Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ephesians 3:18
May be able to comprehend with all saints what [is] the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
18. may be able ] R. V., may be strong; more lit. still, may get strength; the verb being aorist, pointing to a new crisis. The idea is of a wide grasp, a mighty stretch of thought and faith, only to be made by spirits perfectly assured (Eph 3:17) of their footing.
to comprehend ] R. V., “ apprehend ” ; a minute and over-careful change. The Gr. is used ( e.g. Act 4:13; Act 10:34; Act 25:25) of mental perception, or ascertainment.
with all saints ] Lit., with all the saints. For the phrase cp. Eph 1:15, Eph 6:18; Col 1:4; 1Th 3:13; Phm 1:5; Rev 8:3, and perhaps Rev 22:21. On the word “saint” see note on Eph 1:1. The thought emphasized here is that of the great Community. The Apostle has spoken of experiences possible only in the sanctum of the individual regenerate “heart,” but he reminds the reader here that these are never to terminate in themselves. The individual, as he is never other than a “member” of Christ, is never other than a “member” of his brethren (see Rom 12:5). His grace and light are to be, as it were, contributions to the combined experience of the true Church, as the grace and light of the true Church are to enhance his own.
what is the breadth, &c.] The Object is left unnamed. What is it? We explain it, with Monod, as the Divine Love, which has just been named (see last on Eph 3:17), and is to be named (as the Love of Christ) immediately again. At least, it is that Work, Purpose, Covenant, of God in Christ which is ultimately resolved into the Eternal and Sovereign Love.
The imagery is perhaps suggested by a vastly spacious building, with its high towers and deep foundations. But may it not rather be suggested by the visible Universe itself, as if a spectator gazed from horizon to horizon, and at the boundless air above, and thought of the depths beneath his feet? We may partially illustrate the language, in any case, by such passages as Psa 103:11-12.
Some curiosities of interpretation attach to this verse. Severianus (cent. 4, 5), quoted by Alford, finds here an allusion to the shape of the Cross, and in it to the Lord’s Godhead (“ height ”) and Manhood (“ depth ”), and to the extent of the apostolic missions (“ length and breadth ”). St Jerome (cent. 4, 5) in his Commentary here interprets the words at some length, and finds in the “ height ” the holy angels, in the “ depth ” the evil spirits, in the “ length ” those of mankind who are on the upward path, and in the “ breadth ” those who are “sinking towards vices. For broad and ample is the way which leadeth to death.” The Calvinist Zanchius (cent. 16) adopts from Photius (cent. 9) the explanation that the reference is to “the mystery of the free salvation through Christ of the Gentiles and the whole human race”; called long, because decreed from eternity; broad, because extended to all; deep, because of the descent of Christ to Hades, and because of the resurrection of the dead; high, because Christ ascended above all heavens. (Quoted in Poole’s Synopsis Criticorum.)
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
May be able to comprehend with all saints – That all others with you may be able to understand this. It was his desire that others, as well as they, might appreciate the wonders of redemption.
What is the breadth, and length, … – It has been doubted to what this refers. Locke says it refers to the mystery of calling the Gentiles as well as the Jews. Chandler supposes there is an allusion in all this to the temple at Ephesus. It was one of the wonders of the world – exciting admiration by its length, and height, and dimensions in every way, as well as by its extraordinary riches and splendor. In allusion to this, the object of so much admiration and pride to the Ephesians, he supposes that Paul desires that they should become fully acquainted with the extent and beauty of the spiritual temple. But I do not see that there is clear evidence that there is allusion here to the temple at Ephesus. It seems rather to be the language of a heart that was full of the subject, and impressed with its greatness; and the words are employed to denote the dimensions of that love, and are similar to what would be meant if he had said, that you may know how large, or how great is that love. The apostle evidently meant to express the strongest sense of the greatness of the love of the Redeemer, and to show in the most emphatic manner how much he wished that they should fully understand it. On the phrase depth and height, compare notes on Rom 8:39.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Eph 3:18
May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height.
Spiritual perception
From Divine love, as the root and ground of the souls life, comes all spiritual perception. I say spiritual, as distinct from intellectual, perception. Paul says: You will net be able to comprehend the love of Christ, unless you are first rooted and grounded in it. A spiritual understanding is the opened flower of the Divine love root. Light is loves first-born child. Before one can enjoy the light of the world, he must be born of the worlds love. And before we can be light in the Lord, we must be in the Lord, having a root and ground in us derived from Himself. Any such knowledge as the natural understanding is capable of deriving from the words of Scripture is by no means spiritual knowledge. In order to spiritual knowledge, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, must as really shine into our hearts, as, in order to behold objects of nature, the light of the sun must shine into our eyes. If Christ dwell in your hearts by faith, you will be rooted and grounded in love, and as a consequence, you will be able to comprehend spiritual things. Love, then, according to our apostle, is the ground and mother of the perceptive faculty. Without fire there can be no effulgence, or radiance. As is the fire, will be the radiance. The source of mental illumination is the Son of God in the heart. (J. Pulsford.)
Comprehending Christs love
I. The dimensions of this love.
1. The breadth is seen in reaching out Divine mercy to sinners who are far off from God (Isa 65:1; Isa 45:22).
2. The length of this love reaches from eternity to eternity (Jer 31:3; Jer 32:40).
3. The depth of this love is seen in raising sinners from condemnation and hell (Psa 40:2-3; 1Co 6:9-11).
4. The height of this love consists in making sinners heirs of God, and bringing them finally to glory (2Ti 4:6-8).
II. What the apostle meant, desiring the Ephesians might comprehend it. May be able to comprehend with all saints.
1. That they might form correct views of the freeness of Gods love (2Ti 1:9).
2. That they might comprehend the perpetuity of it (Joh 13:1; Psa 89:33).
3. That they might exhibit the effects of it in its constraining influence and constant peace (Rom 5:1-5).
III. For what purpose he expresses this desire. That ye might be filled, etc.
1. That they might be able rightly to value it (Php 3:8-9).
2. That they might depend upon it (Jam 1:17).
3. That they might honour it (Gal 6:14).
4. It is inexpressible love. (T. B. Baker.)
The vastness of the Divine love
These terms were not, perhaps, intended to convey each of them a distinct idea, but generally to represent the vastness of the Divine love; yet we may make use of these various expressions to classify what we have to say on the matter.
1. The breadth suggests to us the extent of that love, the vastness of the field for which it is designed and for which it provides. God loves all His creatures–not one is excluded.
2. The length may suggest the duration of His love. It is not a thing of today, suddenly conceived, and that may be suddenly laid aside; it is from eternity, and had its birth before the foundations of the earth were laid. Look back, and back, and back, and you shall not see its commencement! Look forward, and forward, and forward, and you shall never see the termination of it, for it is also to everlasting. Through the whole of your journey, however long continued it may be, you shall find His love with you.
3. And the depth. Oh, how low has God come with that wondrous love of His! How He stooped to our low estate. From what depths has He sought to rescue His wayward, erring children.
4. And the height. He who ascended is the same also who descended; therefore, God hath highly exalted Him. He is high upon the throne of universal empire; and He says, Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am. In the same height of glory to which He Himself has gone; to the same height as that throne on which He reigns; to that height of glory He purposes to bring us–a height to which no weapon can reach–a height at which there can be no sin–a height from which every step may be a stepping stone to higher glories. As the lark soars and sings, and soars and sings, so shall we; but not as the lark, which soars aloft, but ever comes back to earth. (Newman Halt, LL. B.)
Comprehension of Gods immeasurable love
Well may St. Paul add, to comprehend with all saints. No single mind is equal to this study. One mighty intellect of Newton may sketch the plan of the solar system; one Laplace may demonstrate its permanent equilibrium; one Herschel map out the nebulae of the southern sky; one Dalton unfold the laws of atomic combination; one Darwin assign the clue to the partial unfolding of the mystery of successive lives in nature. But no single soul is capable of comprehending the love of Christ, for the vision and experience of each is limited, and in morals we are members one of another. God has gifts which He bestows on the solitary students of Divine truth, and gifts which He bestows on His solitary petitioners in the closet or under, the fig tree. But, in general, the law of understanding the love of Christ is united study, united work, united conference, united prayer. In our spiritual being we are wonderfully dependent on each other, so that the gifted thinker freezes in solitude while companies of earnest and humble supplicants attain by their communion the vision and the faculty Divine. Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is, for where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them. The whole Church is a spiritual organism which is requisite for the comprehension of love Divine in its fulness. A few rays may fall on the individual eye: still more, when Churches meet to praise and pray even in a splintered and divided Christendom: but when the relics of eighteen hundred years of conflict, and ecclesiastical pride and sectarian contention, are cast aside and forgotten, and the one Church of God becomes visibly one on earth and consciously one in every place, then there will break upon the countless millions of eyes which will gaze upward every morning on the Sun of Righteousness, with one heart and one soul, a flood of sunshine, an effulgence of answering glory, which will consecrate the earth, and prove it to be the gate of heaven. (E. White.)
The paradox of loves measure
Of what? There can, I think, be no doubt as to the answer. The next clause is evidently the continuation of the idea begun in that of our text, and it runs: and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. It is the immeasurable measure, then; the boundless bounds and dimensions of the love of Christ which fires the apostles thoughts here. Of course, he had no separate idea in his mind attaching to each of these measures of magnitude, but he gathered them all together simply to express the one thought of the greatness of Christs love. Depth and height are the same dimension measured from opposite ends. The one begins at the top and goes down, the other begins at the bottom and goes up, but the surface is the same in either case. So we have the three dimensions of a solid here–breadth, length, and depth. And I suppose that I may venture to use these expressions with a somewhat different purpose from that for which the apostle employs them: and to see in each of them a separate and blessed aspect of the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.
I. What, then, is the breadth of that love? It is as broad as humanity. As all the stars lie in the firmament, so all creatures rest in the heaven of His love. Mankind has many common characteristics. We all suffer, we all sin, we all hunger, we all aspire; and, blessed be God! we all occupy precisely the same relation to the love, the Divine love, which lies in Jesus Christ. There are no step-children in His great family, and none of them receive a more grudging or a less ample share of His love and goodness than every other. Broad as the race, and curtaining it over as some great tent may enclose on a festal day a whole tribe, the breadth of Christs love is the breadth of humanity. And this broad love, broad as humanity, is not shallow because it is broad. Our human affections are too often like the estuary of some great stream which runs deep and mighty as long as it is held within narrow banks, but as soon as it widens becomes slow, and powerless, and shallow. The intensity of human affection varies inversely as its extension. A universal philanthropy is a passionless sentiment. But Christs love is deep though it be wide, and suffers no diminution because it is shared amongst a multitude. There are two ways of arguing about the love of Christ, both of them valid, and both of them needing to be employed by us. We have a right to say, He loves all, therefore He loves me. And we have a right to say, He loves me, therefore He loves all. For surely the love that has stooped to me can never pass by any human soul. What is the breadth of the love of Christ? It is broad as mankind, it is narrow as myself.
II. Then, in the next place, what is the length of the love of Christ? If we are to think of Him only as a man, however exalted and however perfect, you and I have nothing in the world to do with His love. When He was here on earth it may have been sent down the generations in some vague, pale way, as the shadowy ghost of love may rise in the heart of a great statesman or philanthropist for generations yet unborn, which he dimly sees will be affected by his sacrifice and service. But we do not call that love. Such a poor, pale; Shadowy thing has no right to the warm, throbbing name; has no right to demand from us any answering thrill of affection; and unless you think of Jesus Christ as something more and other than the purest and the loftiest benevolence that ever dwelt in human form, I know of no intelligible sense in which the length of His love can be stretched to touch you. And if we content ourselves with that altogether inadequate and lame conception of Him and of His nature, of course there is no present bond between any man upon earth and Him, and it is absurd to talk about His present love as extending in any way to me. But we have to believe, rising to the full height of the Christian conception of the nature and person of Christ, that when He was here on earth the Divine that dwelt in Him so informed and inspired the human as that the love of His mans heart was able to grasp the whole, and to separate the individuals that should make up the race till the end of time; so as that you and I, looking back over all the centuries, and asking ourselves what is the length of the love of Christ, can say, It stretches over all the years, and it reached then as it reaches now to touch me, upon whom the ends of the earth have come. Its length is conterminous with the duration of humanity here or yonder. There is another measure of the length of the love of Christ. Master! How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven. So said the Christ, multiplying perfection into itself twice–two sevens and a ten–in order to express the idea of boundlessness. And the law that He laid down for His servant is the law that binds Himself. What is the length of the love of Christ? Here is one measure of it, howsoever long drawn out my sin may be, it stretches beyond this; and the while line of His love runs out into infinity, far beyond the point where the black line of my sin stops. Anything short of eternal patience would have been long ago exhausted by your sins and mine, and our brethrens. But the pitying Christ, the eternal Lover of all wandering souls, looks down from heaven upon every one of us; goes with us in all our wanderings, bears with us in all our sins, in all our transgressions still is gracious. The length of the love of Christ is the length of eternity, and out-measures all human sin.
