Ephesians 3.18c-Comphrending the Four Dimensions of Jesus Christ's Love for the Believer with All the Saints
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Saturday September 7, 2024
Ephesians Series: Ephesians 3:18c-Comprehending the Four Dimensions of Jesus Christ’s Love for the Church Age Believer with All the Saints
Lesson # 181
Ephesians 3:14 For this reason, I make it my habit of bending my knees in the presence of the Father 15 from whom each and every family located in the heavens as well as located upon the earth is designated a name. 16 I make it a habit of occupying myself with praying that according to the wealth produced by His glory He would cause each and every one of you as a corporate unit to be given strength by means of power through the personal intermediate agency of His Spirit for the benefit of your inner being. 17 Namely that the one and only Christ’s power would dwell in your hearts through your faith …because each and every one of you are firmly rooted, yes specifically, because of all of you without exception are firmly established by means of the practice of divine-love, 18 each and every one of you as a corporate unit would cause yourselves to be able to fully comprehend with each and every one of the saints what constitutes being the breadth, length, height and depth (of Christ’s love for each and every one of you as a corporate unit). (Lecturer’s translation)
As we noted, Ephesians 3:18 is composed of a hina (ἵνα) infinitive purpose clause, which presents the purpose of the hina (ἵνα) direct object clause in Ephesians 3:16 and the one in Ephesians 3:17, which is a complementary infinitive clause that explains the one in Ephesians 3:16.
Therefore, here in Ephesians 3:18, this hina (ἵνα) purpose clause presents the purpose of the Father answering Paul’s intercessory prayer in Ephesians 3:16 that the recipients of this epistle would be given strength by means of power through the personal intermediate agency of the Spirit for the benefit of their inner being, i.e., the indwelling nature of Christ.
In Ephesians 3:17, Paul explains what he means by this request, namely that the power of Christ would dwell in their hearts through their post-justification faith in the Spirit inspired contents of Ephesians.
This hina (ἵνα) purpose clause in Ephesians 3:18 states that the recipients of this epistle would be fully able to comprehend or grasp with the all the saints what constitutes being the breadth, length, height and depth of Christ’s love for them.
Thus, in Ephesians 3:16-18, Paul prays that the recipients of this epistle would be given strength by means of power through the personal intermediate agency of the Spirit for the benefit of their inner being, i.e., the indwelling nature of Christ.
Namely that, the power of Christ would dwell in their hearts through their post-justification faith in the Spirit inspired contents of Ephesians.
The purpose of which is that they would be to fully able to comprehend with all the saints what constitutes being the breadth, length, height and depth of Christ’s love for them.
The reason why they are able to fully comprehend the four dimensions of the Lord’s love for them is that each and every one of them are firmly rooted, yes specifically, because all of them without exception are firmly established by means of the practice of divine-love.
Now, the apostle Paul employs four nouns in this verse whose referent is Jesus Christ’s love for every church age believer.
The noun platos (πλάτος), “the breadth” is used to describe the life and death of Jesus Christ and specifically, this word describes the person of Jesus Christ who is the incarnate love of God because He is the incarnate Son of God, who as to His nature, is love.
It describes the life of Jesus Christ who always fulfilled the requirement of the Mosaic Law to love God with one’s entire being and neighbor as oneself.
It describes the substitutionary spiritual and physical deaths of Jesus Christ on the cross, which demonstrated or manifested the love of God for God’s enemies, i.e., unregenerate sinners who are enslaved to Satan and the indwelling Adamic sin nature.
The noun is mēkos (μῆκος), “length” describes the love of the Lord Jesus Christ for the believer as being eternal.
This love originated from eternity past when He agreed to become a human being for unregenerate humanity and extends to eternity future because they were placed in an eternal union with Him and identified with Him in His crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection and session at the Father’s right hand through the baptism of the Spirt at justification.
This guarantees that nothing whatsoever could separate them from the Lord Jesus Christ’s love for the church age believer.
The noun hypsos (ὕψος), “height” describes Jesus Christ’s love for the church age believer from the perspective that because of His love for all of unregenerate humanity, He left the throne of His heavenly Father in order to become a human being and suffer the wrath of His Father on the cross for all of unregenerate humanity.
The result was that He propitiated the Father’s holiness, which demanded that sin and sinners be judged, reconciled all of sinful humanity to a holy God and redeemed them out of the slave market of sin, in which they were born physically but spiritually dead.
