Paul’s use of the four dimensions gives us windows for understanding what he has in mind when praying that God’s people will experience the love of Jesus. Whatever they point to in the love of Jesus, they have relevance to all of God’s people because the apostle mentions that all the saints can do this together.
When we think of the breadth of the love of Jesus, we can see that it embraces people from all over the world. Given that Paul had been speaking about Jews and Gentiles in the previous chapter, it would be appropriate to think about the range of people that Jesus loved. Of course, we can also think of other ways of identifying the range of people that he loved – he loved rich and poor, free and slave, young and old.
The length of the love of Jesus is eternal. It is hard for us to grasp how his love had no beginning, that there never has been a moment when he did not love his people personally as well as together. And his love will never end. The future of his love is as long as its past. His love is not only to be viewed in the past or in the future because it is very real in the present. While the way he applies it may change according to different situations, the degree and intensity of it is the same. Of course, his love is now also expressed and will be expressed through his human nature as well as through his divine nature.
The height of the love of Jesus is seen in the place to which he plans to take his people, which is to be with himself in the new creation of which he and they are heirs. A king could decide to adopt his nation as his family and say they could share his assets, but all that would bring about would be poverty for him and them. Jesus is very different because he cannot lose any of his assets, no matter with whom they are shared. His inheritance, which is also reserved for us, cannot fade away. A lover may buy a nice house for his beloved, but even although she is thankful she knows it will not last forever. But believers know that what Jesus will give them will last for ever.
Then there is the depth of the love of Jesus. Obviously, this includes his experience on the cross when he went down under the billows of the Father’s wrath in order to pay the penalty for our sins. We can imagine someone dropping a priceless jewel in a dark cave and her lover descending the darkness to find it. The search could be dangerous, but if he spent long enough he would find it. That is a faint illustration of what happened to Jesus when he descended into the darkness of the cross to pay the penalty of our sins. Love to God and to his people led him to stay there until the last demand was paid.
Probably, Paul also means to say with his use of the dimensions of space and time that in Christian experience the love of Jesus should be everywhere. He also indicates that having such experiences leads to knowing the fullness of God. I would take this to mean that the activities of love engaged in by Jesus are to give his people entrance into the resources of the Trinity. But it all comes through Jesus.
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