Where You Stand Makes All the Difference

“Humanity thought it understood Earth — until some of us got far enough away to actually see it.”— A modern paraphrase of the Apollo 8 “Earthrise” moment

We live in a world that does not understand Christianity.

There are many who think they do. Some even claim its benefits. The Apollo 8 astronauts knew the Earth: its size, its circumference, its estimated mass, and how it spins on its axis. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders were pinnacle examples of human achievement. The training that prepared them for their mission gave them rare knowledge and understanding. It took orbiting the moon to gain comprehension.

Yet as they made their fourth orbit around the Moon and captured the photograph called “Earthrise,” they gained an understanding that could not be found from any other position.

Sometimes, where you stand makes all the difference.

When the Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 3:14–21, he is earnestly praying for the believers to “comprehend” — not merely to know, but to fully comprehend.

Paul was a Greek-speaking Jew from Tarsus, and he was clearly educated. It is reasonable to assume, from Paul’s upbringing and from the Hellenistic influence of the Jewish world at that time, that he had at least a practical understanding of arithmetic, measurement, and spatial language. The book of Acts portrays him as having been educated in Jerusalem “at the feet of Gamaliel” in the strict ancestral law. He wrote his letters in Koine Greek, and his trade was tentmaking and leather-working.

He knew how to measure something!

Why then, in Ephesians 3:18–19, when Paul is earnestly praying that the Ephesians would be “filled with all the fullness of God,” does he cite:

1. Breadth

2. Length

3. Height

4. And depth?

   
   

Everyone who has ever labored in the dungeons of a math class knows that, to measure a rectangular solid, we usually speak in three dimensions: length, breadth, and height. That is how we measure it. That is how we describe it. That is how we begin to comprehend it.

Three, not four!

So why does Paul include both height and depth?

“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 3:18–19

Understanding is not only about what you know. It is also about where you stand.

You only need breadth, length, and height if you are looking at something abstractly or from a distance. But Paul’s use of both height and depth suggests something more. He understands that true comprehension is not only about measuring a thing from the outside. It is about knowing your place within it.

Could it be that Paul includes height and depth because he is not merely trying to help the saints measure the love of Christ? Could it be that he is locating them inside it?

I believe Paul is not asking the saints to measure Christ’s love from the outside. He is praying that they would comprehend their place in it from within — to know themselves surrounded by it, above and below, on every side.

The love of Christ is not merely something to be observed.

It is something in which we stand