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The focus of Apostle Paul’s prayer is the spiritual life of the Christian. He spent considerable time and effort to describe the “new man in Christ”, made alive by his belief in Jesus. There is more to this “new man” than just his persona. He is more than the sum total of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of a person. He possesses more than simply the organized pattern of behavioral characteristics.

Unless and until we realise that there is a new element of “aliveness” in the Christian, we may never fully understand Paul’s demand of the Christian. We may never fully appropriate the power that is required for the “new man”. It is the awakening of this “new man in Christ” (Christian) that there is something higher than all the senses in man. The Christian is being awakened spiritually. His life is not just confined to the body and its faculties – it now includes the spiritual realm (ref. 2 Cor. 4:16). What happens to the outward person is far less important than the building up of the inner person. Therefore, the emphasis of Paul’s prayer is for the renewal of the Christian who receives “accessions of strength from heaven and from glory” (Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones). The secret weapon of the Christian is the empowering and strengthening of his spiritual life by the Holy Spirit.

Inasmuch as the physical body has need for food to function, so the spiritual body has need of strengthening from God. Strengthening from any other means just does not work. There is much more potential in our spiritual being than our physical being can offer. Realistically, the physical body will degenerate and our vision must be for our spiritual being’s ascension to a higher plane of glory. This transformation of every Christian and the empowering by the Holy Spirit is so potent, so mighty and so strong. We cannot simply be Christians, satisfied only with being saved by Jesus. We are to be partakers of God’s nature and must rise way above simply the physical. This is not only a possibility for all Christians but it is the duty of all Christians to desire to be strengthen by God – “that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of GOD”