This is a revelation that searches every man's soul who looks into it. What is there so confounding to our reason and our human self-complacency as the discovery: "He loved me; He gave Himself up for me"--that He should do it, and should _need_ to do it! It was this that went to Saul's heart, that gave the mortal blow to the Jewish pride in him, strong as it was with the growth of centuries. The bearer of this grace and the ambassador of Christ's love to the Gentiles, he feels himself to be "less than the least of all the saints." We carry in our hands to show to men a heavenly light, which throws our own unloveliness into dark relief.
II. The _love of Christ_ connects together, in the apostle's thoughts, _the greatness of the Church_ and _the fulness of God_. The two former conceptions--Christ's love and the Church's greatness--go together in our minds; knowing them, we are led onwards to the realization of the last.
The "fulness [_pleroma_] of God," and the "filling" (or "completing") of believers in Christ are ideas characteristic of this group of epistles. The first of these expressions we have discussed already in its connexion with Christ, in chapter i. 23; we shall meet with it again as "the fulness of Christ" in chapter iv. 13. The phrase before us is, in substance, identical with that of the latter text. Christ contains the Divine plenitude; He embodies it in His person, and conveys it to the world by His redemption. St Paul desires for the Asian Christians that they may receive it; it is the ultimate mark of his prayer. He wishes them to gain the total sum of all that God communicates to men. He would have them "filled"--their nature made complete both in its individual and social relations, their powers of mind and heart brought into full exercise, their spiritual capacities developed and replenished--"filled unto all the plenitude of God."
This is no humanistic or humanitarian ideal. The mark of Christian completeness is on a different and higher plane than any that is set up by culture. The ideal Christian is a greater man than the ideal citizen or artist or philosopher: he may include within himself any or all of these characters, but he transcends them. He may conform to none of these types, and yet be a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Our race cannot rest in any perfection that stops short of "the fulness of God." When we have received all that God has to give in Christ, when the community of men is once more a family of God and the Father's will is done on earth as in heaven, then and not before will our life be complete. That is the goal of humanity; and the civilization that does not lead to it is a wandering from the way. "You are complete in Christ," says the apostle. The progress of the ages since confirms the saying.