PAUL’S PRAYER
Christ dwells in the Father’s heart and fills it. When here in flesh, handled and contemplated by the apostles, He was “with the Father” – the only begotten Son in the bosom of the Father. He said, “I am in the Father.” He ever dwelt in the Father’s affections.
Paul would have Christ to dwell in our hearts also, and to this end he bows his knees to the Father, desiring that we may be strengthened with might by the Father’s Spirit in the inner man. This is the only scripture where the Holy Spirit is spoken of as the Spirit of the Father. (In Matthew 10:20 it is “the Spirit of your Father” – a different thought.) If we are strengthened by the Father’s Spirit, the One who dwells in the Father’s heart will dwell in our hearts. Our faith will be strengthened to hold that blessed One in abiding occupation of our affections.
If the apostle bowed his knees to the Father about this, is it not fitting that we should do likewise? A man bowing his knees to the Father, and strengthened by the Father’s Spirit so that the Christ dwells in his heart through faith, will surely be “rooted and grounded in love”. His roots strike down into the rich soil of divine love and he draws thence invigoration for his whole moral being. He is learning that “the Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into His hand” – learning the greatness of that Anointed One who will give effect to all the Father’s thoughts.
In this way we “may be able to apprehend with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height.” If the One who is the Centre and Head of God’s universe of bliss dwells in our hearts we shall be able to apprehend the blessed character of the whole system. The Father is going to put the impress of Christ upon everything, and Christ will fill all things with the light and love of God. The vast expanse of creation will be filled with the effulgence of God. What a triumphant issue of all the ways of God! Well may we worship in the contemplation of it!
“And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” This is a far wider thought than His love to us, blessed as that is. It is the deep, devoted love in which He has taken up all the Father’s counsels and will give full effect to them for the Father’s glory. We miss a great deal of the fulness of Scripture by attaching things so much to ourselves. The Father would have us to see the wonderful place that Christ holds in relation to a “vast universe of bliss,” and how He will pervade it all with His own love, so that it may be filled with what answers perfectly to the Father. The love of Christ will extend to the utmost bounds of the universe of bliss.
We need not be afraid of losing anything by seeing the vastness of this. It serves to enhance our appreciation of our own – that is, the assembly’s – peculiar place of nearness and union, for we are His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. It is through the assembly that all that Christ is finds expression. It will need the universe of bliss to show what the assembly is as the fulness of Christ. Then we are His bride – the peculiar, unique, and glorious object of His love – presented to Himself for the satisfaction and delight of His heart.
Then Paul would have us “filled even to all the fulness of God.” The assembly is the vessel in which God’s fulness will be displayed throughout all ages. The vessel is being formed and filled now, and will come out resplendent with divine glory to set forth the fulness of God in a reconciled universe. How little do we take in these wondrous thoughts! The assembly is the fulness of Christ to fill the universe with what is delightful to God, so that He may have rest and complacency in all things. And the assembly is the vessel in which the fulness of God will shine forth, filling all things with light and love and blessedness. We are being filled now in view of all this. There is no less measure for us than the fulness of Christ and of God. How blessed to be receiving of that fulness!
We may feel how very small we are to receive, but we are expanded and enlarged by receiving. In natural things the more you put into a vessel the less room there is for more, but in divine things the more the vessel receives the greater its capacity becomes to receive more. And, remember, the Father is “able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.” Now is the time to receive the fulness; in another day all that is received will be displayed, and there will be unto God “glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages. Amen.”
C A Coates ‘The Food of Life’ p.176,177.
(Quotations from scripture in this article are from both the Authorised Version and the Darby Translation.)