Ephesians 3

The Mystery Within: Cultivating Inner Strength through Revelation

Ephesians 3 reads as a carefully staged psychological drama played out entirely within human consciousness. Read as interior theater rather than literal history, each character and image names a state, an ability, or a relationship inside the psyche. Paul is the awakening aspect of self that recognizes a function within imagination: a ministerial faculty that descends into limitation in order to reveal the unity that was concealed. The Gentiles are not foreign peoples but the unawakened parts of consciousness that have been excluded from the family of spiritual inheritance. The mystery at the center of the chapter is the discovery that every divided part, even the seemingly ignorant or hostile ones, is invited to share in the same inheritance. This is a revelation of psychological oneness, revealed by the creative power that operates in imagination.

Begin with the opening confession, I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles. Prisoner describes the initial experience of consciousness trapped in a limiting state. The one who awakens does not leave those parts behind; instead the inner liberator remains within the limitation, consciously experiencing it, so that those unconscious elements might be transformed. Jesus Christ, in this reading, is the operative imaginative faculty, the power of assumption that accomplishes inner change. To be a prisoner of that power for the Gentiles means to take on the role of deliberate embodiment of a liberating attitude inside what appears to be restriction. The awakening self voluntarily descends, plays the part, and through that immersion finds the key to redemption.

The dispensation of grace given to Paul is an inner revelation: a method and an assurance that imagination can reassign identity to every element of the psyche. Grace is the experience of being favoured by imagination itself, the ease with which the felt sense of a new state can be implanted. The mystery, previously hidden, is simply that all fragments of consciousness are meant to be fellowheirs. The idea that Gentiles should be fellowheirs and of the same body tells us that the psyche is not divided into privileged and outcast parts at its core. The exclusion is a temporary pattern of belief. When imagination reveals that the same promise belongs to all internal actors, fragmentation begins to dissolve.

Apostles and prophets are modes of inner revelation: capacities that speak and show what is revealed. They are not literal persons but functions that declare and manifest the truth inside consciousness. The Spirit that reveals the mystery is not an external wind but the active, organizing activity of imagination. That power makes visible, to the inner church, the manifold wisdom that had been hidden. The principalities and powers in heavenly places are the ruling beliefs and habitual emotional complexes that, from a viewpoint inside, appear as higher authorities. The chapter’s aim is to have the church — the assembly of beliefs that compose our conscious identity — understand these powers differently, to see them as expressions of an underlying unity rather than as irreconcilable rulers.

This theology becomes psychology in the line, In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him. Boldness and access name the experiential skill of entering the felt reality of the desired state. Faith is not mere doctrinal assent; it is the practice of assuming and persisting in the feeling of the wish fulfilled. It is the confidence that, when imagination occupies an inner posture, that posture will extend itself into outer circumstance. The chapter insists that the very posture of prayer and petition is an inner rehearsal. The apostolic posture of bowing knees is a contemplative technique: to bow is to focus inward, to intentionally assume a new state, and thereby to make faculties available which were latent.

The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the origin within imagination, the ground from which the operative faculty springs. Naming the whole family in heaven and earth evokes an interior taxonomy: every thought, image, and feeling belongs to that family. The request that we be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man names a practical program. Inner strengthening is the practice of repeatedly assuming the new attitude until it becomes the body of belief. Strengthening happens not by intellectual persuasion but by deepening the feeling tone. This is why the chapter moves from doctrinal statement into prayer: it wants the reader to be reinforced inside, to have imagination dwell there so it will be the fabric of experience.

When the text says that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, it describes the process of interior habitation. To dwell is to occupy so thoroughly that the old furniture of mind is rearranged. The heart here is the center of feeling; when imagination takes up residence and is sustained by the feeling of conviction, the external world must follow the internal pattern. Rooted and grounded in love becomes a psychological instruction: love is the soil in which new states are planted. Rooting implies persistence; grounding implies foundation. If an assumed state is rooted in a genuine feeling of acceptance and belonging, it will grow until it determines perception and action.

The breadth, length, depth, and height that Paul prays to comprehend are the dimensions of the imagined self. A comprehensive awareness of the self’s capacity means recognizing how wide and various its possibilities are, how deep its resources, how high its aspirations, and how long its reach. Knowing the love of Christ which passes knowledge is not an abstract mysticism but the experiential certainty that the operative power of imagination is love expressed as creative attention. When one is filled with all the fullness of God, one is inwardly saturated with the consciousness that births form. That fullness is the state in which imagination no longer hesitates: it assumes, acts as if, and watches the world conform.

The chapter ends with exaltation of the one who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. This is a psychological promise: the creative faculty within surpasses the limitations of the conscious thinker. Imagination has a generative potency that outstrips the narrow calculations of ego. The power that works in us is not limited by past habit if we are willing to cooperate by occupying new states long enough for them to be natural.

Practically, Ephesians 3 becomes instruction for inner work. The drama asks us to identify who in us is playing Paul, who is the captive, who are the Gentiles, which forces have been elevated to principalities, and what image of the Father we carry. Then we are asked to perform the transformation by changing posture: meditate, assume, persist, and forgive. Forgiveness in this psychology is the deliberate forgetting of the reasons to remain in a limiting state. To forgive is to refuse to rehearse the old evidence that keeps a part excluded. As parts are represented to the self in the desired state and the inner witness is persuaded, the excluded parts shift. In effect, one dies to the old identity and rises to the new. This is resurrection described as a psychological event.

The chapter’s drama also reframes suffering. Paul’s tribulations are not punishment but staging. When the conscious center embraces limitation willingly, the creative power can work within it and redeem it. Trials become opportunities for the inner minister to demonstrate that the imaginal core is sovereign. The more entrenched the state, the greater the demonstration when it is transformed.

Finally, the passage invites trust in imagination’s generosity. The creative power operating within human consciousness has no scarcity. It can do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think not by magic but by the simple law that outer circumstances are shaped by inner convictions persisted in until they feel natural. The technique is always the same: identify the desired inner state, assume its feeling with conviction, live from that feeling until it becomes the new habit, and treat every inner actor with the compassion to represent it as completed. In this way the divided self becomes a family, the church within realizes its inheritance, and the mystery becomes plain: all of consciousness, even its most alienated parts, are fellowheirs of the creative power that imagines them into unity.