III. Then again, what is the depth of that love? Depth and height, as I said at the beginning of these remarks, are but two ways of expressing the same dimension; the one we begin at the top and measure down, the other we begin at the bottom and measure up. The top is the Throne; and the downward measure, how is it to be stated? In what terms of distance are we to express it? How far is it from the Throne of the Universe to the manger at Bethlehem, and the Cross at Calvary, and the sepulchre in the garden? That is the depth of the love of Christ. Howsoever far may be the distance from that loftiness of co-equal Divinity in the bosom of the Father, and radiant with glory, to the lowliness of the form of a servant, and the sorrows, limitations, rejections, pains and final death–that is the measure of the depth of Christs love. As if some planet were to burst from its track and plunge downwards in amongst the mists and the narrowness of our earthly atmosphere, so we can estimate the depth of the love of Christ by saying He came from above, He tabernacled with us. A well known modern scientist has hazarded the speculation that the origin of life on this planet has been the falling upon it of the fragment of a meteor or an aerolite, from some other system, with a speck of organic life upon it, from which all has developed. Whatever may be the case in regard of the physical life, that is absolutely true in the case of spiritual life. It all comes because this heaven-descended Christ has come down the long staircase of Incarnation, and has brought with Him into the clouds and oppressions of our terrestrial atmosphere a germ of life which He has planted in the heart of the race, there to spread forever. That is the measure of the depth of the love of Christ. And there is another way to measure it. My sins are deep, my helpless miseries are deep, but they are shallow as compared with the love that goes down beneath all sin, that is deeper than all sorrow, that is deeper than all necessity, that shrinks from no degradation, that turns away from no squalor, that abhors no wickedness so as to avert its face from it. The purest passion of human benevolence cannot but sometimes be aware of disgust mingling with its pity and its efforts, but Christs love comes down, howsoever far in the abyss of degradation any human soul has descended, beneath it are the everlasting arms, and beneath it is Christs love. When a coal pit gets blocked up by some explosion no brave rescuing party will venture to descend into the lowest depths of the poisonous darkness until some ventilation has come there. But this loving Christ goes down, down, down into the thickest, most pestilential atmosphere, reeking with sin and corruption, and stretches out a rescuing hand to the most abject and undermost of all the victims. How deep is the love of Christ? The deep mines of sin and of alienation are all undermined and countermined by His love. Sin is an abyss, a mystery, how deep only they know who have fought against it; but–
O Love! thou bottomless abyss,
My sins are swallowed up in thee.
I will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. The depths of Christs love go down beneath all human necessity, sorrow, suffering, and sin.
IV. And, lastly, what is the height of the love of Christ? We found that the way to measure the depth was to begin at the Throne, and go down to the Cross, and to the foul abysses of evil. The way to measure the height is to begin at the Cross and the foul abysses of evil, and go up to the Throne. That is to say, the topmost thing in the universe, the shining apex and summit, glittering away up there in the radiant unsetting light, is the love of God in Jesus Christ. The other conceptions of that Divine nature spring high above us and tower beyond our thoughts, but the summit of them all, the very topmost as it is the very bottommost, outside of everything, and therefore high above everything, is the love of God which has been revealed to us all, and bought for us sinful men in the passion and manhood of our dear Christ. And that love which thus towers above us, and gleams the summit and the apex of the universe, like the shining cross on the top of same lofty cathedral spire, does not gleam there above us inaccessible, nor lie before us like some pathless precipice, up which nothing that has not wings can ever hope to rise, but the height of the love of Christ is an hospitable height, which can be scaled by us. Nay, rather, that heaven of love which is higher than our thoughts, bends down, as by a kind of optical delusion the physical heaven seems to do, towards each of us, only with this blessed difference, that in the natural world the place where heaven touches earth is always the furthest point of distance from us; and in the spiritual world, the place where heaven stoops to me is always right over my head, and the nearest possible point to me. He has come to lift us to Himself. And this is the height of His love, that it bears us up, if we will, up and up to sit upon that throne where He Himself is enthroned. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Heavenly geometry
This Divine mensuration is an art of the most desirable kind, as appears from its being the object of most earnest apostolic prayers.
I. Like a wise and enlightened teacher, Paul desires for the saints that they should receive that previous education which is necessary before they will be able to enter upon such a science as the measurement of Christs love. When lads go to school they are not at first put to study algebra, nor are they sent out to make a trigonometrical survey of a county. The schoolmaster knows that they must have a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic, or else to teach them algebra would be waste of time, and that they must have some acquaintance with common geometry, or it would be absurd to instruct them in surveying. He therefore begins with the elementary information, and when they have learned simpler matters they are ready for the more difficult studies. They climb the steps of the door of science, and then they are introduced to her temple. The Apostle Paul does not propose that the new convert should at once be able to measure the breadth and length and depth and height of the love of Christ; he knows that this is not within the range of his infant mind; for the newborn spirit has a time of growth to go through before it can enter into the deep things of God. If you will kindly refer to the text you will see what this previous education is which the apostle desired for the saints. It is very fully described in three parts.
1. He desired that their spiritual faculties might be strengthened, for he prays that they might be strengthened with might by the Spirit in the inner man. The schoolmaster knows that the boys mind must be strengthened, that his understanding must be exercised, his discernment must be developed, and his memory must be rendered capacious before he may enter upon superior studies; and the apostle knows that our spiritual faculties must undergo the same kind of development; that our faith, for instance, must be unwavering, that our love must become fervent, that our hope must be bright, that our joy must be increased, and then, but not till then, we shall be able to comprehend the length and breadth of love Divine. We are to be strengthened in the inner man by the Spirit of God; and who can strengthen as He strengthens?
2. He desired that the object of study may be evermore before them: that Christ may dwell, etc. A good tutor not only wishes his scholar may have a disciplined mind able to grapple with the subject, but he endeavours to keep the subject always before him; for in order to attain to any proficiency in a science the mind must be abstracted from all other thoughts, and continually exercised with the chosen theme. You will never find a man preeminent in astronomy unless astronomy has become the lord of mind, and holds a sway over his mind even in his dreams. The anatomist must be bound to nerves, and bones, and blood vessels, as the galley slave is bound to the oar, or he will never master his subject, The botanist must be enamoured of every flower, and wedded to every plant, or the fields will utterly bake him. Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom. Solomon knew what he wrote when he said, Separated himself, for without separation or abstraction there can be no progress. Now, the apostle desires that we who are believers, our faculties being strengthened, may have the person of Jesus constantly before us to inflame our love, and so increase our knowledge. See how near he would have Jesus to be! That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. You cannot get a subject closer to you than to have it on the inner side of the eyes; that is to say, in the heart itself. The astronomer cannot always see the stars because they are far away, and outside of him; but our star shines in the heaven of our hearts evermore. The botanist must find his flowers in their seasons, but our plant of renown blooms in our souls all the year round. We carry the instruments of our saintly art, and the object of our devout contemplation within ourselves. As a scholar carries in his pocket a small edition of his favourite classic, so do we carry Christ in our hearts; what if I say we bear about with us a heart edition of the Liber Crucis, the Book of the Cross. If we knew more fully by experience the meaning of Christ in you the hope of glory, our heaven-taught affections, which are the best part of our inner man, might be continually exercised upon the person, the work, and the love of our dear Redeemer.
3. The apostle prays further that they may have practical exercise in the art of holy love; that ye being rooted and grounded in love. Every experienced tutor knows that it is greatly helpful to the student to exercise him in his chosen pursuit upon some lower and inferior branch of it, so as to lead him gradually to the higher points of it. If, for instance, he means him to understand the surveying of estates, he bids him measure a field containing an acre or two. If he means him to map out a country, he sets him first to make a plan of a neighbouring field or a farm. The apostle acts upon the same method. That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend the breadth and length of the love of Christ. Having the love of Jesus in you, possessed with love to Christ, you will be practised in the exercise of love, and so will understand the love which filled the Saviour. You will learn to do business upon the greater waters of the Redeemers infinite love to His people, as you sail upon the stream of your love to Him. Two expressions are used:–rooted, like a living tree which lays hold upon the soil, twists itself round the rocks, and cannot be upturned–grounded, like a building which has been settled, as a whole, and will never show any cracks or flaws in the future through failures in the foundation. The apostle wishes us to be rooted and grounded in love, a vital union being established between our souls and Jesus, so that we love Him because He first loved us; and also a fiducial union, or a union of trust, by which we rest upon Jesus as the stones of a wall are settled upon the foundation.
II. We now come to consider more closely the science of heavenly mensuration itself. According to the text, we have a solid body to deal with, for we are to measure its breadth and length, and depth, and height. This cubical measurement–for it lieth foursquare, like the new Jerusalem–proves the reality of the body to be measured. Alas, to a great many religious people the love of Jesus is not a solid substantial thing at all–it is a beautiful fiction, a sentimental belief, a formal theory; but to Paul it was a real, substantial, measurable fact. No one knows the love of Christ at all if he does not know it to be real, and no one has felt it in his soul at all unless it becomes so real as to constrain him and move him into actual activity. The apostle desires that when the love of Christ becomes to us a solid reality we may have close communion with it. You may measure the breadth and length of a thing at a great distance, but you cannot very well measure its depth without drawing near to it. What a holy familiarity with Jesus do the words imply when we come to measurements of all kinds! What condescension is this which allows the sacred heart to be fathomed like a sea, and to be measured as a field! Shall the infinite thus bow itself to man? Shall man refuse to commune with such condescending love? Let me come to the very words of our text, and point out to you their order.
1. The first object of the Christians knowledge should be the breadth of the Saviours love. I know a certain school of Christians who have need to study this point, for they have a very narrow idea of the Lords loving kindness. They conceive of Divine love as a very narrow stream, they have never seen it to be a mighty, flowing, abounding, and rejoicing river, such as it really is. The love of Jesus Christ does not surround our favoured island alone, but, like the ocean, it washes every shore. The love of Jesus Christ has been extended to kings upon their thrones, but with equal and more frequent bounty to the slaves in their dungeons.
2. The next object of study is the length of Christs love. I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Coeval then with Deity itself is the love of Deity towards its chosen ones. God did love us in His Son long before the world began. If an angel were to start from today with the design of finding out when Gods love began he would doubtless fly on till he lingered at the Cross. Here, he would say, here is the fountain, here is the source of it all. But he would be reminded that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Then there was a love before the giving of His Son. He would fly onward till he paused at Isaiahs day and heard of Gods love in the prophecy that the Son of man should bear the iniquity of His people. He would say, Surely it begins here! But saints would remind him of yet older words of comfort, and he would fly on till he stopped outside of the garden of Eden and heard the Lord say, The Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpents head. Surely, saith he, it began here. But, divinely instructed, he would go back yet further, even to the eternal councils where first of all salvation was planned and contrived in the cabinets of wisdom before the world was. He would have to go back, back, back, till creation had vanished, till there remained not a shred of existence except the absolute self-existent Deity, and then in the Eternal Mind he would see thoughts of love toward a people to be formed for himself. This knowledge of the length of love does not always come to Christians early in their history. This love is not only without beginning, but it is without pause. There is never a moment when Jesus ceases to love His people. The love of Jesus knows nothing of suspended animation. There are some rivers in Australia which lose themselves, and for miles along their bed you find nothing but dry stones at certain seasons of the year. It is never so with the love of Christ: it is tong, and without a break from beginning to end; it is a chain without a single broken or feeble link.
3. The depth of the love of Jesus! Consider it as stooping to look upon such an insignificant creature as man! View the depth of that love in receiving such sinful creatures into His embrace! O sinner! you cannot have gone too deep for Christs love to reach you. O backslider! you cannot have sinned too foully for forgiveness.
4. Think next of the height of the Masters love. You see it is put last, as the highest point of learning, There are some who have advanced as far as to understand somewhat of the depths, who do not know the full dignity and glory of an heir of heaven, and have felt but little of the power of His ascension. Why, the love of Jesus, even in this present life, is a height unspeakable, for has it not lifted us up to become sons of God? Yet, brethren, the height of this love will be best seen in a future state. You shall be borne up to dwell with Christ in the clouds when the world is in a blaze, and when the judgment is passed you shall be carried by angels wings up to the seventh heaven where God dwelleth. Oh the breadth, the length, the depth, the height! To sum up what we have said in four words. For breadth the love of Jesus is immensity, for length it is eternity, for depth it is immeasurability, and for height it is infinity. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Measuring the immeasurable
I. The previous training required for this measurement.
1. He would have their spiritual faculties vigorous.
2. He would have the subject always before them.
3. He would have them exercised in the art of measurement.
(1) We must love Him ourselves, if we would measure Christs love.
(2) We must, by experience of His love, be confirmed in our own love to Him, or we cannot measure His love.
(3) We must also have a vital grip of Christ. We must be rooted as a tree, which takes many a hold upon the soil.
(4) We must settle down on His love as our foundation, on which we are grounded, as a building.
(5) We must also show fixedness, certainty, and perseverance in our character, belief, and aim; for thus only shall we learn.
II. The mensuration itself.
1. This implies a sense of the reality of the matter.
2. It includes a coming near to the object of our study.
3. It indicates an intimate study, and a careful survey.
4. It necessitates a view from all sides of the subject.
5. The order of the measurement is the usual order of our own growth in grace. Breadth and length before depth and height.
(1) The breadth. Immense.
(a) Comprehending all nations. Preach the gospel to every creature.
(b) Covering hosts of iniquities. All manner of sin.
(c) Compassing all needs, cares, etc.
(d) Conferring boundless boons for this life and worlds to come. It were well to sail across this river and survey its broad surface.
(2) The length. Eternal. We wonder that God should love us at all. Let us meditate upon–
(a) Eternal love in the fountain. Election and the covenant.
