“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’.”
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, … … …
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.”
Paul has layered steps into the fullness of God from the posture of prayer. We have been looking at each step starting at the bottom, the fullness of God, and moving up, one step at a time, back to the top, leaving a staircase for our understanding into God’s love. Last time we looked at faith. It is our door allowing Christ to “dwell in our hearts” allowing us to experience the fullness of God.
Now we want to look more closely to what the apostle Paul means by dwelling in our hearts. The word he uses in the Greek is a compound word meaning House (οικοs) and down against (κατα). It is not uncommon in Greek to combine a preposition into a word in order to convey a nuance or emphasize a meaning. In this instant, the emphases is not just living in a house or dwelling in it but with the κατα formed into the front of the word, Paul emphasizes the full weight of God’s presence is meant to impact our soul-self. He is saying Christ may come against our heart so that we can know the full content of Jesus’ presence within our soul-self.
We need to remember this letter is written to the saints in Ephesus, believers already in Christ Jesus. In other words, this letter of prayer is for saints containing the risen Lord Jesus within their body of self, 2Cor. 13:5. A person cannot be a believer and not have within them the resurrected person of Christ, Romans 8:9, 1Cor. 3:16.
Paul is telling us there is much more to being a Christian than believing in Jesus. This prayer for believers calls them to experience the full weight of Christ’s living presence within their soul’s self.
This brings us once again to the Leodicean church letter in Revelation 3:14. We have here Jesus’ own verbal picture knocking on the believer’s heart seeking our attention to allow His entrance into the communion of our soul’s experience. Christ is already in the believer but He is seeking a more intimate relationship in the believer.
The idea of an intimate relationship with God is to many “Christians” just an idea. It is still a religion, a moral standard for human behavior for many believers. In the words of highly regarded biblical expositor, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones:
You can be a Christian without enjoying conscious fellowship with Him. You can be in a position in which you are relying upon Him, relying upon His perfect work in your behalf, and you can even be praying to Him, and yet not have a conscious fellowship, a conscious of His nearness and a conscious enjoyment of Him.
Many Christians mistakenly believe entering into a grace relationship with God through Christ is their destination. They have entered into their “rest” and now attend a local church fellowship while waiting for the rapture. They have spiritual life but not the power of resurrection life flowing from their well of living water. They are content to coast to heaven without investing the Spiritual resources placed in their heavenly account.
The word Paul uses for heart, in this verse, is intended to mean the whole person not just feelings or emotion. The “κατα οικοs,” dwelling, is directed toward our total person, our intellect, our will to do and the passion of our heart. God has placed Himself at the disposal of our total self and awaits our faith response to His grace. This is the challenge of “faith” as we discussed last time. He gives us the capacity to fulfill the Jewish Shema of oneness, Duet. 6:5, Mark 12:30-31, Matt. 27:36-37. All we have to do is hear and open our heart’s door to produce “so much more” (Romans 5) and expand our mind knowledge to include expanded knowledge through its experience. This is knowledge upon knowledge. Jesus specifically promises our love will be met, not only with a responding love from the Father, but He will also reveal Himself to us, John 14:21ff.
This is the level of God’s fullness Paul is praying these saints in Ephesus would experience. The believers in Ephesus were primarily slaves, not learned people with resources. This is the spiritual expectation Paul had for a 2Corinthians 5:17 believer. This is the level of commitment Jesus is looking for when He tells us to follow Him. This is our love response He is looking for to the gift of life given to us. These are those whom He has promised to reveal Himself. Jesus is not just our earthly destination, He is our beginning into a spiritual journey while we still wear our temporal cloak of flesh.
The use of this verb for dwelling (κατοικησαι - κατα & οικοs) in the Greek is in the aorist tense. The significance of this Greek tense is its finality. The action of the verb signifies completeness and nothing further is required. The full weight of Christ’s presence has been established within our heart. The resources are at our disposal to unlock this grace given to us. This reality is intended for our physical experience and hindered by lack of faith.
God has completed His work in Christ, He has reconciled the world to Himself. If we have been “born again”, if we have been created new in Christ Jesus (2Corinthians 5:17), then, we have now to reconcile ourselves to Him (2Cor 5:20b). We have been given the spiritual resources to do this by faith.
We can bring this about through a negative approach or a positive approach. The negative approach is through submission. Identifying those things in our life which are contrary to the righteousness of Christ. These fleshly hindrances Christ has nailed to the cross so we are freed to nail them also. It now is up to us to purge them from our soulish habits and desires. The positive approach is to seek those things that are above and replace the negatives in out life with Spiritual fruits which come out of the love God has poured into our hearts, Rom. 5:5.
Both tacks work. They combine in our soul to get the holiness God has already placed in our spirit/Spirit to make us righteous in Him. Ultimately, it is love working through faith, Gal. 5:6.