in order that ye may be fully able to apprehend with all the saints what [is] the breadth and length and depth and height;
Paul's prayer reaches a point where language runs out. He names four measurements, but he never says what he is measuring. Then he asks that believers be able to grasp them together with everyone else who belongs to God. Two questions sit at the heart of the verse — the dimensions of what, and why this grasp is impossible alone.
One writer supplies the missing word from the letter itself:
Four dimensions are listed, but we are not told what they refer to. The dimensions of what? Surely of all the great truth Paul had been unfolding, the dimensions of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
One writer reads the four measures as the range of God's eternal purpose, and gives each one its own reach:
Then the Apostle desires that we may grasp "the breadth, and length, and depth, and height". This would appear to be the whole range of God's "eternal purpose", already mentioned in verse 11. In its breadth this eternal purpose embraces "all saints". In its length it stretches into the age of ages. In its depth it reached down to us in all our need. In its height it brings us into a scene of glory.
Another writer points the depth and the height to Christ Himself:
Depth — this reminds us of all the distance and shame and suffering the blessed Lord went through. He went through it to open all this up righteously and to carry out God's wonderful plan of blessing. Height — we look up and see Him who went into the lowest depth, now in the highest height of glory. And we see the believer made to sit in heavenly places in Christ.
The verb Paul uses asks for more than information. One writer also refuses to shrink the four measures down to love alone:
In verse 18, to comprehend or apprehend is not just to know about something. It is to apply it to the heart in experience. The apostle speaks of love in verse 17. But verse 18 is not limited to love. It takes in all the counsels of God, in which He shows His great love.
These measurements are not handed to a private student. One writer draws out what that means for how we treat other believers:
How can I "comprehend with all saints" if I leave out any? I cannot separate from them without lessening my own sense of the fulness of the love of Christ and of God. If I leave out one, he is Christ's joy. And here we fail.
But believers today are scattered and divided. One writer faces that head on:
In these days of brokenness and division in the church of God we cannot bring all saints together. Nor can we stir up all saints to grasp these things. But we can hold firmly to the divine thought of all saints, and, as far as we are able, live and act with all saints in view. Those who do this are more likely than others to grasp the mighty scope of the unsearchable riches of Christ, to know His love which is centred on all saints, and to be filled with all the fulness of God.
Paul makes one thing the condition of this grasping: being rooted and grounded in love. That sounds like a strange qualification for understanding, and one writer names the puzzle:
The question is this: What is to enable you to comprehend that which is measureless? True, it is a paradox; but the answer is, the love of Christ. It is not knowledge by itself, or general intelligence, or great mental power. It is being rooted and grounded in the love of Christ.
This rules out one route and opens another:
To be rooted and grounded in the knowledge of the schools will be of no help in learning the mysteries of God. Here we touch a region beyond the wit of man. We are in touch with things that no eye has seen and no ear has heard. They have never entered the heart of man. God alone can teach them, and He teaches them through our affections.
- Strength first. Paul asks for this grasp; he does not assume it. He prays that believers may be able, because the four measures lie beyond the wit of man.
- Root next. Love, not learning, gives the capacity. The knowledge of the schools is of no help here; God teaches these things through the affections.
- Measure then. Breadth takes in all saints. Length stretches into the age of ages. Depth answers to what Christ went through, and height to where He now is.
- Company always. We grasp the dimensions "with all saints". Leave one out, and you shrink your own sense of the fulness of Christ's love.
- Fulness last. The grasp ends where the prayer ends: knowing His love, and being filled with all the fulness of God.
and to know the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge; that ye may be filled [even] to all the fulness of God.
The prayer in this chapter reaches its high point here. It asks for the knowledge of a love that no one can ever exhaust. Two questions press on any reader. How can we know what surpasses knowledge? And what could it mean for creatures as small as us to be filled with what belongs to God?
The phrase sounds like a contradiction. We will never master this love. We can keep going further into it forever.
It may seem to be a paradox to say so, but a blessed one. He does not mean that we shall ever know it perfectly. But there may be the knowing more and more of that which surpasses knowledge. He supposes us launched upon that sea where there is no shore: we can never reach the end of His love... You could no more get to the end of the love, than you could get to the end of God Himself.
Believers are not shut out from this love now. They live on it, and still cannot measure it.
But do we not know it? Are we quite ignorant of it? No — it is our security, it is our motive, it is indeed our portion. It has cast out fear. The manger, the garden, the cross, the throne, all bear witness to its fullness and eternity. But who can fully know its everlasting strength?
The prayer does not stop with glory. Even the brightest glory leaves the heart wanting more.
But the heart wants far more than glory. Even a human heart needs more, not to speak of God's heart. Suppose I were in heaven, with all the glory God could give a creature. Even then it would not be enough for what the heart feels the need of even now. So glory, bright as it is, is beneath what he next brings before us...
The measurements only mean something because a Person fills them:
The verse adds "and to know" — as though that were something extra — "the love of Christ". What would those measures mean to me if I did not have the knowledge of the love of Christ which fills it all? God is going to fill the whole sphere with the One in Whom His love is centred.
The ESV reads "filled with all the fullness of God." One writer presses a different rendering: filled unto it. That changes the picture. We do not contain God. He brings us into His fulness, and our growth in it matches our grasp of the love of Christ.
"That you may be filled unto (not with) all the fullness of God." We are filled unto that fullness in the measure in which we know the love of Christ and understand the dimensions of this love. We are filled in the measure in which Christ dwells in our hearts by faith and we are rooted and grounded in love.
Being placed inside something limitless is a different thing from containing it:
If I am placed in the middle of infinity, I am not at the end of it. I am in an infinity which I do not comprehend and do not measure. I have no smaller measure than that: it is nothing less than the fulness of God... whatever my littleness may be, I am in this blessed position... we cannot go outside this wall of enclosure with which God has surrounded us, and which is God Himself.
This fulness is not vague. It is God's own moral character, and it should show in the people it fills.
Does not the fulness of God speak of all that God is in His moral attributes — His holiness, His love, and His grace? A vessel could be filled with water, but no vessel could hold the ocean. So our little vessels cannot take in all the fulness of God, but the fulness of God can fill our little vessels. So the beautiful character of God, as He has been pleased to reveal Himself, should fill the saints, and show in the saints.
That filling has a practical cost and a practical result:
If we are to be filled with the divine fulness then everything of self, of the world, and of the earth must be removed from the vessel... All that we are to be for God, and to do for Him, must come from the fulness of God that dwells in Christ.
- Know — we know the love of Christ now. It is our security, our motive, our portion. Yet no one exhausts it.
- Surpasses — the paradox is deliberate: we know more and more of what we will never fully know, like a sea with no shore.
- Crowns — the prayer sets love above the vast measures and above glory itself, because glory alone leaves the heart wanting.
- Filled unto — read it as unto, not with. God launches us into His fulness; He does not ask us to contain it. Our measure of it matches our grasp of Christ's love.
- Shows — the fulness of God is His holiness, love and grace. Clear out self and the world, and that fulness fills the saints and shows in them.