TRUE CHRISTIANS FIND CHRIST EVERYWHERE.

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.