What is the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:19)?

But there was something still deeper than this, and which needed to be known along with it. Therefore he adds, "And to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that ye might be filled to all the fulness of God." Glorious as all these prospects are, what can compare with His love? The best wine is kept to the last. "To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge." 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. Yet he speaks of knowing the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ; "that ye might be filled to all the fulness of God." You could no more get to the end of the love, than you could get to the end of God Himself. Nothing can be more wonderful than such a desire for us, feeble creatures as we are, "that ye might be filled to all the fulness of God." And yet it is for the saints now that the apostle thus prayed; not that we might know ourselves to be Christ's body, the fulness of Him that fills all in all, but practically enlarged entrance by the power of the Spirit into God's fulness. It is the heart's condition, and real growth in communion with God that is before us here; and this most appropriately after the standing has been treated, and before the exhortations as to walk and conduct.

Thirdly, the apprehension of the counsels of God and the appreciation of the love of Christ, leads to the third great result of a right spiritual state — that we "might be filled with all the fulness of God." 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 it is possible for the fulness of God to fill our little vessels. Thus the beautiful character of God, as He has been pleased to reveal Himself, should fill the saints, and be seen in the saints.

The fifth request is that we may be filled with all the fulness of God. The fulness of God is all that God is as revealed and made known in Christ. The Son has fully declared the Father in His love and holiness, in His grace and truth; and the Apostle desires that we should receive, in full measure, of the divine fulness that it may be displayed in the saints.

Verse 19. What is said here is specially for us. The apostle desires that we should realise the love of Christ, which passes knowledge; and that we should be strengthened to understand this love and to be rooted in Him, in order that we may be filled with all the fulness of God. If I am placed in the midst of infinity, I am not at the end of this infinity; I am in infinity which I do not comprehend, which I do not measure, and I have no smaller measure than that: it is nothing less than the fulness of God. God fills all in all, and I am full of Him, and all this by the Spirit; whatever be my littleness, I am in this blessed position. The Jews had no idea of this relationship which is named in heaven and on earth; but as for us, we cannot go outside this wall of enclosure with which God has surrounded us, and which is God Himself; and this depends on the presence of the Spirit, making the church the habitation of God. God cannot be less than Himself; He does not cease to be Himself. The Spirit dwells in the church; she becomes the vessel of that which nothing can contain.

"To know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge." We are to know something which passeth knowledge. It is a paradox. We know that love, and the more we know it the more it passeth our knowledge. Shall we ever know fully the love that passeth knowledge? This ever must be our blessed occupation to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. And what are the consequences? "That ye may be filled unto (not with) all the fullness of God." In the measure in which we know the love of Christ and comprehend the dimensions of this love, in the measure in which we have Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith and are rooted and grounded in love, in that measure shall we be filled unto all the fullness of God.

In Eph. 3 we read, "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." Suppose I address myself to a poor illiterate person, and say, "What do you know about Christ?" If that person is walking near to Christ, Christ is dwelling in his heart by faith. There is all the fulness of the Godhead bodily presented in Christ there. I can quite understand that if you said to many simple souls, "Are you filled into all the fulness of God?" they would say, "Oh no!" If you say, "Have you much to do with the Lord Jesus Christ?" they would say, "Blessed be His name, I have nothing else!" If Christ dwells in your heart by faith, you are filled into all the fulness of God.

Paul then adds, "that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." What a wonderful thing it is that saints of God in this world can be filled with His fulness, with the resources of the Godhead that dwell in the Son of God in heaven. 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. Heart and mind are to be engaged with Christ and with all that is in Christ in the presence of God, and it is this that the prayer seeks for us. All that we are to be for God, and to do for Him, must come from the fulness of God that dwells in Christ. The more of this divine fulness that we possess, the more shall we be able to represent Christ in our place of testimony.

