Ephesians 3:17a indicates that Christ lives in the believers for them to have Him making His home in their hearts. Our heart is composed of the three parts of our soul-the mind, the emotion, and the will-plus our conscience, the main part of our spirit. Through regeneration Christ came into our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22), and now we should allow Him to spread Himself into every part of our hearts. The heart is the totality of our inward parts and the center of our inward being. Therefore, when Christ makes His home in our hearts, He controls our entire inward being and supplies and strengthens every inward part with Himself.
The Greek word rendered “make home” in Ephesians 3:17 is the word for house plus a prefix that means “down.” This indicates that Christ wants to make His home deep down in our being. As we are strengthened into the inner man, the way is opened for Christ to spread in us, to spread from our spirit to every part of our mind, emotion, and will. The more Christ spreads within us, the more He settles down in us and makes His home in us. This means that He occupies every part of our inner being, possessing all these parts and saturating them with Himself.
For Christ to make His home in our hearts means that He settles Himself in our mind, emotion, will, and conscience. In order for this to take place, Christ must occupy every part of our being. We may compare our heart to a house with many rooms. One room is the mind, and other rooms are the emotion, the will, and the conscience. We have believed in the Lord Jesus, and we have Him within us, but He still needs to make His home in our heart. Although we have Christ in us in a general way, we may not have Him in us in a particular way, saturating our mind, emotion, will, and conscience. Christ desires to make His home in our heart, to occupy every part of our inner being. Our inner being, therefore, needs to be saturated, possessed, occupied, and filled with Christ.
If Christ has made His home in our heart, occupying every room of our inner being, we shall be strong. Too many times, however, we are not strong in our spiritual life. The reason is that we have Christ in us only in a general way. We may have received Christ into a corner of our “living room,” but have not given Him the liberty to spread in us. The result is that we are weak. We have Christ, but we are weak because we are not saturated with Christ. We are short of the divine dispensing into our mind, emotion, will, and conscience to saturate our entire being. But if we have been thoroughly saturated with Christ through the divine dispensing into every part of our inward being, we shall be strong. We shall truly be one with the Lord.
Although Christ desires to spread from our spirit to all the parts of our heart, we may not always be willing for Him to spread into our mind, emotion, or will. For this reason, Paul prayed to the Father that He would strengthen us according to His power by His Spirit into our inner man (Eph. 3:16) so that Christ may make His home in our hearts. This indicates that by being strengthened in this way we shall be willing to let the indwelling Christ spread into all the parts of our being and to take over each part. This is Christ making His home in our hearts.
Ephesians 3:17b indicates that Christ lives in the believers for them to be rooted and grounded in His love. To be rooted and grounded in Christ’s love involves a deep and practical experience of the divine dispensing.
Being rooted and grounded in love is related to our being God’s farm and God’s building (1 Cor. 3:9). As God’s farm we need to be rooted for growth, and as God’s building we need to be grounded for building up. Thus, in Ephesians 3:17b Paul has in mind the matters of life and building. In speaking of our having been rooted and grounded, Paul indicates that the experience of Christ is for life and building. As those who have Christ making His home in our hearts, we must have both the life and the building. All that we experience of Christ must be for this.
Paul specifically says in 3:17b that we are rooted and grounded in love. In order to experience Christ, we need faith and love (1 Tim. 1:14). Faith enables us to receive and realize Christ, and love enables us to enjoy Him. Both faith and love are not ours but His. His faith becomes our faith to believe in Him, and His love becomes our love to love Him. The love in which we are rooted and grounded is the divine love realized and experienced by us in a practical way. With such a love we love the Lord, and with that same love we love one another. In such a love we grow in life and are built up in life. Paul’s thought here regarding the relationship between the experience of Christ and the matters of life and building is surely deep and profound.
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