Yeshua (Jesus) did not just come to forgive us of our sin. He came to reconcile us into a relationship with the Father. Paul wrote, “For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father … that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man” (Ephesians 3:14–16).[1] Paul is talking about your spirit, the inner man. God is spirit and it is your spirit that is capable of relating to Him (John 4:24). Therefore, it is not enough to be reconciled to God in theory; it is deeper than that. You need to know your spirit and be able to communicate with Him in the spirit.
Whatever God has for you comes through your spirit, into your soul, and into your body until it affects every aspect of your being. You are saved spirit, soul, and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23). We are to be preserved blameless before Him (Jude 1:24). “So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth [speaking of the love], and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17–19). I love when God says that you are going to know something that is unknowable. That is what Paul is saying here. You are going to know the love of Christ, which no one can know. You cannot comprehend the love of God, but He is going to let you understand it as He empowers your spirit to connect with Him.
Your spirit has the ability to know the Father. And as we come to know Him, we are naturally overwhelmed by His love for us because God is love (1 John 4:16). God so loved the world that He sent us His Son (John 3:16). So Yeshua is the carrier of that love. And if we are firmly planted in that foundation of God’s love, it affects our thinking about ourselves. That is the only way to get over condemnation. Without this love, we will never get over what we have done wrong because it will always come up in our minds. But by experiencing the love of God, those memories are all erased. Once you see His love, you will start being filled with all the fullness of God, which affects your thinking about you and who you are in Him.
If God in His fullness and power is dwelling in us, then we cannot be nothing. And that must make us something—not in our flesh, not in ourselves, but because He is dwelling in us. Just as God’s presence once dwelled in the Temple, so His glorious presence will dwell in each of us. We are going to be filled with His presence. We are going to be firmly planted in His love. We are going to come to know God’s love in its fullness. That is what Paul was talking about: the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth of His love. Without any boundaries, you are going to completely know all that God is in His love—for you personally and for all His creation.
[1] All Scripture references are from the New American Standard Bible 1995 (NASB1995).