“Love is layered throughout this passage and the dominate theme. But none of our core samples of love are the same. In fact, this prayer passage itself suggests God’s diversity. The further away from the center of God’s fullness, the love textures become more dimensioned with reason and truth. They all have love in them but the closer we get to God’s fullness, the more dense is the love surrounding ‘fullness’.” -GN
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, … … …
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. - Ephesians 3:14-19
We are continuing our look at this passage illustrated in the life of Elijah. God exposed the breadth, length, height and depth of agape love through power from where Elijah was standing inside the cave. Watching God’s display, protected by the cave, didn’t persuade. Elijah had just been God’s own instrument of power before Ahab and all Israel. The wind, earthquake and fire may have been a reminder but not a revelation for Elijah. But it wasn’t God’s power he saw, it was His love. Fear had griped his heart driving him into the cave but he left the cave in faithful submission to the lover of his soul.
God’s power always exposes man to a divine context. Since God is Love, 1John 4:8, His power embodies love to mankind. In fact, God’s agape love is inherently expressed in our phrase, “May have strength to comprehend with all saints.” God joined in us by His Holy Spirit is mentoring His creation through agape love.
The word “Strength,” in this quote, refers not to power, per se, but God’s love which itself has the power of physical strength. Paul is praying believers aggressively grasp God’s love, unlocking His attributes within our personal experiences. We have access but we need to grasp His grace by faith.
The two Greek words for “strength to comprehend” have contain this meaning in their intent. The NASB uses the word “able,” which should be “fully able,” meaning God’s love is so overwhelming we are not able to withstand its effects spiritually or physically. Stories and biographical accounts such as D.L. Moody experiencing God’s love while walking the sidewalks of Wall Street speak to this.
The word “comprehend” is a compound form of the Greek to receive. The compound form exaggerates its meaning suggesting “to grab or possess something,” (κατα)λαμβανω. The words in combination gives us the sense of both grace and faith operating in tandem. God’s grace is at the ready to provide “much more” responding to our faith when we are grasping His love within God’s provided capacity to receive and understand. The clear message in the Greek text is our inadequacy to enter into His love without grace. It is His enabling, grace by the Holy Spirit, teaching us, drawing us into His fullness.
Paul’s passage in Ephesians 3 is an exposition of Romans 5 where the law is compared to grace, laying the foundation for the “Therefore” in Romans 8:1. This, in turn, exposes believer’s spiritual reality as the “much more grace” of Romans 5. Here, in Ephesians 3, we are seeing faith and grace operationally, i.e., the desire of our will, in Christ Jesus, being filled from God’s fullness. The Romans 8 “Therefore” presents the result of much more grace in Christ “in which we stand” (Romans 5:2) and the agape love which has been “poured” into our hearts (Romans 5:5). Romans 8 is a love chapter describing who we are in Christ.
Our existence, like Elijah’s, is itself is an expression of God’s love. He breathed His breathe creating our life in His image. In His image each believer exercises their own soul’s will, making choices of love. Our choices determine the degree of our “surpassing knowledge” leading to filling from God’s fullness.
God’s grace enables our faith to unlock more of God’s grace, expanding our capacity to receive abundantly more grace. It is an unending circle of eternal grace and faith, never ending. It is the way God works through us and in us.
There is another parallel passage we need to consider, Luke 19:26. Jesus gives us this parable of the “10 minas” showing an eternal principle of geometric progression. We are entrusted with gifts and grace which will be judged at the end of our stewardship in this life. The man in the parable who doubled his investment ten times was not only given the equivalent compounding in reward but also received from the man who did not compound his investment. The one with the most was given also what had belonged to another. This illustrates the “much more” principle we have observed in Romans 5 as well as the “strengthen” principle in Ephesians 3. The principle in Romans and Ephesians is God driven by grace. The Luke principle is human driven by faith but the same eternality principle of love applies in both.
The spiritual air we breathe is qualitatively different than our natural laws and it dissolves boundaries of temporal existence. It is eternally dimensioned outside our temporal experience. Listen to the words of Jesus to those close to him from Mark 4:21-25:
A Lamp Under a Basket
And he said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand? For nothing is hidden except to be manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” And he said unto them, “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
In this Mark passage, the combination of both grace and faith are operational and the same eternal principle is in force. For those standing in God’s grace there is continuously present, waiting for faith’s trigger, access to God’s fullness.
In Revelation Jesus writes to each of the seven churches a note of warning, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches.” But here, in the Mark passage, we have Jesus giving us a little fuller meaning of His intent, “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you.”
The exercise of our faith is dependent upon hearing and understanding the grace God is measuring out to us. Faith is a response to God’s grace. This is a skill in discernment requiring spiritual training, Hebrews 5:14. In our Romans 5 passage we find believers standing in grace and it is from this grace position we have access to the "much more". If we do not hone our spiritual hearing, we may not hear Jesus knocking on our heart’s door.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me.”
If a person is not listening, if he does not hear the knock of Jesus, he may not open the door! But if he does open the door, grace comes in and fellowship is enjoyed by both.
“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand” – Romans 5:2
The Revelation passage ends with: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” It is clear, one of the hindrances to having the “strength” to apprehend God’s agape love and grace, is listening and hearing.
Paul’s prayer is concerned with our human capacity to hear spiritually. It is an enabling prayer for us, in our humanity, to tune into God’s grace which is constant and triggered by our faith, that is, acting on what we hear enabled by God’s grace. This is one of the messages contained in Revelation 3:20. It is God’s enabling grace providing our strength to both apprehend and comprehend.
Man does not have the ability to hear or respond to God without God’s grace to do so. Man without Christ is spiritually dead, Eph. 2:1cf. He does not have the capacity to believe or exercise faith. It is God’s grace enabling man to enter into belief and having the faith to develop God’s life in Christ, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Eph. 2:8-10.
This accomplishes several things but we will just mention a couple. Our body is our crucible. It is hostile to God and has a natural self serving inclination. Our crucible body provides an ideal furnace to purify our soul by allowing the work of Christ within us to be processed through our body of death. In this way, the life of Christ becomes visible in flesh, glorifying God through His resurrection power, 2Cor. 4:7cf, Romans 8:11.
This is not an easy task, it is the reason for Paul’s prayer. Our body of sin is constantly at war against us. The believer’s identity is our righteous inner man whom God created within us. The believer’s reality is Christ. This is who we are, joined to God through Christ. We have been created new and the old has passed away! (2Cor. 5:17). This identity is our essence, we have been made holy in Jesus. We are to work out this new righteousness from within because it is God working His will within us, Philippians 2:13.
Paul’s prayer is that we might exploit God’s working grace and take advantage of God’s love placed at our disposal to receive. It is God’s will that we listen and hear His truth so that we live in His righteousness experiencing His love poured into our hearts, Romans 5:5.
Elijah’s experience in the cave was just that, listening to God so that he could experience God’s fullness in the remaining days of his ministry. God was showing His love by affirming Elijah with His presence and nurturing. It was here God called him to anoint kings. It was here God gave him Elisha to train to continue Elijah’s ministry. It was from here the school of prophets became God’s ministry to His remnant in Israel through Elijah and then through Elisha. It was from here that Elijah became “grounded” (Eph. 3:16b) in the structure God was providing for Elijah’s ministry.
We will continue discussing, “being rooted and grounded in love.” in our next GN.