Christ lives in the believers for them to know His knowledge-surpassing love. In Ephesians 3:19a Paul says, “To know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ.” The love of Christ surpasses knowledge; yet we can know it by experiencing it. According to our mentality, the love of Christ is knowledge-surpassing. Our mind is not able to know it. But in our spirit we can know the love of Christ through our experience.
The love of Christ is actually Christ Himself. Just as Christ is immeasurable, so His love also is immeasurable. We should not regard the love of Christ as something belonging to Christ. This love is Christ. Because Christ is immeasurable, His love is knowledge-surpassing; yet we can know it in our spirit, not by knowledge but by experience. If we compare what we have experienced thus far of the immeasurable love of Christ to all there is to experience, it is like comparing a raindrop to the ocean. Christ in His universal dimensions and in His immeasurable love is like a vast, limitless ocean for us to experience.
Christ lives in the believers for them to be filled with Him in His unsearchable riches and immeasurable dimensions unto all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:19b says, “That you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.” Some translations say, “filled with all the fullness of God.” According to this rendering, the fullness of God would have to be the element, the essence, with which we are filled. But this is a mistaken understanding of this verse. Here Paul is saying that we shall be filled unto all the fullness of God, that is, we shall be filled to be the expression of God. The Greek word translated “unto” in verse 19 means “resulting in.” Our being filled with the riches of Christ results in the fullness of God, the full expression of God. As Christ makes His home in our hearts, we are filled not with all the fullness of God but unto all the fullness of God. Eventually, we shall be filled with the processed Triune God to such an extent that we shall become His full expression.
When Christ makes His home in our hearts and when we are strong to apprehend with all the saints the dimensions of Christ and to know by experience His knowledge-surpassing love, we shall be filled unto all the fullness of God. All this fullness dwells in Christ (Col. 1:19; 2:9). Through His indwelling Christ continually imparts the element of God into our being. We can be filled with the Triune God to such a measure and can attain to such a standard, even unto all the fullness of God. In this way we fulfill God’s intention that the church should be His expression.
When the riches of Christ are in God Himself, they are His riches. But when these riches are expressed, they become God’s fullness (John 1:16). Thus, when we speak of the fullness of God, we imply that the riches of all that the Triune God is have become His expression. The fullness in Ephesians 3:19 does not mean the riches; it denotes the expression, the manifestation, of the riches. For example, when you fill a cup with water, it is not until the water fills the cup to the brim and overflows that you can see the fullness of the water. The overflow is the fullness of the water. That overflow as the fullness of the water is the expression of the water. We need to be strengthened through the Spirit into our inner man so that Christ may make His home in our hearts to fill us to the brim and even overflow from our inner being. When we are filled up to such an extent that Christ overflows from within us, we become the fullness of God.
In the New Testament the fullness is the expression through the completeness of the riches. This is the reason that in Ephesians 3:8 Paul speaks of the unsearchable riches of Christ but in 1:23 and 4:13 speaks of the fullness of Christ. The riches of Christ are the various aspects of what Christ is, and the fullness of Christ is the result, the issue, of our enjoyment of these riches. As we enjoy the riches of Christ, these riches are assimilated into our being metabolically. Then they constitute us into the fullness of Christ, into the Body of Christ, the church, as His expression. Therefore, the fullness of Christ in 1:23 is the very fullness of God in 3:19. The fullness of God is the issue of the believers’ being constituted metabolically through their experience of the riches of Christ.
When we get into the depths of 3:19, we see that the fullness of God is the church and that the church is metabolically constituted in us through our experience and enjoyment of the riches of Christ. In order to assimilate Christ metabolically, we need to be strengthened into our inner man. We also need Christ to make His home in our hearts, that is, to occupy, possess, and metabolically saturate every part of our inward being with all that He is. Then we shall become strong to grasp Christ experientially in His universal dimensions both horizontally and vertically. Along with this, we shall know through our experience the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ. When we have experienced Christ to such an extent, we shall be filled with the riches of Christ unto all the fullness of God as His expression. Therefore, being filled unto the fullness of God is the outcome, the result, of the deeper, higher, and richer experiences of Christ described in Ephesians 3. This is the dispensing of the processed Triune God into our entire being that we may become His expression.
Home | First | Prev | Next