The noun bathos (βάθος), “depth” describes Jesus Christ’s love for the church age believer from the perspective that out of His love for every church age believer, He was willing to die physically and descend into Hades, which contains the compartments of Torments and Paradise, in order suffer the wrath of God for all of unregenerate humanity (Eph. 4:8-10).
The verb exischuō (ἐξισχύω) in this hina (ἵνα) purpose clause expresses the idea of the recipients of this letter “being able to fully grasp” the four dimensions of Christ’s love for them.
The active voice of this verb is causative which would indicate that the recipients of this letter are the ultimate cause of being able to fully grasp or comprehend with all the saints the four dimensions of Christ’s love for them.
This is indicated by the fact that they must exercise faith in the Spirit contents of this letter in order to appropriate the power of the Holy Spirit to be able to fully grasp the Lord’s love for them.
Thus, the Holy Spirit is the one who enables them to fully grasp or comprehend with all the saints the four dimensions of Christ’s love for them and the faith of the recipients of this letter appropriates the Spirit’s power to do this.
The verb katalambanomai (καταλαμβάνομαι) pertains to grasping the nature, significance or meaning of a particular subject, which in our context are these four dimensions of Christ’s love for them.
This word functions as a complementary infinitive, which means that it is completing the thought of the verb exischuō (ἐξισχύω) and identifies for the reader what Paul wants them to be fully able to do.
The middle voice of this verb katalambanomai (καταλαμβάνομαι) is an indirect middle, which expresses the idea of the recipients of this epistle “for their own benefit” being to fully grasp or comprehend with all the saints the four dimensions of Christ’s love for them.
The articular dative masculine plural form of the adjective hagios (ἅγιος), “the saints” describes all the members of the body of Christ who have been set apart through the baptism of the Spirit at the moment of justification in order to order serve God exclusively.
The baptism of the Spirit resulted in the church age believer being united with and identified with Jesus Christ in His crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection and session at the Father’s right hand.
The articular construction of the adjective hagios (ἅγιος) is monadic indicating that church age believers are a “unique” people on the earth because they are the first group of people in history who are in union with Jesus Christ and identified with Him and members of His body and are His future bride.
This word is modified by the dative masculine plural form of the adjective pas (πᾶς), which pertains to the totality of saints, i.e., church age believers and is also used in a distributive sense emphasizing no exceptions.
The substantive use of the adjective hagios functions as the object of the preposition sun (σύν), which expresses the idea of the recipients of this epistle for their own benefit entering into the state of being to fully grasp or comprehend “in association with” or “along with” or “together with” all the saints the four dimensions of Christ’s love for them.
The interrogative pronoun tis (τις) means “what constitutes” and introduces a categorical or qualitative question expressing the idea of the recipients of the Ephesian epistle entering into the state of being able to fully comprehend “what constitutes” the four dimensions of the Lord Jesus Christ’s love for them.
Paul employs the figure of ellipsis which means that he is deliberately omitting the third person singular present active indicative conjugation of the verb eimi (εἰμί), though it is implied and it pertains to existing in a particular state or condition of possessing characteristic(s).
The nominative feminine singular form of the interrogative pronoun tis (τις) functions as the nominative subject of this verb despite the fact that the nouns platos (πλάτος), “the breadth,” mēkos (μῆκος), “length,” hypsos (ὕψος), “height” and bathos (βάθος), “depth” are all in the nominative case, which usually indicates in the Greek New Testament that the word is the subject.
However, the rule of Greek grammar is that pronoun has the greatest priority even though the noun in the nominative case is articular.
Therefore, this indicates the interrogative pronoun tis performs the action of the third person singular present active indicative conjugation of the verb eimi (εἰμί), which we noted is omitted but implied.
The referent of the nominative feminine singular form of the interrogative pronoun tis (τις) is the Lord Jesus Christ’s love for the recipients of this epistle.
This is indicated by the assertion in Ephesians 3:19, which presents the result of the recipients of this epistle practicing the command to love one another, namely that they would be able to fully comprehend Christ’s love for them.
Therefore, the verb eimi (εἰμί) expresses the idea of Jesus Christ’s love for the recipients of this epistle existing in the state of possessing characteristics of breath, length, height and depth.