As Paul's prayer for the Ephesian Church continues, he prays that Christ would dwell in them. We explain the significance of Paul praying for what he has already told them to be true. God does dwell in believers who are born of Him but there needs to be an understanding of the significance of this truth. God has taken up a fixed dwelling in believers in particular and the church in aggregate. This is a settled dwelling and God does not come and go from us. This is by grace through faith.

Paul uses an agricultural metaphor and a building metaphor to help us realize that our lives are stable in God's love and also growing in Him. We need solid doctrinal teaching so that we are stable in our knowledge of God and what He has revealed. Our status in Christ is profound and we need to "seize" the importance of it. The believers in Ephesus were surrounded by people who were unstable because of the fear of the cosmic deities that were worshipped in their culture. These being were fickle and wrecked havoc on humans. Those who know Christ are safe and secure in His love for them and are not like the pagans.

When Paul speaks of love that "surpasses knowledge," we can learn that in His ultimate being, God's love is greater than what we can ever exhaust. Even the communicable attributes of God such as love are such that in God will we be learning more throughout eternity. The point of Paul's prayer and what we learn from it is that we can be stable, comforted, and encouraged in our relationship with God through Christ.

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