It doesn’t take me long to get my fill of something.

That’s because everyone has a limit to what he can consume and digest, regardless of its palatability.  I’m sure Rod Serling understood this well.

As a teenager, I wasn’t necessarily a big fan of The Twilight Zone, but one episode is seared in my memory:  A criminal was killed in the line of work and “crossed over” into an endless cornucopia of luxury, women, booze and good fortune—all the things he sought diligently prior to his demise.  At some point, however, he grew weary of his monotonous excess and pled for mercy to an “angel” dressed in a white suit:

“I can’t do this anymore…I actually think I’d rather just…be in…you know…the other place!“

The angel [actor Burl Ives] responded with a hearty laugh and bellowed:

“This IS the other place!

So, when I first read the apostle Paul’s letter to “…the saints who [were] at Ephesus and who [were] faithful in Christ Jesus, the phrase “filled up into all the fullness of God” brought that ridiculous television episode to mind:

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in the heavens and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, for Christ to dwell in your hearts through faith, having laid a foundation [which is] rooted in love, in order that you might be strong enough to comprehend [along] with all the saints the love of Christ—[that is] the breadth and length and height and depth [of it], which goes beyond knowledge, in order that you might be filled up into all the fullness of God.”   [Eph. 3:14-19]  [my emphasis]

At the same time, though, I was just Biblically astute enough to realize that being “filled with God” could never be compared to overindulging in any fleshly aspiration.

So, I wondered…how much of God is really possible?

Not only that, it seemed unrealistic to assume that my Creator could somehow exist fully in me yet maintain His Holy Nature at the same time.  Eventually, though, I came to understand that every Biblical text has a context, and that context is built upon a holistic interpretation of surrounding sentences and key words.  And the key word in the quoted passage above is “love.”

Paul prayed that the faithful saints in Ephesus would, after having established a solid infrastructure of love, gain strength through the Holy Spirit.  He did this in the hope that they might acquire the needed strength to be able to both perceive and experience the true dimensions of that which would be otherwise incomprehensible—that is, the loving essence of the Christ and therefore the Father.

Aγάπη [âgâpāy, or agape] love is the contextual relationship to fullness here.  This Greek word is the marrow of a spiritual bone which both defines and sustains the Christian experience.  A body cannot live without marrow.  In the same way, the Body of Christ can’t fully experience the magnitude of His love without the life-giving blood in the agape marrow.

Just like carbohydrates, agape love never signals the brain that you’ve had enough.  But, unlike bean burritos and potato chips, agape love is healthy.

You really can’t have too much of it.