Outline
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The Christ who is making His home in our hearts is an unlimited, immeasurable Christ—Eph. 3:18:
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As Christ makes His home in our hearts, we apprehend with all the saints the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth; these are the dimensions of the universe, the dimensions of the immeasurable Christ.
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Although Christ is immeasurable, He is nevertheless making His home in our hearts.
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Christ is the universal cube, and our experience of Him in the Body must be “cubical,” three-dimensional.
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When Christ makes His home in our hearts, we will be filled unto all the fullness of God—v. 19:
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The fullness of God is the Body of Christ as the expression of the Triune God to the uttermost, the ultimate consummation of the corporate expression of the Triune God.
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The Body of Christ is the unlimited expression of the unlimited Christ.
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If we let Christ make His home in our hearts, we will be filled with the Triune God to such an extent that we will become His full expression.
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The genuine church life is the issue of the unlimited and immeasurable Christ personally making His home in our hearts—v. 17a; 4:16:
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The content of the church is the Christ whom we take as our person, the Christ who is wrought into our being.
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If we would have the reality of the Body of Christ, we must allow Christ to make His home in our hearts.
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In order for Christ’s word in Matthew 16:18 concerning the building up of the church to be fulfilled, the church must enter into a state where saints allow Christ to make His home in their hearts, possessing, occupying, and saturating their entire inner being.
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The more Christ occupies our inner being, the more we will be able to be built up with others in the Body—Eph. 2:21-22; 4:16.
Morning Nourishment
Eph. 3:17-19 That you…may be full of strength to apprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and height and depth are and to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.Christ is immeasurable in His spreading forth. As we experience Christ in His spreading, we come to see that the dimensions of the universe are the very dimensions of Christ.
In our experience of Christ, we should go on from the two dimensions to three, from a “square” to a “cube.”…Both in the tabernacle and in the temple, the Holy of Holies was a cube. The dimensions of this cube in the tabernacle and temple respectively were ten cubits and twenty cubits. The New Jerusalem will be an eternal cube, twelve thousand stadia in three dimensions. The church life today must also be a “cube.”…Our experience of Christ in the church must be “cubical,” three-dimensional… When we become a cube, we cannot fall, and we cannot be broken. Christ is the universal cube, and the church life today is also a “cube,” not a “line” or even a “carpet.”…As we go back and forth and up and down in our experience of Christ, we eventually have a solid “cube.” (Life-study of Ephesians, pp. 276-277)
Today’s Reading
The genuine church life is the issue of Christ personally making His home in our heart to occupy every corner of our inner being. The content of the church is the Christ whom we take as our person, the Christ who is wrought into our being. In order for Christ’s word in Matthew 16:18 concerning the building up of the church to be fulfilled, the church must enter into a state where many saints allow Christ to make His home in their heart, possessing, occupying, and saturating their entire inner being. The more Christ occupies our inner being, the more we will be able to be built up with others in the Body (Eph. 2:21-22; 4:16). The reality of the Body life is such an inner experience of the indwelling Christ. The Body of Christ is the consummation of our enjoyment of the unsearchable riches of Christ and the consummation of the experience of the unlimited Christ making His home in our entire inward being. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate issue of Christ making His home in our heart.The result of Christ’s making His home in our hearts is that we are full of strength to apprehend…the breadth, length, height, and depth…To apprehend the dimensions of Christ, we need all the saints, not individually but corporately…We first experience the breadth of what He is and then the length. This is horizontal. When we advance in Christ, we experience the height and depth of His riches. This is vertical.
We become strong not only to apprehend the dimensions of Christ but also to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ…Just as Christ is immeasurable, so also is His love; hence, it is knowledge-surpassing. Yet, we can know it in our spirit by experiencing it. If we compare what we have thus far experienced of the immeasurable love of Christ to all that there is to experience, it is like comparing a raindrop to the ocean. Christ in His universal dimensions and in His immeasurable love is like a vast, limitless ocean for us to experience.
The result of apprehending the dimensions of Christ and knowing the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ is that we are filled unto all the fullness of God. Here the expression the fullness of God denotes the overflow of the riches of Christ that have been constituted into us. The fullness of God implies that the riches of all that God is have become His expression. When the riches of God are in God Himself, they are His riches, but when the riches of God are expressed, they become His fullness (John 1:16). All the fullness of God dwells in Christ (Col. 1:19; 2:9). Through His indwelling, Christ imparts the fullness of God into our being that we may be filled even unto the fullness of God to be the practical manifestation of the church, in which God may be glorified in His expression (Eph. 3:21). (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 3391-3392)
Further Reading: The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 338