Here we have the indwelling of the Holy Ghost as the source of strength, and that "according to the riches of God's glory;" Christ taking His abode in our hearts by faith; the soul, "rooted and grounded in love," able to enter into the vastness of God's ways; "the breadth, and length, and depth, and height" of those purposes which His grace has formed for His own glory, as well as for our blessing; and, finally, ourselves taught to know, not indeed in its extent — for in this it passes knowledge — but in its nature, the wondrous love of Christ Himself, that we may "be filled to all the fulness of God." This last expression is beautiful in its very indefiniteness. That we can be filled to God's fulness is, of course, impossible; but this is, as it were, the measure in which God is willing to supply, and the only limit of the Holy Ghost's desire for us. Full as we may be, there is still infinitely more beyond; so that there is no limit to what is placed at our command.

The apostle prays now, therefore, that God may give them "according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with power by His Spirit in the inner man." His glory is being manifested indeed in all its fullness. He desires that this should be realized by us in the heart, but for what purpose? Not that signs and miracles may display what God is working, but "that Christ may dwell" in the heart through faith. This Christ, in whom all God's purposes united and with whom we have been brought into such wonderful and tender relationship, well may He dwell through faith in our hearts, not be a Visitor, known, as it were, fitfully and imperfectly, but dwelling there so that we might be "rooted and grounded in love," that the love which has been manifested in Him might be that out of which we should draw continually and in which also we should be established, a perfect love, dismissing all fear and refusing all distance. "Rooted and grounded," — thus we are alone fitted to apprehend "with all saints," "the breadth and length and depth and height," He does not say of what. It is not of love, certainly, that he is speaking, for he immediately goes on to say that this is measureless, this surpasses knowledge. "Breadth and length and depth and height" naturally speak of God's ways, of what He is doing. The breadth of His work includes all His creatures. The length of it is from eternity to eternity. The depth of it could only be rightly known by that depth to which Christ has descended for us; and the height by that place which He has given us with Himself; but if we apprehend these things aright, they are, in fact measurements, in a sense, of that which cannot be measured, so that he immediately adds: "To know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge" like those measurements which we take of the heavens from angles obtained on earth. They convey to us, — how much! but yet leave us to realize that we are incompetent in any full way to estimate what this love is; but even now the consequence of it will be, we shall be "filled up in all. the fulness of God." This is what is in Christ. "In Him," as Colossians tells us, "dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," and it is added: "We are filled up in Him." This divine fulness then, though we cannot hold it, holds us. We are, as has often been said, like a vessel dipped in the ocean which cannot, of course, hold the ocean, but in which the ocean is, as well as round about it. Divine fulness, to be filled with that which is, nevertheless, infinite, how natural to think that here the apostle has in some way exhausted. the sober estimate of things! It is as if anticipating that thought, that he says immediately, "To Him that is able to do far exceedingly above all that we ask or think, to Him be glory." How wonderful the connection there! Think of what he has just been speaking of. It is not, however, that he means that God is able to do more than fill us with all the fulness of God, but that as to all that we might think about it, He is able to exceed any measure we can make. We may ask, but He can transcend all that we can ask for. We may think, but He will be beyond us still, and beyond us in a power which works in us too as the apostle says here, a power which is, of course, the power of the Holy Spirit. He has thus taken hold upon us for this very thing, and to make the Church the vessel of His praise, not simply for the present time, but in a way which nothing will exceed, forever: "To Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus, unto all the generations of the age of ages." How he seems to contemplate there the whole history as it were of the future, filled with wonderful and new displays continually, to new spectators also of God's goodness and power, and to all these and in the midst of all these, the vessel of His glory will still be the Church. in Christ Jesus. Think of it, that this is what God has brought us into! Is it possible, one would ask, to add more to a revelation such as this?

There is another fulness mentioned at the end of Eph. 3, "filled with all the fulness of God". That is often placed alongside the fulness here, but I judge the two are distinct. I have come to the conclusion that the fulness in Eph. 3 is the fulness of the divine revelation which is going to be displayed in the world to come, called in Eph. 1, "the fulness of Him that filleth all in all". I do not think it is the fulness of Godhead there. The Assembly is being formed as a vessel to contain that fulness in view of display, but I am sure this fulness of Godhead will never dwell in the Assembly. It is in the One Who dwells in the Assembly and is available today to enable the saints to function for God. I do think there is a distinction between the two statements and what each involves.