WE PAUSE ANOTHER day on access—access to what? These verses try to tell us: “that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God” (Eph. 3:16–19).
Here words break down under the weight of new meaning—this not only surpasses knowledge, but surpasses description! It is the unspeakable gift. Look at the things to which we have access when in Christ: (1) we have access to the riches of His glory. The riches of His humiliation—His earthly life—are wonderful, but the riches of His glory! What they are I can only imagine. (2) Access to being “strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man”—the Holy Spirit, who is applied redemption, working redemptively in the inner man. (3) Access to Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith. The Holy Spirit and Christ both dwell in the heart—the living Christ is the Holy Spirit with a face—personalized. (4) Access to the life that is rooted and grounded in love. (5) Access to being able to comprehend with all saints, in the words of a Roman Catholic saint, that the love of Christ “is as wide as the limits of the universe, long as the ages of eternity, deep as the abyss from which He redeemed us, and as high as the throne of God itself.” (6) Access to being able to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge. (7) Access to being filled with all the fullness of God. These accesses to seven wonderful phases of reality make cheap and shallow the psychiatrist’s access to one’s own resources and only to one’s own resources. The comment of George Carver to me concerning a scientific atheist: “The poor man, the poor man,” is apropos.
O Jesus, Lord, Thou dost open everything to those who are in Thee. To be in Thee is to be in everything good that is in this universe. I am rich beyond calculation or imagination. I am rich with all the riches of God. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am rich in potentiality—I shall be rich in actuality by my receptivity.
