that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19 ESV)Charles Hodge, the great Princeton theologian in the 19th century, writes in his commentary of Ephesians about this passage.
“It is the love of Christ, i. e. his love to us which passes knowledge. It is infinite; not only because it inheres in an infinite subject, but because the condescension and sufferings to which it led, and the blessings which it secures for its objects, are beyond our comprehension. This love of Christ, though it surpasses the power of our understanding to comprehend, is still a subject of experimental knowledge. We may know how excellent, how wonderful, how free, how disinterested, how long-suffering, how manifold and constant, it is, and that it is infinite. And this is the highest and most sanctifying of all knowledge. Those who thus know the love of Christ towards them, purify themselves even as he is pure.”Experimental knowledge is tasting and seeing that the Lord is good. (Psalm 34:8). It is having and keeping Christ's commands because we love Jesus and God the Father. Christ promises to manifest Himself to us, when we obey His commands (John 14:21). God reveals Himself not only in the spiritual disciplines (reading the Word, prayer, meditation, fellowship, etc), but also when we step out obedience. In our obedience, the love and manifold wisdom of God is revealed. God revealed His love and wisdom when we were in Haiti in miraculous ways. This is why I think we need power to comprehend the love of Christ. Not only does the subject of Christ's love have infinite scope, which will take an eternity to comprehend, but it is comprehended through faith in obedience. We need strength to faithfully obey Christ's commands so we can experimentally know Him better.
God gracefully gives us the power to obey. As Paul finishes the prayer in Ephesians chapter 3.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)We obey Christ because of what he has already done for us. We obey Christ because we seek Him in His promises to us because He fulfilled His promises to us in the past. We seek Christ because we have an infinitely powerful, loving and wise God who wants to sustain us and empower us. We seek Christ because God will glorify Himself through Christ's body, the Church. Charles Hodge encourages us to join Paul in praise to God, when Hodge comments on this doxology in Ephesians 3.
“Κατὰ τὴν δύναμιν τὴν ἐνεργουμένην ἐν ἡμῖν, according to the power that worketh in us. The infinite power of God from which so much may be expected, is the same of which we are now the subjects. It is that power which wrought in Christ when it raised him from the dead, and set him at the right hand of God, ch. 1, 19-20; and which has wrought an analogous change in the believer in raising him from the death of sin, and making him to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; and which still sustains and carries on the work of salvation in the soul. The past is a foretaste and pledge of the future. Those who have been raised from the dead, who have been transformed by the renewing of their minds, translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, and in whom God himself dwells by his Spirit, having already experienced a change which nothing but omnipotence could effect, may well join in the doxology to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think.” ― Charles Hodge, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians
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