(b) Ceaseless love in the flow. Redemption, calling, perseverance.
(c) Endless love in endurance. Long suffering, forgiveness, faithfulness, patience, immutability.
(d) Boundless love, in length exceeding our length of sin, suffering, backsliding, age, or temptation.
(3) The depth. Incomprehensible.
(a) Stoop of Divine love, condescending to consider us, to commune with us, to receive us in love, to bear with our faults, and to take us up from our low estate.
(b) Stoop of love personified in Christ. He stoops, and becomes incarnate; endures our sorrows; bears our sins; and suffers our shame and death.
(c) Where is the measure for all this? Our weakness, meanness, sinfulness, despair, make one factor of the measurement. His glory, holiness, greatness, Deity, make up the other.
(4) The height. Infinite.
(a) As developed in present privilege, as one with Jesus.
(b) As to be revealed in future glory.
(c) As never to be fully comprehended throughout the ages.
III. The practical result of this mensuration. That ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Here are words full of mystery, worthy to be pondered.
1. Be filled. What great things man can hold!
2. Filled with God. What exaltation!
3. Filled with the fulness of God. What must this be?
4. Filled with all the fulness of God. What more can be imagined? (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The knowledge of our ignorance
The more we know the more are we conscious of our ignorance of that which is unknown, or, as Dr. Chalmers used to put it in his class–borrowing an illustration from his favourite mathematics–The wider the diameter of light, the greater is the circumference of darkness. The more a man knows, he comes at more points into contact with the unknown. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Among the heights of Divine love
As I was riding along in the South of France one day I saw a fine pair of birds overhead. The driver called out in the French tongue, Eagles. Yes, and there was a man below with a gun, wishful to get a nearer acquaintance with the eagles, but they did not come down to oblige him. He pointed his rifle at them, but his shots did not reach half way, for the royal birds kept above. The higher air is the fit dominion for eagles, up above the smoke and clouds. Keep there, eagles. Keep there! If men can get you within range they mean no good to you. Keep up, Christian. Keep up in the higher element, resting in Jesus Christ, and do not come down to find a perch for yourself among the trees of philosophy. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 18. May be able to comprehend with all saints] . These words are so exceedingly nervous and full of meaning, that it is almost impossible to translate them. The first word, , from , intensive, and , to be strong, signifies that they might be thoroughly able, by having been strengthened with might, by God’s power. The second word , from , intensive, and , to take, catch, or seize on, may be translated, that ye may fully catch, take in, and comprehend this wonderful mystery of God. The mind must be rendered apt, and the soul invigorated, to take in and comprehend these mysteries.
What is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height] Here the apostle still keeps up the metaphor, comparing the Church of God to a building; and as, in order to rear a proper building, formed on scientific principles, a ground plan and specification must be previously made, according to which the building is to be constructed, the apostle refers to this; for this must be thoroughly understood, without which the building could not be formed. They were to be builded up a heavenly house, a habitation of God through the Spirit; and this must have its latitude or breadth, its longitude or length, its altitude or height, and its profundity or depth.
It is supposed by some that the apostle is here alluding to the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus, which, as I have already had occasion to remark, was reputed one of the wonders of the world, being in length 425 feet, in breadth 220; it was supported by 127 pillars, each 60 feet high; was builded at the expense of all Asia; and was 220 years in being completed. I cannot, however, allow of this allusion while the apostle had a nobler model at hand, and one every way more worthy of being brought into the comparison. The temple at Jerusalem was that alone which he had in view; that alone could be fitly compared here; for that was built to be a habitation of God; that was his house, and that the place of his rest: so the Christian temple, and the believing heart, are to be the constant, the endless residence of God; and how august must that edifice be in which the eternal Trinity dwells!
But what can the apostle mean by the breadth, length, depth, and height, of the love of God? Imagination can scarcely frame any satisfactory answer to this question. It takes in the eternity of God. GOD is LOVE; and in that, an infinity of breadth, length, depth, and height, is included; or rather all breadth, length, depth, and height, are lost in this immensity. It comprehends all that is above, all that is below, all that is past, and all that is to come. In reference to human beings, the love of God, in its BREADTH, is a girdle that encompasses the globe; its LENGTH reaches from the eternal purpose of the mission of Christ, to the eternity of blessedness which is to be spent in his ineffable glories; its DEPTH reaches to the lowest fallen of the sons of Adam, and to the deepest depravity of the human heart; and its HEIGHT to the infinite dignities of the throne of Christ. He that overcometh will I give to sit dawn with me upon my throne, as I have overcome and sat down with the Father upon his throne. Thus we see that the Father, the Son, and all true believers in him, are to be seated on the same throne! This is the height of the love of God, and the height to which that love raises the souls that believe in Christ Jesus!
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
May be able to comprehend, more fully and perfectly to perceive and understand, with all saints, which are or have been, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, the immense vastness, dignity, and perfection; either:
1. Of redemption by Christ, extending both to Jew and Gentile, and so the mystery before mentioned. Or rather:
2. Of the love of Christ, as follows.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
18. May be ableeven stillfurther. Greek, “May be fully able.”
breadth . . . length . . .depth . . . heightnamely, the full dimensions of the spiritualtemple, answering to “the fulness of God” (Eph3:19), to which the Church, according to its capacity, ought tocorrespond (compare Eph 4:10;Eph 4:13) as to “the fulnessof Christ.” The “breadth” implies Christ’sworld-wide love, embracing all men: the “length,” its beingextended through all ages (Eph3:21); the “depth,” its profound wisdom which nocreature can fathom (Ro 11:33);the “height,” its being beyond the reach of any foe todeprive us of (Eph 4:8)[BENGEL]. I prefer tounderstand “the breadth,” &c., to refer to the wholeof the vast mystery of free salvation in Christ for all, Gentile andJew alike, of which Paul had been speaking (Eph3:3-9), and of which he now prays they may have a fullercomprehension. As subsidiary to this, and the most essential part ofit, he adds, “and to know the love of Christ” (Eph3:19). GROTIUSunderstands depth and height of God’s goodness raisingus from the lowest depression to the greatest height.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
May be able to comprehend with all saints,…. This is the end of their being rooted and grounded in love, that they, together with the rest of the saints interested in it, might have a larger and more comprehensive view of
what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; not of God himself, who is incomprehensible by finite minds, and is not to be found out to perfection; see Job 11:7 but either of the great mystery of salvation, particularly the mystery of the calling of the Gentiles mentioned in the beginning of the chapter; or of the spiritual building, the church, the dimensions of which are given,
Re 21:15 or rather of the love of God, which in its length reaches from one eternity to another; in its breadth to all the elect, in all ages, places, and nations; and in its depth to saints in the lowest state of life; and in its height to bring them to an exalted state in glory.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
That ye may be strong ( ). Sub-final clause again with and the first aorist active subjunctive of , a late and rare compound (from , ) to have full strength. Here only in N.T.
To apprehend (). Second aorist middle infinitive of , old and common verb, to lay hold of effectively (–), here with the mind, to grasp (Ac 25:25).
With all the saints ( ). No isolated privilege. Fellowship open to all. Paul gives a rectangular (four dimension) measure of love (breadth , length , height , depth , all common enough words).
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Rooted and grounded [ ] .
Compare Col 2:7, and see note. Grounded or founded, from qemelion foundation. The dwelling in ver. 17 would naturally suggest the foundation. Rooting and grounding are consequences of the strengthening of the Spirit and of Christ ‘s indwelling.
In love. Standing first in the sentence and emphatic, as the fundamental principle of christian life and knowledge.
May be able [] . Rev., may be strong. This compound verb occurs only here. The preposition ejx has the force of fully or eminently. Iscuv is strength embodied; inhering in organized power. Hence it is an advance on dunamei might in ver. 16 (see note). Paul prays that the inward might or virtue may issue in ability to grasp. Compare Luk 14:30; Luk 16:3; Act 27:16; Jas 5:16, and see notes. 169 Comprehend [] . To English readers this conveys the meaning understand. Rev., better, apprehend : grasp. See on Joh 1:5, and compare Phi 3:12, 13.
Breadth, etc. No special interpretations are to be given to these words. The general idea of vastness is expressed in these ordinary terms for dimension. Notice that the article is attached only to the first, breadth, all the rest being included under the one article; the intention being to exhibit the love of Christ in its entire dimension, and not to fix the mind on its constituent parts.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “May be able to comprehend with all saints” (hina eksischusete katalabesthai sun pasin tois hagiois) “in order that ye may be eminently able to understand in close association or colleague with all the saints,” referring to the “church-body saints,” Eph 1:18. To grasp the love of Christ in close affinity or colleague with all saints was Paul’s prayer for the church at Ephesus.
2) “What is the breadth” (tis to platos) “What is or exists as the breadth.” Four dimensions (all dimensions) of the love of Christ are embraced in Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians, the lost world, and the “church body,” an institution for which He died, Joh 3:16; Rom 10:11-13; Act 20:28; Eph 5:25.
3) “And length” (kai mekos) “And what is or exists as the length.” These four dimensions instead of having four separate meanings appear to be used as geometric terms to express the surpassing grandeur and magnitude of Christ’s love for the whole world, expressed in His life, His works, His death, His resurrection, His intercession, and His return.
4) “And depth” (kai bathos) “And what is or exists as the depth. To effect salvation, fulfill the divine program of Mosaic law -worship, remove the partition wall of worship between Jew and Gentile, reveal the hidden mystery of the purpose of God from eternity by establishing, purchasing, and empowering the church-body, Jesus came! What love!!!
5) “And height’ (kai hupsos) “And what is or exists as the height; And to behold, intercede for, that one body,” temple program of church worship, He ascended into heaven and commissioned and called Paul to be the apostle to the Gentiles to make known the hidden, afore curtained mystery of the love of God through Christ, that through the church should be manifest the manifold wisdom and love of God, Eph 3:9-10.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
18. May be able to comprehend. The second fruit is, that the Ephesians should perceive the greatness of Christ’s love to men. Such an apprehension or knowledge springs from faith. By desiring that they should comprehend it with all saints, he shows that it is the most excellent blessing which they can obtain in the present life; that it is the highest wisdom, to which all the children of God aspire. What follows is sufficiently clear in itself, but has hitherto been darkened by a variety of interpretations. Augustine is quite delighted with his own acuteness, which throws no light on the subject. Endeavouring to discover some kind of mysterious allusion to the figure of the cross, he makes the breadth to be love, — the height, hope, — the length, patience, and the depth, humility. This is very ingenious and entertaining: but what has it to do with Paul’s meaning? Not more, certainly, than the opinion of Ambrose, that the allusion is to the figure of a sphere. Laying aside the views of others, I shall state what will be universally acknowledged to be the simple and true meaning.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(18) May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height.It has been asked, Of what? Various answers have been given; but as St. Paul has obviously of set purpose omitted all definition, leaving the phrase incomplete in absolute generality, no answer can be perfectly satisfactory. The early fathers delighted to refer it to the cross, and to trace in the four dimensions of the cross a symbol of this four-fold extension of the love of God in Christ. The clause following, to know the love of Christ, though partly explanatory of this, hardly seems to be identical or co-extensive with it. The knowledge there described is a partperhaps the chief part, but not the wholeof the comprehension here prayed for. If anything is to be supplied, it should probably be of the mysteryi.e., of the whole mystery on which St. Paul had been dwelling, including the predestination, the redemption, the call and union of Jews and Gentiles. The prayer is that we may know it every way, in every direction in which the soul can go forth towards God.
It may be noted that comprehension is placed after love, just as in Php. 1:9, I pray that your love may abound (that is, overflow) in knowledge and in all judgment. The spiritual order of revelation differs from that of the wisdom of the world. It has first faith, next love, and finally knowledge, because its object is a person, not an abstract principle. That knowledge must, even here, grow from more to more; but St. Pauls prayer can never be perfectly realised till we know even as we are known.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
18. With all saints Inasmuch as you Gentile Ephesians are built with all other saints into the structure of a glorious Church.
Breadth, length, depth, height These are the four geometrical dimensions of a building, or other solid or spacial object. But of what object is it that Paul is praying that his Ephesians may comprehend these dimensions? The old Greek commentators, as well as Erasmus and Grotius, refer it to our redemption identical with the mystery of Eph 3:9. For although the word mystery is far back in the discourse, yet the thought, redemption, runs through its whole current. And to this redemptive mystery these geometrical distinctions have been attributed with a truth and beauty not deserving the repulse they receive from Meyer and others. The length of this redemption extends from the eternity of God’s foresight to the reconciliation of Eph 1:10. Its breadth is in design as broad as humanity; its depth as profound as the perdition from which it rescues us; and its height as sublime as the heaven to which it raises us. Still it must be inquired whether there be any object more supposably present at the moment to St. Paul’s mind in naming these dimensions than this redemptive mystery? Meyer, with decisive confidence, identifies the love of Christ in next verse as the object. If so, then Paul prays that they may comprehend the dimensions of, and know, by real experience, the love of Christ. But, as Eadie justly objects, the Greek conjunction used by St. Paul does not thus unite two clauses co-ordinately. Besides, the break between Eph 3:18-19 is too decided.
