“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”
So Paul begins in his letter to the Ephesians to declare the facts of the Lord’s work in Jesus which stretches the bounds of reason, even stretching beyond our wildest imaginations.
Swept up in a vain attempt to capture a glorious reality that explodes beyond his ability to express in words, Paul speaks of “the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us” in Christ. That word, “lavished,” is a made-up word literally meaning “super-abounding,” it carries the sense of exploding beyond its bounds.
Paul is seeking to make comprehensible what is incomprehensible; to make sound reasonable what has every appearance of being reckless, irrational, and almost irresponsible; to describe something which exceeds one’s imagination, much less one’s ability to describe. Other biblical writers found themselves resorting to bigger than life, gi-normously fantastic images of crazy looking wheels with eyes and multiple faces to capture something of the wonder and awe of it all.
It is for this reason, having reflected on this one, massive, imagination-exploding reality of God’s glory in Jesus Christ, that Paul turns to pray that,
“according to the riches of his glory,” we 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 we may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
The gospel of God’s super-abounding grace and glory in Jesus Christ is so gi-normous and powerful, that we need the strength of his Spirit just to comprehend it. As Tim Keller suggests, though, in the introduction to his recent volume, “The Prodigal God,” “one of the signs that we may not quite grasp the [gi-normous reality] of the gospel is that we are certain, comfortable, and even complacently confident that we do have a firm, full grasp on it.” (w/ amplification from DSG.)
Come, then, you who are weary and heavy laden; come, you who are thirsty; come, you who find yourselves bankrupt and with no money – buy wine and milk; taste and see the goodness of the Lord; be nourished and strengthened to behold the super-abounding, gi-normity of God’s glory and grace, love and mercy poured out and put on display in Jesus Christ.