The Father and the Essence of Fatherhood
For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. Ephesians 3:14,15 (NIV)
Paul has been explaining both Christ’s peace-making work, which resulted in the creation of the new society, and his personal involvement in this because of the special revelation and commission he had received. Now he turns from exposition to intercession.
‘For this reason …’ (3:14). Paul is almost certainly thinking of Christ’s reconciling work and his own understanding of it. These are the convictions undergirding his prayer. The basis for Paul’s praying was his knowledge of God’s purpose. The indispensable prelude to all praying is the revelation of God’s will. Our authority in praying is defined by and limited to what we know to be the divine will. Reading the Bible and praying must always happen together because in the Bible God reveals His will and in praying we ask God to fulfil that will.
‘I kneel’ (3:14). Jews normally stood while praying (cf. Luke 18:11,13 where both men are standing) so kneeling was unusual. It indicated extreme earnestness, as when Jesus fell on His face in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:39) and Stephen faced martyrdom (Acts 7:59,60). The Bible has no rule.
‘I kneel before the Father’ (3:14). Paul already called God ‘the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1:2,3). He has already declared that Jews and Gentiles are fellow-members of the Father’s family, who enjoy equal access to the Father in prayer (2:18,19). Now he says that from this Father, before whom he kneels in humility, ‘every family in heaven and on earth derives its name’ (3:15). The word translated ‘every family’ (Greek: patria) strictly means ‘lineage’ (on the father’s side) and more often a tribe or even a nation. By its context and derivation, the thought of fatherhood is there (‘father’: pater in Greek). Paul is saying: think of any father-headed group ‘in heaven and on earth.’ Each is ultimately named from God the Father. Its existence and experience of fatherhood comes from Him. To the heavenly Father, the father of us all, in whom alone fatherhood is seen in perfection, we come when we pray. Paul’s adding ‘in heaven and on earth’ shows that the church triumphant in heaven and the church militant on earth are two parts of the one great family of God. The relation between human fatherhood and divine fatherhood is neither one of analogy (God is a father like human fathers), nor one of projection (Freud’s theory that we invented God because we needed a heavenly father figure) but rather one of derivation (God’s fatherhood being the archetypal reality, the source of all conceivable fatherhood).
So when I think of the wisdom of his plan I kneel humbly in awe before the Father of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah, the perfect Father of every father and child in heaven and on the earth Ephesians 3:14,15 (The Passion Translation)