Our division of paragraphs clearly shows, we think, to what object these dimensions belong. At Eph 3:14, as we have noted, the for this cause being identical with the for this cause of Eph 3:1, and the entire of Eph 3:1-13 being parenthetical, Paul’s mind reverts back to Eph 2:20-22, where the glorious churchly temple stands out in full view. Into this temple the intervening paragraph describes the inbuilding of his Ephesians; and the present passage prays that they may fully comprehend the blessings and glories of its structure. That the apostle has this architectural image still in view is clear from the fact that grounded that is, based, or founded has the same Greek word as foundation in Eph 3:20.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Eph 3:18. The breadth, and length, and depth, and height; It has often been observed, that this text is extremely emphatical. Bodies are well known to have only three dimensions, length and breadth, and thickness; but the Apostle divides this last into its depth downwards, and its height upwards, measuring from the middle point; and so makes use of it to express the depth of misery, from which the love of God delivers us; as well as the height of glory, to which it exalts the faithful.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Eph 3:18 . . . .] is not to be separated by interpunction from the following , because it belongs to . . . (comp. Lachmann): in order that, rooted and grounded in love, ye may be able, etc . Thus the aim of the two preceding parallel infinitive clauses is expressed, and the emphatically prefixed . . . . is quite in keeping with the Pauline doctrine of the , Gal 5:6 ; 1Co 13 . Through the strengthening of their inner man by means of the Spirit, through the of Christ in their hearts, the readers are to become established in love, and, having been established in love, are able to comprehend the greatness of the love of Christ. How often and other conjunctions follow a part of the sentence which is with special emphasis prefixed, no matter whether that part of the sentence be subject or object (Rom 11:31 ; 2Co 2:4 ; 2Th 2:7 ; Act 19:4 ; Gal 2:10 , al. ), may be seen in Fritzsche, ad Rom. II. p. 541; Buttmann, neut. Gr. p. 333 [E. T. 389]. Comp. on Gal 2:10 . This construction is here followed by Beza, Cajetanus, Camerarius, Heinsius, Grotius, Calixtus, Semler, Storr, Rosenmller, Flatt, Meier, Schenkel, and others, including Winer, Exo 6 [E. T. 715], and Buttmann [E. T. 299]. Comp. already Photius in Oecumenius. . . . . is, on the other hand, connected with what precedes by Chrysostom, Erasmus, Castalio, Luther, Estius, Er. Schmid, Michaelis, Morus, Koppe, and others, including Rckert, Matthies, Harless, Olshausen, Baumgarten-Crusius, de Wette, Bleek, holding that it attaches itself, with abnormal employment of case, predicatively to . . [187] To the abnormal nominative of the construction continued in participles there would be in itself nothing to object (see already Photius in Oecumenius, ad loc. ; Winer, p. 505 [E. T. 715]; Buttmann, p. 256 [E. T. 299]); but here the perfect participles are opposed to this, since they in fact would express not the state into which the readers are to come (“ita ut in amore sitis stabiles,” Morus), but the state in which they already are (so also Rckert), the state which is presupposed as predicate of the readers (so Harless and Olshausen). But to the desire that the readers might be strengthened, and that Christ might make His dwelling in their hearts, the presupposition that they were already would stand in quite illogical relation. Present participles would be logically necessary: “inasmuch as ye are being confirmed in love,” namely, by the fact that Christ takes up His dwelling in you. De Wette, on the other hand, is wrong in appealing to Col 2:7 , where, indeed, in the case of the having received Christ appears as having already preceded.
] is, in accordance with the following figures, the soil in which the readers were rooted and grounded, namely, in love , the effect of faith, Christian brotherly love ; hence there is no reason in the relation of faith to love [188] for supplying after . . ., with Holzhausen and Harless, , which is not even required by the anarthrous ; for without an article ( in amando ) it has “ vim quasi verbi ,” Khner, ad Xen. Mem. i. 1. 9. Such a supplement is, however, the more arbitrary, inasmuch as there is already a definition by ; consequently the reader could not light upon the idea of supplying such in thought. . . . . is prefixed with emphasis, because only the loving soul is in a position to recognise the love of Christ (comp. 1Jn 4:7 ff.). Erroneously Beza says: “charitatem intellige, qua diligimur a Deo ” (so also Calovius, Wolf, and others), and Bengel holds that the love of Christ , Eph 3:19 , is meant; against which in the very mention of love along with faith (Eph 1:15 ; 1Co 13 .) the absence of a genitival definition is decisive.
. .] a twofold figurative indication of the sense: stedfast and enduring . Paul, in the vivacity of his imagination, conceives to himself the congregation of his readers as a plant (comp. Mat 13:3 ff.), perhaps a tree (Mat 7:17 ), and at the same time as a building . Comp. Col 2:7 ; 1Co 3:9 . Passages from profane literature for the tropical usage of both words may be seen in Raphel, Herod . p. 534; Bos, Exerc. p.183; Wetstein, p. 248. Comp. the Fathers in Suicer’s Thes . II. p. 905.
] ye may be fully able ( Sir 7:6 ; Plut. Mor . p. 801 E; Strabo, xvii. p. 788).
] to apprehend , . Comp. Act 4:13 ; Act 10:34 ; Act 25:25 ; Josephus, Antt. viii. 6. 5, with classical writers in the active. Comp. on Joh 1:5 . Strangely at variance with the context (because the object is not suited thereto), Holzhausen takes it to mean to lay hold of, as a prize in the games (1Co 9:24 ; Phi 3:12 ).
] The highest and most precious knowledge (Phi 3:8 ) Paul can desire only as a common possession of all Christians; individuals, for whom he wishes it, are to have it in communion with all ; as the knowledge of (the ground of salvation , so the attaining of the salvation itself (Act 20:32 ).
. . .] Sensuous illustration (arbitrarily declared by de Wette to be “hardly” in keeping with the Pauline style) of the idea: how great in every relation . The deeply affected mind with its poeticoimaginative intuition looks upon the metaphysical magnitude as a physical, mathematical one, (Chrysostom) extending on every side. Comp. Job 11:7-9 . The many modes of interpreting the several dimensions in the older expositors may be seen in Cornelius a Lapide and Calovius. Every special attempt at interpretation is unpsychological, and only gives scope to that caprice which profanes by dissecting the outpouring of enthusiasm. [189] Of what, however, are these dimensions predicated? Not of the Christian church , as the spiritual temple of God , Rev 21:16 (Heinsius, Homberg, Wolf, Michaelis, Cramer, Koppe, and others; comp. Bengel), which is at variance with the context; inasmuch as a temple is not spoken of either before or after ( !). Not of the work of redemption (Chrysostom: , Theophylact, Oecumenius, Theodoret, Beza, Piscator, Zanchius, Calovius, and others, including Rckert, Meier, Harless, Olshausen, Baumgarten-Crusius, Bleek), because, after a new portion of the discourse is commenced with Eph 3:14 , the is not again mentioned; hence also not of the mystery of the cross , in connection with which marvellous allegories are drawn by Augustine and Estius from the figure of the cross. [190] Not of the love of God to us (Chrysostom: , Theodore of Mopsuestia, Erasmus, Vatablus, Grotius, Baumgarten, Flatt); because previously does not apply to this love. Not of the “ divine gracious nature ” (Matthies), which would only be correct if the predicates were exclusive attributes of the divine nature, so that, as a matter of course, the latter would suggest itself as the subject. Not of the wisdom of God , which de Wette quite irrelevantly introduces from Col 2:3 ; Job 11:8 . The love of Christ to men, Eph 3:19 , is the subject (Castalio, Calvin, Calixtus, Zachariae, Morus, Storr, Rosenmller, Holzhausen), the boundless greatness of which is depicted. [191] Instead, namely, of the apostle adding immediately after and thus bringing to a close the majestic flow of his discourse, now, when he has written as far as , there first presents itself to his lively conception the as regards sense, climactically parallel to the just expressed oxymoron ; he appends this, and can now no longer express the love of Christ in the genitive, so that remains without a genitive, but lays claim to its genitival definition as self-evident from the immediately following.
[187] Harless holds that the changing of the construction is here, as Col 2:2 , the more natural, inasmuch as the predicate is equally applicable to and , and as an essential element must stand forth independently.
[188] Calvin already aptly remarks: “neque enim disputat P., ubi salus nostra fundata sit sed quam firma et tenax debeat in nobis esse caritas” (rather: “quam firmi et tenaces debeamus esse in caritate”).
[189] By way of example, we subjoin some of these modes of explanation, e.g. Oecumenius; it is indicated that redemption and the knowledge of Christ were foreordained from eternity ( ), extend to all ( ), reach even to hell in their efficacy ( ), and that Christ has ascended above the heavens ( ). Erasmus, Paraphr.: “ altitudine ad angelos usque se proferens, profunditate ad inferos usque penetrans, longitudine ac latitudine ad omnes hujus mundi plagas sese dilatans.” Grotius, “ latissime se effundit in omnes homines, et in longum , i.e. in omnia saecula se extendit, et ex infima depressione hominem liberat, et in loca suprema evehit.” For other instances, see Calovius.
[190] According to Estius, the length applies to the upright beam of the cross as far as the cross-beam; the breadth , to the cross-beam; the height , to the portion projecting above the cross-beam; the depth , to the portion fixed in the ground. He comprehends the length of the cross, who perceives that from the beginning to the end of time no one is justified save by the cross; the breadth , who reflects that the church in all the earth has come forth from the side of Christ! the height , who ponders the sublimity of the glory in heaven obtained through Christ; the depth , who contemplates the mystery of the divine election of grace, and is thereby led to the utterance, Rom 11:32 ! This as a warning instance how even the better exegetes, when they give the reins to subjectivity, may lose themselves in the most absurd attempts at interpretation.
[191] Comp. Luther: “that nothing is so broad, long, deep, high, as to be beyond the power and help of Christ.”
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
Ver. 18. The breadth and length, &c. ] God’s mercy hath all the dimensions. “Thy mercy, O God, reacheth to the heavens,” Psa 36:5 . There is the height of it. “Great is thy mercy toward me, and thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell,” Psa 86:13 . There is the depth of his mercy. “The earth is full of thy goodness.” There is the breadth of it. “All the ends of the earth have seen thy salvation.” There is the length of it. The apostle sets out Christ’s love with the four dimensions of the cross; to put us in mind (say the ancient writers) that upon the extent of the tree was the most exact love with all the dimensions in this kind represented, that ever was.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Eph 3:18 . : that ye may be fully able to comprehend with all the saints . The “may be strong” of the RV is a less happy rendering than usual, as it obscures the fact that the verb is different from that expressing the strengthened in Eph 3:16 . The strong compound , = to be eminently able , to have full capacity , occurs only this once in the NT and is rare in ordinary Greek. , = “take hold of” (1Co 9:24 ; Phi 3:12 , etc.) or in the sense of mental grasp (Plato, Phaedr. , 250 D), in its various NT occurrences in the Middle Voice (Act 4:13 ; Act 10:34 ; Act 25:25 ) has only the latter meaning. Here, therefore, it is = understand , not = occupare, take possession of (Goth., Kypke). The RV substitutes the more neutral apprehend a word capable of either sense for the “comprehend” of the AV. This gift of spiritual comprehension is contemplated further as to be possessed and exercised , not as a matter of private experience, the peculiar faculty of some, or an exceptional bestowment like the rare privilege of visions, but as a gift proper to the whole community of believers and one in which these Ephesians might share together with all God’s people; for the phrase cf. Eph 1:15 , Eph 6:18 ; Col 1:4 ; 1Th 3:13 ; Phm 1:5 ; Rev 8:3 ; and for the sense of see under Eph 1:1 above. : what is the breadth and length and depth and height . So the AV. But height and depth , according to the RV. The order of the TR, , is that of [344] [345] [346] , Syr., etc.; is that of [347] [348] [349] [350] , 17, Vulg., Boh., etc. The latter is preferred by LTrWH, the former getting a place in the margin with Tr and WH. What is the object in view in the mention of these dimensions? It is left unnamed. Hence the many conjectures on the subject; e.g. , that it is the Christian Church (Mich., Koppe, etc.), or Temple (Bengel), the work of redemption , or the mystery previously noticed (Theophy., Harl., Olsh., Bleek, etc.), the mystery of the Cross (Est.), the love of God (Chrys., Erasm., Grot., etc.), the wisdom of God (De Wette), love (Moule), all that God has revealed or done in us and for us (Alf.). But the context naturally suggests the love of Christ (Calv., Mey., Ell.), that being the supreme theme and the one which is immediately set before us in express terms. The imagination of the Fathers, Augustine, Gregory Nyss., Jerome and others, ran riot in the endeavour to find some distinctive, spiritual meaning in each of the four things here named, the shape of the Cross, e.g. , being supposed to be signified (Estius), the Divinity of Christ being found in the figure of the height , His human nature in the depth , the extent of the Apostolic Commission in the length and breadth , etc. Nor are the feats of interpretation less forced or fanciful which have been performed by some more modern exegetes. But the terms length, breadth, depth, height are introduced with no other purpose than the simple and consistent one of setting forth the surpassing magnitude of Christ’s love for us. The power to comprehend that love in its utmost conceivable grandeur and its furthest-reaching relations is what Paul prays God to grant his Ephesians.
[344] Codex Sinaiticus (sc. iv.), now at St. Petersburg, published in facsimile type by its discoverer, Tischendorf, in 1862.
[345] Codex Mosquensis (sc. ix.), edited by Matthi in 1782.
[346] Codex Angelicus (sc. ix.), at Rome, collated by Tischendorf and others.
