44. These words represent another feature of the apostle's desire for
his Christians to be established and comforted in God through faith,
and rooted and grounded in love toward their neighbors. "When you are
thus strengthened," he would say, "and are perseveringly pressing
forward, you will be able to grasp with all saints the four parts, to
increase therein and to appreciate them more and more." Faith alone
effects this apprehension. Love is not the moving force here, but it
contributes by making faith manifest.
45. Some teachers would make these words reflect and measure the holy
cross. But Paul does not say a word about the cross. He simply says,
in effect: "That you may apprehend all things; may see the length and
breadth, the height and depth, of Christ's kingdom." This condition
obtains when my heart has reached the point where Christ cannot make
the spiritual life too long or too wide for me to follow, nor high
enough or deep enough to cause my fall from him or his Word; the
point where I may be satisfied that wherever I go he is, and that he
rules in all places, however long or broad, deep or high, the
situation from either a temporal or eternal point of view. No matter
how long or wide I measure, I find him everywhere. David says (Ps
139, 7-8): "Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I
flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:
if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there." Christ rules
eternally. His length and breadth, his depth and height, are
unlimited. If I descend into hell, my heart and my faith tell me he
is there.
46. The sum of the matter is this: Depressed or exalted,
circumscribed in whatsoever way, dragged hither or thither, I still
find Christ. For he holds in his hands everything in heaven or on
earth, and all are subject to him--angels, the devil, the world, sin,
death and hell. Therefore, so long as he dwells in my heart, I have
courage, wherever I go, I cannot be lost. I dwell where Christ my
Lord dwells. This, however, is a situation impossible to reason.
Should reason ascend a yard above the earth or descend a yard below,
or be deprived of the tangible things of the present, it would have
to despair. We Christians are, through Christ, better fortified. We
are assured that he dwells everywhere, be it in honor or dishonor,
hunger, sorrow, illness, imprisonment, death or life, blessing or
affliction. It is Paul's desire for the Ephesians that God give them
grace and strength to have such heart-apprehension of his kingdom. He
concludes the details of his prayer in these words:
"And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may
be filled unto all the fulness of God."
47. He means: "I desire you, in addition to having faith and
apprehending the four proportions of Christ's kingdom, to know the
love of Christ we should have--the love Christ bears toward us, and
the love we owe our neighbor. This knowledge transcends all other,
even familiarity with the Gospel; for, know as much as you may, your
knowledge will avail little or nothing without love."
48. Paul's desire, briefly summed up, is that the faith of Christians
may be strengthened unto efficacy, and that love may be warm and
fervent, and the heart filled with the fullness of God. "Filled unto
all the fullness of God" means, if we follow the Hebrew, filled with
everything God's bounty supplies, full of God, adorned with his grace
and the gifts of his Spirit--the Spirit who gives us steadfastness,
illuminates us with his light, lives within us his life, saves us
with his salvation, and with his love enkindles love in us; in short,
it means having God himself and all his blessings dwelling in us in
fullness and being effective to make us wholly divine--not so that we
possess merely something of God, but all his fullness.