Ephesians 3:19

19. Know As by conscious experience.

Love of Christ His love to us as manifested in the redemption.

Passeth knowledge The conciseness of St. Paul’s Greek justifies the rendering, that ye may know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ. A contradiction in form in order vividly to impress the truth that the quality and surpassing amount may be apprehended, though it cannot be adequately comprehended. We know the ocean, yet the ocean immensely exceeds our knowledge.

Filled Is the image of a temple still continued? The thought, then, naturally recurs to the filling of the temple of Solomon with the shekinah at the dedication, (2 Chronicles 5:14,) when “The glory of Jehovah filled the house of God.” St.

Paul here, as Clarke beautifully, develops the thought, dedicates the temple described in Ephesians 2:20-22, into which the Ephesians are structurally incorporated. But as this temple is a spiritual structure a communion of living souls so the shekinah must therein dwell in living hearts.

With The old method of interpretation, by which the Greek preposition εις was said to be put for εν , and then εν be rendered with, is properly obsolete. The preposition truly expresses into or unto. The image suggested by the phrase filling into an element, would seem to be that of filling a sponge or a vessel by plunging it into the element, as dipping a cup into the ocean and thereby filling it. The filling would imply the complete replenishment of the cup, and the into would imply the motion by which the filling is accomplished. Taking the preposition to denote unto, what would the phrase unto all the fulness of God mean? Unto would then be a preposition of measure; that ye may be filled up to the full measure of the fulness of God. But then the fulness of God surely cannot include his omniscience, or his omnipresence, so that we become endowed inwardly with the attributes of God? It is that highest plenitude of his Spirit wherewith he ever fills his true and holy Church, made up of true believers. It is to be filled with all that sanctifying plenitude of the indwelling Spirit for which our finite nature has the capacity. There is no limit in God, but in us only.