[347] Codex Vaticanus (sc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.
[348] Codex Ephraemi (sc. v.), the Paris palimpsest, edited by Tischendorf in 1843.
[349] Codex Claromontanus (sc. vi.), a Grco-Latin MS. at Paris, edited by Tischendorf in 1852.
[350] Codex Boernerianus (sc. ix.), a Grco-Latin MS., at Dresden, edited by Matthi in 1791. Written by an Irish scribe, it once formed part of the same volume as Codex Sangallensis ( ) of the Gospels. The Latin text, g, is based on the O.L. translation.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
EPHESIANS
LOVE UNKNOWABLE AND KNOWN
Eph 3:18
This constitutes the third of the petitions in this great prayer of Paul’s, each of which, as we have had occasion to see in former sermons, rises above, and is a consequence of the preceding, and leads on to, and is a cause or occasion of the subsequent one.
The two former petitions have been for inward strength communicated by a Divine Spirit, in order that Christ may dwell in our hearts, and so we may be rooted and grounded in love. The result of these desires being realised in our hearts is here set forth in two clauses which are substantially equivalent in meaning. ‘To comprehend’ may be taken as meaning nearly the same as ‘to know,’ only that perhaps the former expresses an act more purely intellectual. And, as we shall see in our next sermon, ‘the breadth and length and depth and height’ are the unmeasurable dimensions of the love which in the second clause is described as ‘passing knowledge.’ I purpose to deal with these measures in a separate discourse, and, therefore, omit them from consideration now.
We have, then, mainly two thoughts here, the one, that only the loving heart in which Christ dwells can know the love of Christ; and the other that even that heart can not know the love of Christ. The paradox is intentional, but it is intelligible. Let me deal then, as well as I can, with these two great thoughts.
I. First, we have this thought that only the loving heart can know Christ’s love.
Now the Bible uses that word know to express two different things; one which we call mere intellectual perception; or to put it into plainer words, mere head knowledge such as a man may have about any subject of study, and the other a deep and living experience which is possession before it is knowledge, and knowledge because it is possession.
Now the former of these two, the knowledge which is merely the work of the understanding, is, of course, independent of love. A man may know all about Christ and His love without one spark of love in his heart. And there are thousands of people who, as far as the mere intellectual understanding is concerned, know as much about Jesus Christ and His love as the saint who is closest to the Throne, and yet have not one trace of love to Christ in them. That is the kind of people that a widely diffused Christianity and a habit of hearing sermons produce. There are plenty of them, and some of us among them, who, as far as their heads are concerned, know quite as much of Jesus Christ and His love as any of us do, and could talk about it and argue about it, and draw inferences from it, and have the whole system of evangelical Christianity at their fingers’ ends. Ay! It is at their fingers’ ends, it never gets any nearer them than that.
There is a knowledge with which love has nothing to do, and it is a knowledge that for many people is quite sufficient. ‘Knowledge puffeth up,’ says the Apostle; into an unwholesome bubble of self-complacency that will one day be pricked and disappear, but ‘love buildeth up’-a steadfast, slowly-rising, solid fabric. There be two kinds of knowledge: the mere rattle of notions in a man’s brain, like the seeds of a withered poppy-head; very many, very dry, very hard; that will make a noise when you shake them. And there is another kind of knowledge which goes deep down into the heart, and is the only knowledge worth calling by the name; and that knowledge is the child, as my text has it, of love.
Now let us think about that for a moment. Love, says Paul, is the parent of all knowledge. Well, now, can we find any illustrations from similar facts in other regions? Yes! I think so. How do we know, really know, any emotions of any sort whatever? Only by experience. You may talk for ever about feelings, and you teach nothing about them to those who have not experienced them. The poets of the world have been singing about love ever since the world began. But no heart has learned what love is from even the sweetest and deepest songs. Who that is not a father can be taught paternal love by words, or can come to a perception of it by an effort of mind? And so with all other emotions. Only the lips that have drunk the cup of sweetness or of bitterness can tell how sweet or how bitter it is, and even when they, made wise by experience, speak out their deepest hearts, the listeners are but little the wiser, unless they too have been scholars in the same school. Experience is our only teacher in matters of feeling and emotion, as in the lower regions of taste and appetite. A man must be hungry to know what hunger is; he must taste honey or wormwood in order to know the taste of honey or wormwood, and in like manner he cannot know sorrow but by feeling its ache, and must love if he would know love. Experience is our only teacher, and her school-fees are heavy.
Just as a blind man can never be made to understand the glories of sunrise, or the light upon the far-off mountains; just as a deaf man may read books about acoustics, but they will not give him a notion of what it is to hear Beethoven, so we must have love to Christ before we know what love to Christ is, and we must consciously experience the love of Christ ere we know what the love of Christ is. We must have love to Christ in order to have a deep and living possession of love of Christ, though reciprocally it is also true that we must have the love of Christ known and felt by our answering hearts, if we are ever to love Him back again.
So in all the play and counterplay of love between Christ and us, and in all the reaction of knowledge and love this remains true, that we must be rooted and grounded in love ere we can know love, and must have Christ dwelling in our hearts, in order to that deep and living possession which, when it is conscious of itself, is knowledge, and is for ever alien to the loveless heart.
‘He must be loved, ere that to you He will seem worthy of your love.’
If you want to know the blessedness of the love of Christ, love Him, and open your hearts for the entrance of His love to you. Love is the parent of deep, true knowledge.
Of course, before we can love an unseen person and believe in his love, we must know about him by the ordinary means by which we learn about all persons outside the circle of our sight. So before the love which is thus the parent of deep, true knowledge, there must be the knowledge by study and credence of the record concerning Christ, which supplies the facts on which alone love can be nourished. The understanding has its part to play in leading the heart to love, and then the heart becomes the true teacher. He that loveth, knoweth God, for God is love. He that is rooted and grounded in love because Christ dwells in his heart, will be strengthened to know the love in which he is rooted. The Christ within us will know the love of Christ. We must first ‘taste,’ and then we shall ‘see’ that the Lord is good, as the Psalmist puts it with deep truth. First, the appropriation and feeding upon God, then the clear perception by the mind of the sweetness in the taste. First the enjoyment; then the reflection on the enjoyment. First the love; and then the consciousness of the love of Christ possessed and the love to Christ experienced. The heart must be grounded in love that the man may know the love which passeth knowledge.
Then notice that there is also here another condition for this deep and blessed knowledge laid down in these words, ‘That ye may be able to comprehend with all saints.’ That is to say, our knowledge of the love of Jesus Christ depends largely on our sanctity. If we are pure we shall know. If we were wholly devoted to Him we should wholly know His love to us, and in the measure in which we are pure and holy we shall know it. This heart of ours is like a reflecting telescope, the least breath upon the mirror of which will cause all the starry sublimities that it should shadow forth to fade and become dim. The slightest moisture in the atmosphere, though it be quite imperceptible where we stand, will be dense enough to shut out the fair, shining, snowy summits that girdle the horizon and to leave nothing visible but the lowliness and commonplaceness of the prosaic plain.
If you want to know the love of Christ, first of all, that love must purify your souls. But then you must keep your souls pure, assured of this, that only the single eye is full of light, and that they who are not ‘saints’ grope in the dark even at midday, and whilst drenched by the sunshine of His love, are unconscious of it altogether. And so we get that miserable and mysterious tragedy of men and women walking through life, as many of you are doing, in the very blaze and focus of Christ’s love, and never beholding it nor knowing anything about it.
Observe again the beginning of this path of knowledge, which we have thus traced. There must be, says my text, an indwelling Christ, and so an experience, deep and stable, of His love, and then we shall know the love which we thus experience. But how comes that indwelling? That is the question for us. The knowledge of His love is blessedness, is peace, is love, is everything; as we shall see in considering the last stage of this prayer. That knowledge arises from our fellowship with and our possession of the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ. How does that fellowship with, and possession of the love of God in Jesus Christ, come? That is the all-important question. What is the beginning of everything? ‘That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.’ There is the gate through which you and I may come, and by which we must come if we are to come at all into the possession and perception of Christ’s great love. Here is the path of knowledge. First of all, there must be the simple historical knowledge of the facts of Christ’s life and death for us, with the Scripture teaching of their meaning and power. And then we must turn these truths from mere notions into life. It is not enough to know the love that God has to us, in that lower sense of the word ‘knowledge.’ Many of you know that, who never got any blessing out of it all your days, and never will, unless you change. Besides the ‘knowing’ there must be the ‘believing’ of the love. You must translate the notion into a living fact in your experience. You must pass from the simple work of understanding the Gospel to the higher act of faith. You must not be contented with knowing, you must trust. And if you have done that all the rest will follow, and the little, narrow, low doorway of humble self-distrusting faith, through which a man creeps on his knees, leaving outside all his sin and his burden, opens out into the temple palace-the large place in which Christ’s love is imparted to the soul.
Brethren, this doctrine of my text ought to be for every one of us a joy and a gospel. There is no royal road into the sweetness and the depth of Christ’s love, for the wise or the prudent. The understanding is no more the organ for apprehending the love of Christ than the ear is the organ for perceiving light, or the heart the organ for learning mathematics. Blessed be God! the highest gifts are not bestowed upon the clever people, on the men of genius and the gifted ones, the cultivated and the refined, but they are open for all men; and when we say that love is the parent of knowledge, and that the condition of knowing the depths of Christ’s heart is simple love which is the child of faith, we are only saying in other words what the Master embodied in His thanksgiving prayer, ‘I thank Thee, Father! Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.’
And that is so, not because Christianity, being a foolish system, can only address itself to fools; not because Christianity, contradicting wisdom, cannot expect to be received by the wise and the cultured, but because a man’s brains have as little to do with his trustful acceptance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a man’s eyes have to do with his capacity of hearing a voice. Therefore, seeing that the wise and prudent, and the cultured, and the clever, and the men of genius are always the minority of the race, let us vulgar folk that are neither wise, nor clever, nor cultured, nor geniuses, be thankful that all that has nothing to do with our power of knowing and possessing the best wisdom and the highest treasures, but that upon this path the wayfaring man though a fool shall not err, and all narrow foreheads and limited understandings, and poor, simple uneducated people as well as philosophers and geniuses have to learn love by their hearts and not by their heads, and by a sense of need and a humble trust and a daily experience have to appropriate and suck out the blessing that lies in the love of Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name! The end of all aristocracies of culture and superciliousness of intellect lies in that great truth that we possess the deepest knowledge and highest wisdom when we love and by our love.
II. Now a word in the next place as to the other thought here, that not even the loving heart can know the love of Christ.
‘It passeth knowledge,’ says my text. Now I do not suppose that the paradox here of knowing the love of Christ which ‘passeth knowledge’ is to be explained by taking ‘know’ and ‘knowledge’ in the two different senses which I have already referred to, so as that we may experience, and know by conscious experience, that love which the mere understanding is incapable of grasping. That of course is an explanation which might be defended, but I take it that it is much truer to the Apostle’s meaning to suppose that he uses the words ‘know’ and ‘knowledge’ both times in the same sense. And so we get familiar thoughts which I touch upon very briefly.
Our knowledge of Christ’s love, though real, is incomplete, and must always be so. You and I believe, I hope, that Christ’s love is not a man’s love, or at least that it is more than a man’s love. We believe that it is the flowing out to us of the love of God, that all the fulness of the divine heart pours itself through that narrow channel of the human nature of our Lord, and therefore that the flow is endless and the Fountain infinite.
I suppose I do not need to show you that it is possible for people to have, and that in fact we do possess a real, a valid, a reliable knowledge of that which is infinite; although we possess, as a matter of course, no adequate and complete knowledge of it. But I only remind you that we have before us in Christ’s love something which, though the understanding is not by itself able to grasp it, yet the understanding led by the heart can lay hold of, and can find in it infinite treasures. We can lay our poor hands on His love as a child might lay its tiny palm upon the base of some great cliff, and hold that love in a real grasp of a real knowledge and certitude, but we cannot put our hands round it and feel that we comprehend as well as apprehend. Let us be thankful that we cannot.
His love can only become to us a subject of knowledge as it reveals itself in its manifestations. Yet after even these manifestations it remains unuttered and unutterable even by the Cross and grave, even by the glory and the throne. ‘It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.’
We have no measure by which we can translate into the terms of our experience, and so bring within the grasp of our minds, what was the depth of the step, which Christ took at the impulse of His love, from the Throne to the Cross. We know not what He forewent; we know not, nor ever shall know, what depths of darkness and soul-agony He passed through at the bidding of His all-enduring love to us. Nor do we know the consequences of that great work of emptying Himself of His glory. We have no means by which we can estimate the darkness and the depth of the misery from which we have been delivered, nor the height and the radiance of the glory to which we are to be lifted. And until we can tell and measure by our compasses both of these two extremes of possible human fate, till we have gone down into the deepest abyss of a bottomless pit of growing alienation and misery, and up above the highest reach of all unending progress into light and glory and God-likeness, we have not stretched our compasses wide enough to touch the two poles of this great sphere, the infinite love of Jesus Christ. So we bow before it, we know that we possess it with a knowledge more sure and certain, more deep and valid, than our knowledge of ought but ourselves; but yet it is beyond our grasp, and towers above us inaccessible in the altitude of its glory, and stretches deep beneath us in the profundity of its condescension.
