grace. If it took this incomparable power to bring us out of the clutches of spiritual death and into life in the presence of God, how ludicrous for us to think that our own actions can contribute even a miniscule part towards either gaining or maintaining our salvation.

How ludicrous also to think, even for a moment, that any action of ours can undermine or diminish our salvation, when all of this 'incredibly great power' of God, is active for us!

Copyright Rosemary Bardsley 2006, 2010.