Ephesians 1:17
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, will give you spiritual wisdom and revelation in your growing knowledge of him,
Paul is starting a prayer point that runs for three verses, and it's one prayer point, where he is asking God to give them something, which is what prayer is about. We are asking God for things.
But the thing Paul is asking about here is spiritual, the kind of thing that Solomon asked for and God said, "Way to go," (my words) and added many other things he did not ask for (1 Kings 3:5-14).
In a way, what Solomon asked God and God commended him for is what Paul is telling this church; this is what he is praying for them.
Again, what we have is a spiritual request here. And sometimes spiritual requests are not enticing; we seem unable to envision what they mean, but Paul's saying that this is what he prays for should draw our attention.
And it seems important that the prayer is coming on the heels of the spiritually loaded info dump in the last verses.
- He knows the impact of spiritual wisdom and revelation on true growth in knowledge.
- He does not just want them to have information, just knowledge, for knowledge's sake.
- He recognized that only God can give this, and it is individual.
- He wants them to move from the camp of the ignorant to the knowledgeable.
-but not the kind of knowledge that puffs up (1 Corinthians 8:1),
-not one that shames the others for not knowing as many Bible verses as you do
-or not putting things together the way you do.
-not glorying in your competitive spirit as someone who has memorized where you have memorized portions.
As a definition, wisdom is the intersection of what is known and what is lived, its about you sense of judgment as we see with Solomon.
Solomon had a situation that included two prostitutes coming to him complaining that of two babies, the living one was there and the dead one was the other (1 Kings 3:16-28).
That is a unique situation, meaning you can pick a textbook to help you. You cannot rely on any party's reputation to determine who is telling the truth, since neither party was morally upright.
Wisdom means being able to avoid distracting information, get to the truth, and act on it.
And what Paul is praying for is deep, deep spiritual wisdom that cuts through the distracting lies the devil wants to throw at you from time to time.
- And while God has spiritual wisdom and revelation to give, the devil has spiritual confusion and lies to give.
- While God comes with a coherent truth, the devil comes with divergent falsehoods, able to take different argument positions and attack from different positions. It's all about subterfuge, and anything and everything can be used as a weapon.
There may be two thought systems that, on the face, seem contradictory, but the devil can be powering both. For example, the devil is both behind the lifestyle of sexual deviance and the violence directed at them by zealots. Do you get? The devil can play both sides.
He has an aim: to get you to disobey God, and he can play games with your mind to do that. And as he did with Jesus, when he comes at a particular time, he can wait a while to strike again.
He can sow the seed of sexual immorality in you one year and then strike you with a crash and burn opportunity years later. But God is one (Deuteronomy 6:4). He does not tempt anyone (James 1:13). He cannot be both yes and no (1 Corinthians 1:19). But not so the devil. God does not have it in Himself to tempt anyone; that should be a powerful clue as to where the temptation is coming from. The devil is the tempter (Matthew 4:3).
So, without being distracted by the divergent testimonies, by the reputation of the women, he went to the core of things; he acted in a way to touch what cannot be contravened, the motherly instinct. So wisdom sees beyond the external affectations, where you don't react to the tone of voice but the true intention in the heart.
Paul wants the people to have the spirit of wisdom and revelation.
While what we have in the story of Solomon is wisdom, it also reveals a baseline, though revelation can be regarded as situational. It's the flash of insight. We do not know Solomon had wisdom, but the revelation is applying it in a specific situation. It was a unique use case.
The passage mentioned a trifecter: wisdom, revelation and knowledge.
Knowledge is very important. I would say that the wrong wisdom and revelation will come from the wrong knowledge.
So Paul took his time to lay out the right knowledge in the last several verses. It was not just for the fun of it.
Therefore, we need to be careful about a fixation on prayer that is removed from knowledge. Or a fixation on revelation that us removed from knowledge.
And knowlegde is not something you come up with, it is what the apostle and prophets thought that has been codified in scriptures.