And, in like manner, we may say that this known love passes knowledge, inasmuch as our experience of it can never exhaust it. We are like the settlers on some great island continent-as, for instance, on the Australian continent for many years after its first discovery-a thin fringe of population round the seaboard here and there, and all the bosom of the land untraversed and unknown. So after all experiences of and all blessed participation in the love of Jesus Christ which come to each of us by our faith, we have but skimmed the surface, but touched the edges, but received a drop of what, if it should come upon us in fulness of flood like a Niagara of love, would overwhelm our spirits.
So we have within our reach not only the treasure of creatural affections which bring gladness into life when they come, and darkness over it when they depart; we have not only human love which, if I may so say, is always lifting its finger to its lips in the act of bidding us adieu; but we may possess a love which will abide with us for ever. Men die, Christ lives. We can exhaust men, we cannot exhaust Christ. We can follow other objects of pursuit, all of which have limitation to their power of satisfying and pall upon the jaded sense sooner or later, or sooner or later are wrenched away from the aching heart. But here is a love into which we can penetrate very deep and fear no exhaustion; a sea into which we can cast ourselves, nor dread that like some rash diver flinging himself into shallow water where he thought there was depth, we may be bruised and wounded. We may find in Christ the endless love that an immortal heart requires. Enter by the low door of faith, and your finite heart will have the joy of an infinite love for its possession, and your mortal life will rise transfigured into an immortal and growing participation in the immortal Love of the indwelling and inexhaustible Christ.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
EPHESIANS
THE PARADOX OF LOVE’S MEASURE
Eph 3:18
Of what? There can, I think, be no doubt as to the answer. The next clause is evidently the continuation of the idea begun in that of our text, and it runs: ‘And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.’ It is the immeasurable measure, then; the boundless bounds and dimensions of the love of Christ which fire the Apostle’s thoughts here. Of course, he had no separate idea in his mind attaching to each of these measures of magnitude, but he gathered them together simply to express the one thought of the greatness of Christ’s love. Depth and height are the same dimension measured from opposite ends. The one begins at the top and goes down, the other begins at the bottom and goes up, but the distance is the same in either case. So we have the three dimensions of a solid here-breadth, length, and depth.
I suppose that I may venture to use these expressions with a somewhat different purpose from that for which the Apostle employs them; and to see in each of them a separate and blessed aspect of the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.
I. What, then, is the breadth of that love?
It is as broad as humanity. As all the stars lie in the firmament, so all creatures rest in the heaven of His love. Mankind has many common characteristics. We all suffer, we all sin, we all hunger, we all aspire, hope, and die; and, blessed be God! we all occupy precisely the same relation to the divine love which lies in Jesus Christ. There are no step-children in God’s great family, and none of them receives a more grudging or a less ample share of His love and goodness than every other. Far-stretching as the race, and curtaining it over as some great tent may enclose on a festal day a whole tribe, the breadth of Christ’s love is the breadth of humanity.
And it is universal because it is divine. No human mind can be stretched so as to comprehend the whole of the members of mankind, and no human heart can be so emptied of self as to be capable of this absolute universality and impartiality of affection. But the intellectual difficulties which stand in the way of the width of our affections, and the moral difficulties which stand still more frowningly and forbiddingly in the way, have no power over that love of Christ’s which is close and tender, and clinging with all the tenderness and closeness and clingingness of a human affection and lofty and universal and passionless and perpetual, with all the height and breadth and calmness and eternity of a divine heart.
And this broad love, broad as humanity, is not shallow because it is broad. Our love is too often like the estuary of some great stream which runs deep and mighty as long as it is held within narrow banks, but as soon as it widens becomes slow and powerless and shallow. The intensity of human affection varies inversely as its extension. A universal philanthropy is a passionless sentiment. But Christ’s love is deep though it is wide, and suffers no diminution because it is shared amongst a multitude. It is like the great feast that He Himself spread for five thousand men, women, and children, all seated on the grass, ‘and they did all eat and were filled.’
The whole love is the property of each recipient of it. He does not love as we do, who give a part of our heart to this one and a part to that one, and share the treasure of our affections amongst a multitude. All this gift belongs to every one, just as all the sunshine comes to every eye, and as every beholder sees the moon’s path across the dark waters, stretching from the place where He stands to the centre of light.
This broad love, universal as humanity, and deep as it is broad, is universal because it is individual. You and I have to generalise, as we say, when we try to extend our affections beyond the limits of household and family and personal friends, and the generalising is a sign of weakness and limitation. Nobody can love an abstraction, but God’s love and Christ’s love do not proceed in that fashion. He individualises, loving each and therefore loving all. It is because every man has a space in His heart singly and separately and conspicuously, that all men have a place there. So our task is to individualise this broad, universal love, and to say, in the simplicity of a glad faith, ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me.’ The breadth is world-wide, and the whole breadth is condensed into, if I may so say, a shaft of light which may find its way through the narrowest chink of a single soul. There are two ways of arguing about the love of Christ, both of them valid, and both of them needing to be employed by us. We have a right to say, ‘He loves all, therefore He loves me.’ And we have a right to say, ‘He loves me, therefore He loves all.’ For surely the love that has stooped to me can never pass by any human soul.
What is the breadth of the love of Christ? It is broad as mankind, it is narrow as myself.
II. Then, in the next place, what is the length of the love of Christ?
If we are to think of Him only as a man, however exalted and however perfect, you and I have nothing in the world to do with His love. When He was here on earth it may have been sent down through the ages in some vague way, as the shadowy ghost of love may rise in the heart of a great statesman or philanthropist for generations yet unborn, which He dimly sees will be affected by His sacrifice and service. But we do not call that love. Such a poor, pale, shadowy thing has no right to the warm throbbing name; has no right to demand from us any answering thrill of affection. Unless you think of Jesus Christ as something more and other than the purest and the loftiest benevolence that ever dwelt in human form, I know of no intelligible sense in which the length of His love can be stretched to touch you.
If we content ourselves with that altogether inadequate and lame conception of Him and of His nature, of course there is no present bond between any man upon earth and Him, and it is absurd to talk about His present love as extending in any way to me. But we have to believe, rising to the full height of the Christian conception of the nature and person of Christ, that when He was here on earth the divine that dwelt in Him so informed and inspired the human as that the love of His man’s heart was able to grasp the whole, and to separate the individuals who should make up the race till the end of time; so as that you and I, looking back over all the centuries, and asking ourselves what is the length of the love of Christ, can say, ‘It stretches over all the years, and it reached then, as it reaches now, to touch me, upon whom the ends of the earth have come.’ Its length is conterminous with the duration of humanity here or yonder.
That thought of eternal being, when we refer it to God, towers above us and repels us; and when we turn it to ourselves and think of our own life as unending, there come a strangeness and an awe that is almost shrinking, over the thoughtful spirit. But when we transmute it into the thought of a love whose length is unending, then over all the shoreless, misty, melancholy sea of eternity, there gleams a light, and every wavelet flashes up into glory. It is a dreadful thing to think, ‘For ever, Thou art God.’ It is a solemn thing to think, ‘For ever I am to be’; but it is life to say: ‘O Christ! Thy love endureth from everlasting to everlasting; and because it lives, I shall live also’-’Oh! give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endureth for ever.’
There is another measure of the length of the love of Christ. ‘Master! How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?-I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven.’ So said the Christ, multiplying perfection into itself twice-two sevens and a ten-in order to express the idea of boundlessness. And the law that He laid down for His servant is the law that binds Himself. What is the length of the love of Christ? Here is one measure of it-howsoever long drawn out my sin may be, this is longer; and the white line of His love runs out into infinity, far beyond the point where the black line of my sin stops. Anything short of eternal patience would have been long ago exhausted by your sins and mine, and our brethren’s. But the pitying Christ, the eternal Lover of all wandering souls, looks down from heaven upon every one of us; goes with us in all our wanderings, bears with us in all our sins, in all our transgressions still is gracious. His pleadings sound on, like some stop in an organ continuously persistent through all the other notes. And round His throne are written the divine words which have been spoken about our human love modelled after His: ‘Charity suffereth long and is kind; is not easily provoked, is not soon angry, beareth all things.’ The length of the love of Christ is the length of eternity, and outmeasures all human sin.
III. Then again, what is the depth of that love?
Depth and height, as I said at the beginning of these remarks, are but two ways of expressing the same dimension. For the one we begin at the top and measure down, for the other we begin at the bottom and measure up. The top is the Throne; and the downward measure, how is it to be stated? In what terms of distance are we to express it? How far is it from the Throne of the Universe to the manger of Bethlehem, and the Cross of Calvary, and the sepulchre in the garden? That is the depth of the love of Christ. Howsoever far may be the distance from that loftiness of co-equal divinity in the bosom of the Father, and radiant with glory, to the lowliness of the form of a servant, and the sorrows, limitations, rejections, pains and death-that is the measure of the depth of Christ’s love. We can estimate the depth of the love of Christ by saying, ‘He came from above, He tabernacled with us,’ as if some planet were to burst from its track and plunge downwards in amongst the mist and the narrowness of our earthly atmosphere.
A well-known modern scientist has hazarded the speculation that the origin of life on this planet has been the falling upon it of the fragments of a meteor, or an aerolite from some other system, with a speck of organic life upon it, from which all has developed. Whatever may be the case in regard to physical life, that is absolutely true in the case of spiritual life. It all originates because this heaven-descended Christ has come down the long staircase of Incarnation, and has brought with Him into the clouds and oppressions of our terrestrial atmosphere a germ of life which He has planted in the heart of the race, there to spread for ever. That is the measure of the depth of the love of Christ.
And there is another way to measure it. My sins are deep, my helpless miseries are deep, but they are shallow as compared with the love that goes down beneath all sin, that is deeper than all sorrow, that is deeper than all necessity, that shrinks from no degradation, that turns away from no squalor, that abhors no wickedness so as to avert its face from it. The purest passion of human benevolence cannot but sometimes be aware of disgust mingling with its pity and its efforts, but Christ’s love comes down to the most sunken. However far in the abyss of degradation any human soul has descended, beneath it are the everlasting arms, and beneath it is Christ’s love. When a coalpit gets blocked up by some explosion, no brave rescuing party will venture to descend into the lowest depths of the poisonous darkness until some ventilation has been restored. But this loving Christ goes down, down, down into the thickest, most pestilential atmosphere, reeking with sin and corruption, and stretches out a rescuing hand to the most abject and undermost of all the victims. How deep is the love of Christ! The deep mines of sin and of alienation are all undermined and countermined by His love. Sin is an abyss, a mystery, how deep only they know who have fought against it; but
‘O love! thou bottomless abyss, My sins are swallowed up in thee.’
‘I will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.’ The depths of Christ’s love go down beneath all human necessity, sorrow, suffering, and sin.
IV. And lastly, what is the height of the love of Christ?
We found that the way to measure the depth was to begin at the Throne, and go down to the Cross, and to the foul abysses of evil. The way to measure the height is to begin at the Cross and the foul abysses of evil, and to go up to the Throne. That is to say, the topmost thing in the Universe, the shining apex and pinnacle, glittering away up there in the radiant unsetting light, is the love of God in Jesus Christ. Other conceptions of that divine nature spring high above us and tower beyond our thoughts, but the summit of them all, the very topmost as it is the very bottommost, outside of everything, and therefore high above everything, is the love of God which has been revealed to us all, and brought close to us sinful men in the manhood and passion of our dear Christ.
And that love which thus towers above us, and gleams like the shining cross on the top of some lofty cathedral spire, does not flash up there inaccessible, nor lie before us like some pathless precipice, up which nothing that has not wings can ever hope to rise, but the height of the love of Christ is an hospitable height, which can be scaled by us. Nay, rather, that heaven of love which is ‘higher than our thoughts,’ bends down, as by a kind of optical delusion the physical heaven seems to do towards each of us, only with this blessed difference, that in the natural world the place where heaven touches earth is always the furthest point of distance from us: and in the spiritual world the place where heaven stoops to me is always right over my head, and the nearest possible point to me. He has come to lift us to Himself, and this is the height of His love, that it bears us, if we will, up and up to sit upon that throne where He Himself is enthroned.
So, brethren, Christ’s love is round about us all, as some sunny tropical sea may embosom in its violet waves a multitude of luxuriant and happy islets. So all of us, islanded on our little individual lives, lie in that great ocean of love, all the dimensions of which are immeasurable, and which stretches above, beneath, around, shoreless, tideless, bottomless, endless.
