Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ephesians · About this commentary
The Eyes of Your Hearts
Ephesians 1:15-19
15 For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you and the love which you have toward all the saints, · WEB
Paul's prayer for a church he knows well asks for nothing they lack in circumstances, only that they see what they already have.
The thanksgiving is grounded in report rather than acquaintance — having heard of the faith among them — which fits a letter with no personal greetings in it.
What he prays for is worth listing, because of what is absent. No request for their health, their safety, their finances, or their deliverance from anything. He asks for a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, and then for something odder: that the eyes of your hearts be enlightened.
The image locates the problem in perception rather than in supply. Everything the first fourteen verses announced is already true of these readers; the prayer is that they should be able to see it.
Three objects follow, and each is a thing to be known. The hope of his calling — what the calling is aimed at. The riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints — the phrase runs the other way from expectation, making the saints the inheritance rather than the heirs, which matches verse 14. And the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe.
That third object is where the sentence is heading. Verse 19 stacks four words for strength in one clause, and a reader may reasonably ask how such power is measured. The next verse answers by pointing at a specific event rather than at an abstraction Ephesians 1:20, which is the letter's habit throughout: the scale of what God can do is stated by what he has already done.
settled What this mark means