Apprehending the Breadth, 
Length, Height, and Depth of Christ

Once the Lord has made His home in our hearts, Paul continues to say, the result is that we are “full of strength to apprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and height and depth are” (Eph. 3:18). Here the breadth, length, height, and depth refer to the breadth, length, height, and depth of the universe. Who can tell how wide is the breadth, how long is the length, how high is the height, and how deep is the depth of the universe? We all know that [405] many, many solar systems constitute one galaxy, and many, many galaxies constitute the universe. The universe is boundless, and its breadth, length, height, and depth are also limitless. These dimensions are the dimensions of Christ; Christ is such an unlimited One. When Christ makes His home in our hearts for us to experience and enjoy, we find that this Christ, into whom we believe and whom we enjoy, know, and experience, is boundless and unsearchable.

Knowing the Knowledge-surpassing Love of Christ 
in Our Experience

Verse 19a says, “To know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ.” According to the context, this means that due to the Lord’s making His home in us, we can experience Him as the unsearchable One. Immediately we can also know His love; that is, we know that His love surpasses human knowledge and understanding. It is very strange that on the one hand, Christ’s love surpasses human understanding, but on the other hand, we can know it. Man can neither know nor understand this love, yet we who allow the Lord to make His home in us can know and experience it. According to our intellect, Christ’s love is knowledge-surpassing, and our mind can never understand it; according to our experience in our spirit, however, we can know it.

Once we experience Christ’s making His home in us, we can know how great the love of Christ is. That the Triune God would make us His dwelling place and would reside in us to be our life, our nature, and our content reveals the greatness of the love of Christ. What a love this is! How great a love this is! This is not only the love in His dying on the cross for us but also the love in His entering into us. How excellent the heavens are, and how beautiful the earth is! Yet the Lord is not satisfied; rather, He longs to dwell in us, making us His home, that He may be our life and nature and become our content. Can we imagine what kind of great love this is?

Throughout the centuries very few Christians have apprehended Christ’s love to such an extent. The majority of Christians know only the Lord’s love in dying on the cross for them; they do not know His love in His making His home in them. He loves us to the extent that He not only died for us but also considers us His dwelling place. Who are we? How uncomely we are! Yet He comes to make His home in us, to be our life, our nature, and our content, and to live and move [406] in us. Hence, it is not until we allow Christ to make His home in us that we will be able to understand the extent of the Lord’s love toward us and to know His knowledge-surpassing love.

Being Filled unto the Fullness of the Triune God

Verse 19b says, “That you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.” In the preceding verses Paul referred to the mystery of the Divine Trinity: he prayed that the Father would grant us to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into our inner man, that Christ the Son may make His home in our hearts, and that we would be filled unto all the fullness of God—unto the expression of all the riches of God. This is not merely the fullness of the Father, nor of the Son, nor of the Spirit; this is the fullness of God, the fullness of the Divine Trinity. How wonderful! How glorious! This is an outline of Ephesians 3, a chapter that is full of the divine dispensing, transmission, union, and mingling, and ultimately the accomplishing of God’s economy and the producing of a corporate expression.

THE TRIUNE GOD IN EPHESIANS 4

In chapter 4 we see the Spirit, the Lord, and the Father. In chapter 1, it is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit; in chapter 2, it is the Son, the Spirit, and the Father; in chapter 3, it is the Father, the Spirit, and the Son; and in chapter 4, it is the Spirit, the Son, and the Father. In 4:3-6 Paul mentions seven “ones”: one Body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all. This portion indicates that the Son comes from the Father for us to believe in, to receive, and to enter into, and the result is that we become His Body. The One who dwells in this Body is the Spirit, who is the ultimate manifestation of the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Hence, the ultimate manifestation of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit dwells in a corporate habitation, which is the Body as the expression of the Triune God.

Now we see that the dispensing of the Divine Trinity issues in the one Body, in which dwells the Spirit as the ultimate manifestation of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Moreover, eventually, the Body is the expression of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. In brief, the Triune God’s economy is to dispense and transmit Himself into us, His believers, and to continuously unite and mingle Himself with us that we may become His one Body as His corporate expression. [407]

THE CORPORATE EXPRESSION OF THE TRIUNE GOD

All of us who serve the Lord must see this matter. In all our messages, words, truths, and preaching, we should take this as the starting point, the content, and the destination. We must show people that according to His economy, the Triune God is working Himself into us—dispensing, transmitting, uniting, and mingling Himself with us—producing the one Body, which includes humanity, divinity, incarnation, human living, death, resurrection, and ascension.

This is a mystery as well as an aggregate. In John 15 this mystery is the universal true vine; furthermore, in chapters 21 and 22 of Revelation, the last book written by John, the aggregate is the New Jerusalem. In John 15 we see the universal true vine; in Revelation 21—22 the universal true vine is the New Jerusalem. The Triune God is producing an organism through His dispensing, transmitting, uniting, and mingling to express Himself for the accomplishment of His eternal economy.