But, remember, this ocean of love you can shut out of your lives. It is possible to plunge a jar into mid-Atlantic, further than soundings have ever descended, and to bring it up on deck as dry inside as if it had been lying on an oven. It is possible for men and women-and I have them listening to me at this moment-to live and move and have their being in that sea of love, and never to have let one drop of its richest gifts into their hearts or their lives. Open your hearts for Him to come in, by humble faith in His great sacrifice for you. For if Christ dwell in your heart by faith, then and only then will experience be your guide; and you will be able to comprehend the boundless greatness, the endless duration, and absolute perfection, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
able = fully able. Greek. exischuo. Only here. Compare App-172.
saints = the saints. See Eph 3:8.
what . . . height. Omit “is”. After “height” read “of love is”, i.e. God’s love in Christ. In breadth, boundless : in length, endless: in depth, fathomless, exhaustless: in height, measureless.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Eph 3:18. , in love) of Christ: Eph 3:19, note.- , rooted and founded [grounded]) The root is, of a tree-the foundation, of a house. A Syllepsis[49] precedes, which must thus be explained: that you may have Christ dwelling in you, being rooted, comp. Col 2:2, note; unless the Nominative rather agrees with you may be able,[50] as the ardour of Paul was eagerly intent on what follows. So, in the middle of the sentence, if and how are placed, 1Co 11:14-15; 1Co 14:7; 1Co 14:16; and itself, that, 1Co 14:12;[51] 2Co 2:4; but the words which precede these particles render the earnest striving [of his prayers] very emphatic.-) you may be able: even still further.-) to attain, to comprehend.- , what is the breadth and length and depth and height) These dimensions of the spiritual temple refer to the fulness of God, Eph 3:19, to which the Church according to its capacity ought to correspond; comp. ch. Eph 4:10; Eph 4:13, concerning Christ. For the breadth of the fulness and of the love of Christ is signified, and that too in respect of all men and all peoples; and its length, extending through all ages, Eph 3:21 : as also its depth, which no creature can fathom; and its height, Eph 4:8, such as no enemy can reach. Comp. Psalms 117. In regard to this breadth, length, depth, height, all which are one magnitude, there is nothing broad, long, deep, high in any creature. By Chiasmus the order of the ideas is, love [Eph 3:17], breadth [length, depth, height, Eph 3:18]: [then in Eph 3:19] love, fulness; of these four, the third corresponds to the first, therefore the second to the fourth. In Eph 3:19 the love is at length expressly mentioned; but in Eph 3:18 the fulness of God in itself; but this very fulness is also tinctured with love.
[49] A syllepsis is when the regular syntax of the parts of the sentence is set aside, so that more regard in the construction is paid to the sense, in the mind of the writer, than to the words and their connection. As here the nom. is put as if the sentence were, that you may have Christ dwelling in your heart, etc., you being rooted, etc. As the sentence stands, syntax would require to agree with . I think there is attraction exercised by the , as if , were agreeing with its subject.-ED.
[50] The margin of both Ed. favours this connection of the words, and the Germ. Vers. agrees with it.-E. B.
[51] , for , , . So here , for .-ED.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Eph 3:18
Eph 3:18
may be strong to apprehend-He prays that they might apprehend that which is beyond the apprehension of men, and to know that which is past knowledge, that the love of Christ has shown to the world to lift up and redeem man. [It takes strong faith to apprehend the love of God. The spiritual realities are things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man. (1Co 2:9). The exercise of faith is for him of similar quality to the vigorous use of the mind, when he is striving with all his force to master some difficult problem that confronts him. He recognizes that the love of God is hidden and elusive, that it can be laid hold of only by strenuous effort. The condition of the vigorous exercise of faith is for him to remember that the Lord said it is the pure in heart who see (Mat 5:8); the eye that is single is full of light (Mat 6:22); and that it is the doing the will of God that yields knowledge of the teaching (Joh 7:17). If we are to know the love that is above us, it will be through the experience of love within us.]
with all the saints-[A saint, as here used, is one whose mental conception, whose capacity for thought, has become so quickened and enlarged as to enable him to realize that holiness is necessary to link him to all saints. The knowledge of the love of Jesus Christ depends on our purity of thought and life. God does not allow us to be satisfied with anything less than perfect holiness, so we continue our efforts in spite of failure. The word of God is severe in its demands; but though it is a sharp sword, that cuts down and lays bare the deepest motives hidden in the heart, it is with the deepest motive of love.]
what is the breadth-[The love of Christ is as broad as the necessities of the world and as the expanse of the nations of earth. It embraces all men-both Jews and Gentiles-and of all ages of the world. Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he should taste of death for every man. (Heb 2:9). The great salvation is as free as the air and the sunlight. Jesus unfolded the breadth and comprehensiveness of his love when he told the people of (Nazareth that he had been sent to preach the good tidings to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, and proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luk 4:18).]
and length-[To what length will the love of Christ go? Jesus knowing that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own that were in the world, he loved them unto the end. (Joh 13:1). Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do the things which I command you. (Joh 15:13-14). Paul, in giving encouragement to the brethren, said: Being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ. (Php 1:6). Whenever the love of the Lord Jesus Christ begins a work he never lays it down till he can say, It is finished.]
and height-[Loves aim always determines its height. The height of the Lords love was: Father, I desire that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me. (Joh 17:24). It is the supreme desire of his love that his disciples should share his glory, and sit with him in heavenly places, and partake with him in all the fullness of grace.]
and depth,-[The love of Christ is as profound as the uttermost of human sin and wretchedness. It is vast and measureless, it has gone down far deeper than the lowest depths of human sin. The vilest wretch who crawls the earth today, if in faith and repentance he turns away from his sin and wickedness, may have the everlasting arms beneath him.]
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
able: Eph 3:19, Eph 1:18-23, Job 11:7-9, Psa 103:11, Psa 103:12, Psa 103:17, Psa 139:6, Isa 55:9, Joh 15:13, Gal 2:20, Gal 3:13, Phi 2:5-8, Phi 3:8-10, 1Ti 1:14-16, 1Ti 3:16, Tit 2:13, Tit 2:14, Rev 3:21
with: Eph 1:10, Eph 1:15, Deu 33:2, Deu 33:3, 2Ch 6:41, Psa 116:15, Psa 132:9, Psa 145:10, Zec 14:5, 2Co 13:13, Col 1:4
what: Rom 10:3, Rom 10:11, Rom 10:12
Reciprocal: Exo 36:29 – coupled 1Ki 6:31 – doors Job 11:8 – deeper Psa 106:2 – utter Psa 107:43 – they shall understand Pro 30:3 – nor Son 3:10 – the midst Son 7:4 – thine eyes Zec 9:17 – how great is his goodness Mat 16:17 – but Luk 10:37 – He that Joh 1:14 – full Joh 15:9 – the Father Rom 8:39 – Nor Rom 11:33 – the depth 1Co 13:9 – General 2Co 5:14 – the love Eph 1:17 – in the knowledge Eph 6:18 – supplication 1Jo 3:1 – what 1Jo 5:20 – and hath
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
(Eph 3:18.) -Ye having been rooted and grounded in love, in order that. Some solve the difficulty felt about the connection of this clause by proposing to transfer to its commencement. This metathesis was suggested by Photius, and has been followed by Beza, Heinsius, Grotius, Crocius, and the Authorized Version. There is no necessity for such a change, even though the clause be joined, as by Knapp and Lachmann, to that which begins with ; and the passages usually adduced to justify such an alteration are not precisely parallel, as is acutely shown by Piscator. John 13:39; Act 19:4; Gal 2:10. The clause is, however, connected by some with the preceding one. Theophylact makes it the condition of Christ’s dwelling in their hearts. The exegesis of Chrysostom is similar-He dwelleth only in hearts rooted in His love- , . This connection is also advocated by many, including Erasmus, Luther, Harless, Olshausen, and de Wette. But the change of construction is not so easily accounted for, if this view of the connection be adopted. Harless says, indeed, that as the predicate applies both to and to , it could not with propriety be joined exclusively to any of them. Such a view of grammatical propriety was, however, based on a foregone conclusion, for either the genitive or dative could have been used with equal correctness. On the other hand, the change of syntax indicates a change of connection, and the use of the irregular nominative makes the transition easy to the form adopted with . Krger, 56, 9, 4; Winer, 63, 2. Harless adopts the view of Chrysostom and Theophylact, and regards the clause as a condition-Christ dwells in their heart, since they had been rooted in love. But the clause, so changed, becomes a species of independent proposition, giving a marked prominence to the sense, and connected at once with the preceding context as its result, and with the following context as its starting idea-the perfect being used with propriety, and not the present. Christ dwelling in their hearts-they are supposed, as the effect of this inhabitation, to have been now rooted and grounded in love; and as the design of this confirmation in love-they are then and thus qualified to comprehend with all saints, etc. Having thus become rooted and grounded in love, in order that ye may be able to comprehend.
The two participles and , are usually said to express the same idea by different figures-the one borrowed from botany and the other from architecture. But it is more natural to refer both words to the same general symbol, and indeed, the former term is applied to a building. Thus, Herodot. 1.64- ; Plutarch, De Fortun. Rom.- ; Sophocles, OEdip. Col. 1591, ; also Plutarch, De Lib. Educ. 9, etc. The verb is thus used in a general sense, and coupled with may have no specific reference to plantation. The allusion is again to the solid basement of the spiritual temple described in chap. ii.
But to what do the words describing the foundation refer? Some understand the love of Christ or God to us. Such is the view of Chrysostom and Theophylact, of Beza, Calovius, Aretius, Wolf, Bengel, Storr, Koppe, and Flatt. We cannot lay any stress on the dictum of Harless, that the omission of the article before the substantive proves it to be used in a subjective sense, and to signify our love to Christ. Winer, 19, 1. Nor can we say, with Meyer, that the substantive standing without the article has almost the force of a participle-in amando. But the entire context proves that the love referred to is the grace of love. One would have expected a genitive of possession, if were not predicated of the persons themselves-if it were not a feeling in their hearts. It is a clumsy and equivocal exegesis to comprise under the term both Christ’s love to us and our love to Him, as is done by Bucer, Anselm, Zanchius, Crocius, Matthies, and Stier. Nor can we accede to Meyer, who seems to restrict it to brother-love; for if it be the grace of love which is here specified, then it is love to Christ, and to every creature that bears His image. Col 3:14; 1 Corinthians 13. Now, as the apostle intimates, this love is the root and foundation of Christian character, as all advancement is connected with its existence and exercise. He prayeth well who loveth well. Love is the fundamental grace. As love keeps its object enshrined in the imagination, and allows it never to be absent from the thoughts; so love to Jesus gives Him such a cheerful and continued presence in the mind, that as it gazes ever upon the image, it is changed into its likeness, for it strives to realize the life of Christ. It deepens also that consecration to the Lord which is essential to spiritual progress, for it sways all the motives, and moves and guides the inner man by it s hallowed and powerful instincts. And it gives life and symmetry to all the other graces, for confidence and hope in a being to whom you are indifferent, cannot have such vigour and permanence as they have in one to whom the spirit is intelligently and engrossingly attached. When the lawgiver is loved, his statutes are obeyed with promptitude and uniformity. Thus resemblance to Jesus, devotion to Him, and growth in grace, as the elements and means of spiritual advancement, are intimately connected with love as their living basis. The entire structure of the holy fane is fitly framed and firmly held together, for it is rooted and grounded in love.
(Eph 3:18.) -That ye may be able to comprehend with all the saints. The conjunction expresses the design which these previous petitions had in view. Their being strengthened, their being inhabited by Christ, and their having been rooted and grounded in love, not only prepared them for this special study, but had made it their grand object. By a prior invigoration they were disciplined to it, and braced up for it-that ye may be fully able-fully matched to the enterprise.
On , see Eph 1:2. The verb , used in the middle voice, has in the New Testament the meaning of to comprehend, or to make a mental seizure. Such a middle voice-according to Krger, 52, 8, 4-differs from the active only in so far as it exhibits the idea-des geschftlichen oder geistigen Kraftaufwandes-of earnest or spiritual energy. The aorist expresses the rapid passing of the act. Winer, 44, 7, b. In the only other passages where it occurs, as in Act 4:13; Act 10:34; Act 25:25, the verb signifies to come to a decided conclusion from facts vividly presented to the attention. And they were to engage in this study along with the universal church of Christ-not angels, or glorified spirits, or office-bearers in the church exclusively, as some have maintained. The design is to comprehend-
-what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height. This order of the last two nouns is supported by A, K, L, or J, and the Received Text reversing it is apparently a correction intended to give the more natural order, and has in its favour B, C, D, E, F, G, with the Vulgate, Gothic, and Coptic. But to what do these terms of measurement apply? Many endeavours have been made to supplement the clause with a genitive, and it is certain that many wits run riot in their geometrical and moral discourse upon these dimensions. Assembly’s Annotations, in loc.
1. We may allude in passing to the supposition of Kypke, that the verb may signify to occupy or fill, and that may be used with change of accent in an indefinite sense-that ye may be able in the company of all saints to occupy the breadth, whatever it is, etc. This exegesis is both violent and unnatural, puts an unusual sense upon , and treats as if it were .
2. Nor need we be detained by the opinion of Schrader, who regards the words , etc., as only the paraphrastic complement of the verb , and as indicating the depth and thoroughness of the comprehension.
3. Nor can we suppose, with Beza and Grotius, that there is any allusion in these terms to the quarters of the heavens pointed to in the priestly gestures that gave name to the heave-offering and wave-offering. Exo 29:27.
4. Some of the Fathers referred these four words to the mystery of the cross- , as Severianus calls it. This view was held by Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome, and Augustine, and has been adopted by Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Estius. This quadriform mystery-sacramentum crucis-was explained by Augustine as signifying love in its breadth, hope in its height, patience in its length, and humility in its depth. Ep. cxii.; De Videndo Deo, cap. 14; Ep. cxx. cap. 26. Well does Calvin add-haec subtilitate sua placent, sed quid ad Pauli mentem? Estius is more full and precise. He explains how the terms can be applied to the shape and beams of a cross, and adds-longitudo, temporum est, latitudo locorum, altitudo gloriae, profunditas discretionis, etc.-the reference being to the signum T in frontibus inscriptum. So remote from the train of thought is this recondite mysticism, that it needs and merits no formal refutation.
