This is one of Paul’s prayers for the saints in Ephesus:
“ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith – that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
This is a marvelous prayer. It is spiritually layered from bowing on Paul’s knees to that upward place of being “filled with all the fullness of God.” On the surface it may seem artificial or symbolic. How many people do you know who are filled with all the fullness of God? Yet, Paul didn’t speak in euphemisms. He was focused on being a pastor rather than a theologian. His constant desire was people to experience life in Christ Jesus in very practical ways. The early Christians were actually called people in “the way” (Acts 9:2).
Spurgeon is quoted as saying some Christians are at a point above “normal” Christians as a “normal” Christian is above a non-believer. This is an amazing indictment. Yet, we do have written testimony of people like D. L. Moody who writes of experiencing God in a physically debilitating way, but Paul is not speaking to special people who are singularly blest with a “mountain top” experience. He is talking to the saints at Ephesus. These are normal everyday working people in a metropolitan location like New York or Hong Kong.
Paul expresses his desire for believers to experience “all the fullness of God.” He writes a similar prayer in chapter 1, “… that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saint.” Sound familiar? This is the theme of being “in Christ Jesus.” This is Paul’s normal expectation for every person called by God to be in Christ. Or, may we be so bold to say, this is Christ’s expectation for every believer!
Evangelist and pulpits put so much emphasis on soul saving to diminish the gospel’s message of righteousness in Christ Jesus! Too many believers are taught about hell and heaven at the expense of spiritual maturity. It is enough for them to enjoy their temporal life “in Christ.” People use prayer to bring God down to us rather than lifting us into His holy righteousness. Not to know “the so much more” in Romans 5 is to totally miss the point of being in Christ Jesus.
Paul has given us, in this prayer to the Ephesians, a path to follow. Lets drill down (up) from our destination (being filled with all the fullness of God) up through the layers, installing signpost markers on our way. Then, perhaps, we can work our way back down to “being filled with all the fullness of God” which is really up ☺.
We should first ask, what does it mean to be filled with all the fullness of God? One thing is certain, it does not include being Sir Lancelot in King Arthur’s Court. It is not being the master of all our circumstances and rescuing damsels in distress. It is more like becoming vulnerable rather than invulnerable. It is more like being above circumstances rather than rescued from them. To be filled with God means to be empty of self. An example might be Elijah although he was not always empty of self as we will see.
Elijah first appears on the scene as the Tishbite from the Gilead side of the Jordan (1Kings 17:1), confronting king Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, Lives, before whom I stand, there shall neither be dew nor rain these years, except by my word” (1Kings17: 1). Ahab was making a mockery of God, choosing to follow Jezebel’s worship of Baal.
”The word of the Lord came to Elijah” who defied king Ahab with this news: “You are not getting any more rain or dew ‘til I say so!” This was Elijah, one-on-one, putting Ahab on notice … and Elijah left town, not to be found. God instructed Elijah to retreat to a cave next to a small stream where he would be raven (as in bird) fed … for three years!
Filled with all the fullness of God? Was Elijah filled with all the fullness of God when he confronted Ahab? Or was he filled with the fullness of God while he was waiting by the stream watching the water level go down because of the lack of rain? Did it take three years of strengthening before Elijah was ready to perform his next much bigger Ahab task?
Being filled with all the fullness of God may not be what we envision. The Old Testament is filled with pictures helping us understand the “new covenant” gospel in New Testament terms. One of those pictures is the Ark of the Covenant which was located in the Tabernacle’s Holy of Holies. This was God’s place, where He was present and where Moses received his instruction concerning the will of God.
Seated upon the Ark of the Covenant was the mercy seat where the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled. The Ark was made out of acacia wood and was about 4ft long and 2ft deep and high. It was covered by gold both inside and out with the same gold used for the mercy seat setting on top (Exodus 25).
The Ark of the Covenant itself is widely held to be a picture of Jesus Himself. The wood is representing His humanity and the gold His divinity. McGee uses the quote, “He was very God of very God and very Man of very man.” This is not a scriptural reference but McGee, for one, feels it expresses the intent of this OT picture.
