We have been measuring the love of Christ through the four dimensions Paul names in his prayer for the Ephesian believers — the breadth, and length, and depth, and height (Ephesians 3:18) — each one an expression of what he calls “the measure of the gift of Christ” (Ephesians 4:7). In Part 1 we traced the breadth: how wide the love of Christ reaches, from the eternal predestinating will of God through the demolished wall between Jew and Gentile to the individual believer filled with the Spirit. In Part 2 we traced the length: from before the foundation of the world, through hidden ages and the eternal redemption at the cross, through the dispensational waypoints, to world without end. In Part 3 we descended with Him — from the throne of God into the likeness of sinful flesh, through suffering and the death of the cross, into the heart of the earth — and found that what He descended into, He also descended to dwell within, bringing light into the depth of our deadness.
Now we ascend. The height of the love of Christ is where the series has been moving all along — because the depth was never the destination. It was the love of Christ going as low as the human condition required in order to take us as high as He Himself has gone.
The Ascent: Far Above All
The depth ended at the heart of the earth. The height begins there — and goes in the opposite direction without limit. “He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things” (Ephesians 4:10).
