I won’t go so far as to say that the breadth of God’s love (or any other dimension in particular) refers specifically to His plan to pour out His grace upon the Gentiles. Nevertheless, the expansiveness of the love of God is manifested in the expansiveness of the Gospel to all nations.

Much ink has been spilled over what, exactly, Paul means in Ephesians 3:18 when he speaks of the “width and length and depth and height.” To begin with, the phrase is missing an object – the width and length and depth and height of what? Then, there is the perennial temptation to allegorize. What might Paul mean by each dimension individually?

Augustine, for example, equates the width and length and depth and height with the virtues of love, hope, patience, and humility, respectively?[1] Matthew Henry is perhaps more convincing, but equally allegorical, when he suggests that

By the breadth of it we may understand the extent of it to all ages, nations, and ranks of men; by the length of it, its continuance from everlasting to everlasting; by the depth of it, its stooping to the lowest condition, with a design to relieve and save those who have sunk into the depths of sin and misery; by its height, its entitling and raising us up to the heavenly happiness and glory.[2]

However, most commentators see the width and length and depth and height as referring to “the love of Christ which passes knowledge,” with the individual dimensions “interpreted together in a collective sense to express the immensity of the subject.”[3] Thus Calvin, with characteristic confidence, writes that

what follows is sufficiently clear in itself, but has hitherto been darkened by a variety of interpretations…. By those dimensions Paul means nothing else than the love of Christ, of which he speaks afterwards.[4]

However, having established that the width and length and depth and height refer to the love of Christ, and that the individual dimensions do not necessarily have any hidden allegorical meaning, the use of this phrase in one of the great missionary chapters of the Bible is not insignificant. Paul begins his prayer in Ephesians 3:1 and is immediately distracted. As soon as he mentions the word “Gentiles” he cannot help but launch into a meditation on what it means that he, a Jew, is addressing the Gentiles as fellow heirs of the grace of God. The mystery, as Paul explains in Ephesians 3:6, is “that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel.” In other words, the “mystery” is nothing less than the worldwide missions movement which began with Paul to the Gentiles, and has continued in successive generations ever since!

Read More

[1] John Calvin and William Pringle, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 263.

[2] Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994), 2312.

[3] Glenn Graham, An Exegetical Summary of Ephesians, 2nd ed. (Dallas, TX: SIL International, 2008), 256-257.

[4] Calvin and Pringle, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, 263-264.