Inside the Ark were three items, a pot of manna from the wilderness, the two tablets of God’s law and Aaron’s rod that budded.
The manna was the miracle food given daily to keep the people alive in the wilderness. Jesus is our bread of life and we are instructed to eat of His flesh (John 6:55-57) as we are spiritually sustained. This is the logos (λογοs) word of God of the New Testament covenant.
The two stones are the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mt. Sinai. The two original tablets were destroyed by Moses because of the people’s sin. God replaced them with these two stone slabs provided by Moses. Both were written by the finger of God (Ex. 31:18, Deut. 10:1-5). Jesus is the only man in history to keep the ten commandments. This is Christ’s righteousness given to us under the new covenant and “so much more” by His grace, when we are created new and saved “in” His life (Romans 5:10).
Korah was a Levite priest who led a rebellion against Moses and Aaron. He and 250 fellow Levite followers were devoured by the earth because of their rebellion (Num.13:30ff). The people turned on Moses because their leadership of priests were taken from them. God’s anger turned on them as well, but Moses and Aaron intervened, pleading God’s mercy. God instructed Moses to have almond staffs made with the chief’s name on them from each of the 12 tribes. The almond staff from the tribe of Levi was to have Aaron’s name on it. Moses placed the staffs before the Lord in the Tabernacle. The next morning Moses entered the Tabernacle to retrieve the staffs. Aaron’s staff for the tribe of Levi “had sprouted and put forth buds and produced blossoms, and it bore ripe almonds. Then Moses brought out all the staffs from before the Lord to all the people of Israel. And they looked, and each man took his staff. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Put back the staff of Aaron before the testimony, to be kept as a sign of the rebels, that you may make an end of their grumblings against me, lest they die.’ Thus did Moses; as the Lord commanded him, so he did. (Numbers 17:8b-11).”
God created life in a dead stick. God not only gave life to Aaron’s dead almond staff but made it bud, blossom and produce ripe fruit. Under New Testament covenant, Christ is now our high priest (Heb.5:5-10). He is the one producing buds, blossoms and ripe fruit in us because we are in Him, “and so much more”.
Under the new covenant we are now His dwelling place (2Cor. 6:16). The Tabernacle of the Old Testament has been replaced with His life in our body.
It is difficult to draw exact parallels between the Ark’s contents, those same things contained in us, because we are in Christ. We organically absorb the ministry of the Spirit within us through these Old Testament illustrations of life in the Ark of Christ. We deepen our awe, our fear, our joy and our sense of wonderment. It is what it means to be “filled with all the fullness of God” as Paul wrote to the Ephesians.
We also find these spiritual principles operating in the Life of the Tishbite. Yes, Elijah was filled with all the fullness of God as He waited for God by the diminishing stream. We never quite come to that point where there isn’t more to learn about our own self as well as our bountiful Father who is caring for us with “so much more.”
The daily manna Elijah received came by way of a raven in the morning and in the evening was a reminder of his spiritual provision in God even as he waited upon the Lord as his water source was drying up.
“And after a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him, ‘Arise, go to Zarepath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.’”
The three years of drought was not up, yet, God had additional learning for Elijah before his confrontation with Ahab on Mt. Carmel. But we are continuing to ask the question, was Elijah filled with all the fullness of God? I think he was, but God had more grace for him to consume as soon as his faith was ready to receive it. Being “filled” speaks to the amount of space in us available to be filled by God. The “fullness of God” speaks to limitless grace, and so much more, that God gives us strength to hold, but this is marker #3.
We will finish with “God’s fullness” in Paul’s prayer next week as we see the human side of the Tishbite who is “filled with all the fullness of God” while at the same time being a finite person.
Afterwards, we will (God willing) proceed to follow Paul’s prayer path from “with all the fullness of God,” to the marker preceding God’s fullness, the love of Christ.