5. Some refer the nouns-sacra illa Pauli mathematica, as Glassius calls them-to the Divine plan of redemption-the mystery of grace. Such is the view of Chrysostom, who calls it- , and Theodoret, who describes it as- . It is also the view of Theophylact and OEcumenius, followed by Beza, Bullinger, Piscator, Zanchius, Crocius, Crellius, Calovius, Rckert, Meier, Harless, Baumgarten-Crusius, and Olshausen. The supplement in this case appears to be far-fetched, and there is no allusion in the context to any such theme; the mystery referred to in Eph 3:4-10 being the admission of the Gentiles into the church, and not the scheme of grace in its wide and glorious aspects. As little ground is there to go back to Eph 3:8, to the unsearchable riches of Christ, and refer such terms to them. Whatever the allusion is, it must be something immediately present to his own mind, and something that he supposed very present to the mind of his readers, the dimensions of which are thus characterized.
6. We might almost pass over the fancy of those who suppose the apostle to take a survey of the Divine nature. Such is the opinion of Ambrosiaster, who believes the apostle to describe a sphere or cube equal in length, breadth, and thickness, and imagines that such a figure represents the perfection and all including infinity of God. Matthies holds the same allusion, but refers it to the moral perfections of God. What has led to this view seems to be the similarity of this verse to a passage in Job 11:8, in which the unfathomable mystery of the Divine nature is described-It is high as heaven, etc. But there is nothing to warrant such an allusion here, or even to give it a mere probability.
7. That the terms indicate the measurement of God’s love to men, is the view advocated partly by Chrysostom, and by Erasmus, Bodius, Vatablus, Grotius, Rollock, Dickson, Baumgarten, Flatt, and von Gerlach. God’s love, as is noted in the paraphrase of Erasmus, reaches in its height to the angels, and in its depth into hell, and stretches in its length and breadth to all the climates of the world. Or, as Grotius explains it-The Divine goodness in its breadth affects all men, and in its length endures through all ages; in its depth it reaches to man’s lowest depression, and in its height it carries him to highest glory. But this explanation, too, the context abjures, unless such were the sense of the previous , which, however, means love possessed by us.
8. With greater plausibility, Christ’s love to us is supposed to be the theme of allusion, by Calvin, Calixtus, Zanchius Aretius, Semler, Zachariae, Storr, Bisping, Meyer, Holzhausen, Hodge, Peile, and Ellicott. Neither, however, can this opinion be sustained. The previous could not suggest the thought, for there it is subjective. We apprehend that this exegesis has been borrowed from the following clause-and to know the love of Christ, which Ellicott says is practically the genitive. But that clause is not epexegetical of the preceding, as is manifest in the use of instead of , for this particle does not conjoin dependent sentences-it only adjoins collateral or independent propositions. Besides, the phrases length and breadth are unusual measurements of love.
9. De Wette, looking to Colossians 2 and comparing this phraseology with the second and third verses of that chapter, imagines the apostle to refer to the Divine wisdom. There may be in Job 11:8 a reference to the Divine wisdom, but the language specially affirms the mystery of the Divine nature. Schlichting also refers to Col 2:2 -to the mystery of God the Father and of Christ, as if that were the allusion here. Such a view is quite as capricious as any of the preceding, for the wisdom of God is not a prominent topic either in this prayer or in the preceding context, where it is only once, though vividly, introduced. Alford somewhat similarly supposes that the genitive is left indefinite-every dimension of all that God has revealed or done in or for us. This is certainly better than any of the previous explanations.
10. Heinsius, Homberg, Wolf, Michaelis, Cramer, Rell, Bengel, Koppe, Stier, Burton, Trollope, and Dr. Featley in the Assembly’s Annotations, suppose the allusion to be to the Christian temple; not to the fane of the Ephesian Artemis, as is maintained by Chandler and Macknight. This appears to us to be the most probable exegesis, the genitive being still before the apostle’s mind from the end of the previous chapter. We have seen how the previous language of the prayer is moulded by such an allusion; that the invigoration of the inner man, the indwelling of Christ, and the substructure in love, have all distinct reference to the glorious spiritual edifice. This idea was present, and so present to the apostle’s imagination, that he feels no need to make formal mention of it. Besides, these architectural terms lead us to the same conclusion, as they are so applicable to a building. The magnificent fabric is described in the end of chap. ii., and the intervening verses which precede the prayer are, as already stated, a parenthesis. That figure of a temple still loomed before the writer’s fancy, and naturally supplied the distinctive imagery of the prayer. For this reason, too, he does not insert a genitive, as the substantive is so remote, nor did he reckon it necessary to repeat the noun itself. Yet, to sustain the point and emphasis, he repeats the article before each of the substantives. In explaining these terms of mensuration we would not say with an old commentator quoted by Wolf-The church has length, that is, it stretches from east to west; and it has breadth, that is, it reaches from the equator to the poles. In its depth it descends to Christ, its cornerstone and basis, and in its height it is exalted to heaven. There is a measurement of area-breadth and length, and a measurement of altitude-height and depth. May not the former refer to its size and growing vastness, embracing, as it will do, so many myria ds of so many nations, and spanning the globe? And may not the latter depict its glory? for the plan, structure, and materials alike illustrate the fame and character of its Divine Builder and Occupant, while its lofty turrets are bathed and hidden from view in the radiant splendour of heaven. And with what reed shall we measure this stately building? How shall we grasp its breadth, compute its length, explore its depth, and scan its height? Only by the discipline described in the previous context-by being strengthened by the Spirit, by having Christ within us, and by being thus rooted and grounded in love. This ability to measure the church needs the assistance of the Divine Spirit-of Him who forms this habitation of God-so that we may understand its nature, feel its self-expansion, and believe the glorious things spoken of it. It requires also the indwelling of Jesus-of Him in whom the whole building groweth unto a holy temple, in order to appreciate its connection with Him as its chief corner-stone, the source of its stability and symmetry. And they who feel themselves rooted and grounded in love need no incitement to this survey and measurement, for He whom they love is its foundation, while His Father dwells in it, and His Spirit builds it up with generation after generation of believers. None have either the disposition or the skill to comprehend the vastness and glory of the spiritual temple, save they who are in it themselves, and who, being individual and separate shrines, can reason from their own enjoyment to the dignity and splendour of the universal edifice. And not only so, but the apostle also prayed for ability-
Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians
Eph 3:18. Comprehend is from a word that has different shades of meaning. In the present instance the first two definitions of Thayer are the most appropriate. “1. to lay hold of so as to make one’s own, to obtain, attain to. 2. to seize upon, take possession of.” Our word, therefore, does not mean that the human mind may fully know all about the greatness o$ God’s loving system, but that it can take full possession of it under the terms that are offered by the Lord. The reader should see the comments on the word “un-searchable” in verse 8. With all saints (or Christians) means that no parti ality is shown by Christ for any portion of His followers, but each has the same privileges to enjoy the great love exhibited in the Gospel. All solids have only three dimensions literally, so that depth and height would be the same. However, in the illustration Paul is thinking of a building which is the divine structure. Its length and breadth are important because it takes in the entire territory of human existence, both Jews and Gentiles. And its height signifies that it towers above all other institutions in dignity and efficiency. Also its depth means that its foundation is laid deep, even down to the rock of truth.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Eph 3:18. May be fully able, or, may be strong enough, suggesting difficulty, and the need of exertion.
To comprehend. Php 3:12-13 : apprehend, a rendering which is perhaps too weak, since, both here and there, more is meant than an intellectual apprehension, namely, a spiritual perception and inward experience.
With all saints, the whole body of believers is meant, and it is implied, not only that all saints have this common study, but also that they pursue it in common. Evidently Pauls petition is applicable to all who believe in Christ
What is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height. Many authorities read: height and depth; but the early scribes might readily have substituted this reading for the less usual one. The discovery of the Sinaitic manuscript leaves the weight of evidence in favor of the received order. The Apostle here sets forth the greatness (chap. Eph 1:19) of the object he has in mind, borrowing the terms of mathematical magnitude (sacra illa Pauli mathematica). It is not necessary therefore to find a specific reference in each of the terms, still less to accept any one of the many mystical explanations. Whenever any of these are used, the details must be proven from other passages, the choice being largely a matter of individual fancy. The important question is: To what object does the Apostle refer? The simplest answer is: to Chriss love (Eph 3:19), and the connection found in that verse sustains this view. Other explanations: Gods love, the fulness of God, the Church of Christ, the work of redemption, the mystery, the temple of God, God Himself; all of which are less natural than the view given above. Some have even found here an allusion to the temple of Diana.
The Apostle breaks off, without adding at once the object, to give in what follows a parallel thought which shows what object he has in mind. One specimen of detailed interpretation will suffice. Breadth refers to the nations lying beside each other on the earth, over all of whom the love of Christ will extend itself; length, to the successive ages during which it will reach; depth, to the misery and corruption of sin, into which it will descend; height, to the glory at Gods throne and near His heart, to which it could elevate all (Braune).
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
The Desired Results
Further, Paul wanted them to completely understand, in all its measures, something, or some things. It may be the love spoken of in the previous verse, or the mystery spoken of earlier, or the church he is showing to be supreme in this letter. Perhaps it is all we have cited plus the many other things making up the complete revelation of God’s great will. However, since love is the focus of the verse preceding and the verse following this one, this writer thinks it is love Paul wanted the Ephesians to fully know (3:18).
He really wanted his readers to come into an intimate, or personal, relationship in the arms of Christ’s love. Christ’s love goes beyond man’s understanding because it was extended at Calvary to rebels against his Father’s throne. It involved the sacrifice of the Lord’s life. Paul prayed for them to also be full of the love of the Father. A Christian grows up in love, which is the one identifying characteristic Christ gave for his disciples (3:19; Joh 13:34-35 ).
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
May be able to comprehend with all saints what [is] the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
“May be able” is not just able, but fully able or imminently able to comprehend. The easy ability to comprehend. It might relate to the weight lifter coming along in the grocery store and his ability to pick up a ten-pound bag of sugar for an old lady that is struggling with it.
Paul wants them to easily comprehend this information, not to have to struggle with it, not to have to work at it and not to have to figure things out. They are to easily understand the love of Christ, indeed hasn’t Paul set forth the ground work for their easily understanding it in the previous passages?
What is the “breadth, and length, and depth, and height;” rather well covers the “entirety” of the subject. Paul desires they easily understand the hugeness, the entirety, and the completeness of the subject. He doesn’t want them to struggle to understand any portion, not even a small portion of the subject. The term breadth has with it the suggestion of great breadth.
Now, anyone that knows me knows that I am a consummate organizer. You probably also know I love to reorganize our home for the maximum use and convenience. If you were to ever get in on the beginning of one of these sessions you would probably see me sitting and looking at the furniture in a room and thinking. You might see me get up and measure an empty spot. You might see me get up and measure a piece of furniture or maybe even measure every piece in the room. You would see me sit down again and maybe even take a nap.
The point being, I want to comprehend the entire situation before I begin my planning. I want to know where I am headed before I begin. You would also know because of the smallness and the fullness of our house that within all this planning there is a planning of how to shuffle the furniture and in what order so as to move each piece a minimum amount of times and distance.
The point, I struggle at length to come to a decision and to a plan of action. Paul doesn’t want them to have to go through this entire struggle, he wants them to EASILY comprehend the entireness of the subject.
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I read this passage I notice, due to my organizational skills, that there is an added dimension that is not needed in moving furniture. You need to know the height, depth and width of a subject but what does the breadth have to do with anything? Is it the overall enormity of the subject?
Webster suggests that it is the width of a subject, or how wide a table is from side to side while one is looking at it. “breadth, and length, and depth, and height;” In this context the breadth cannot be the width if the other three terms are to be used. Length would be the longest measure, depth would be the narrower measure and the height would be the top to bottom measure. The depth and height must be two different things in this usage even though depth might be construed to be the top to bottom measurement.
In this construction/usage I would assume that breadth would be the overall extent rather than a measure. It would relate to my moving furniture if I said “This tables HUGENESS is really a problem because the table is so long, so wide, and so tall. It won’t fit anywhere.
Indeed, it seems to be used this way in Rev 20:9 “And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.” But to be forthright it is also used of width in Rev 21:16 “And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.” It seems to be a general term that is defined by its context since these are the only three usages of the word in the Bible.
As to the subject of all these measurements there are some that suggest it is the cross of Christ, others the New Jerusalem, others the power and/or wisdom of God, others the completeness of salvation, while others suggest we look in the immediate context and find the object is the love of Christ. This seems the more sensible at this point to me.
Fuente: Mr. D’s Notes on Selected New Testament Books by Stanley Derickson
3:18 May be able to comprehend with all saints {i} what [is] the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
(i) How perfect that work of Christ is in every part.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
When believers accept Jesus Christ’s revelation of the mystery of the church, they are able to comprehend that God’s love is broad enough to embrace both Jews and Gentiles in the church. They can appreciate that it is long enough to reach the far off (Gentiles) as well as the near (Jews) and to stretch from eternity to eternity. They can see that it is high enough to raise both Jews and Gentiles into the heavenly places. They can understand that it is deep enough to rescue both kinds of people from sin’s degradation and from Satan’s grip. [Note: See Barclay, p. 155, for a slightly different interpretation of the meaning of these dimensions.]