life which belongs to us as creatures ; nor intellectual, which belongs to us as rational beings ; but it is spiritual life, called elsewhere the life of God in the soul. And as this life is common, on the one hand, to Christ and all his members—and on the other, to Christ and God, this union of the church is not only with Christ, but with the Triune God. Therefore in Scripture it is said that the Spirit dwells in believers, that Christ dwells in them, and that God dwells in them. And, therefore, also our Lord prays for his people, ‘ That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.” John 17, 21.
It is obvious from the whole connection that the word πάντων (“of all,” and “ through all”), is not neuter. The apostle does not refer to the dominion of God over the universe, or to his providential agency throughout all nature. Neither is the reference to his dominion over rational creatures or over mankind. It is the relation of God to the church, of which the whole passage treats. God as Father is over all its members, through them all and in them all. The church is a habitation of God through the Spirit. It is his temple in which he dwells and which is pervaded in all its parts by his presence. The preposition 6:4, therefore, does not here express instrumentality, but diffusion. It is not that God operates “ through all” (διὰ πάντωνῚ, but that he pervades all and abides in all. This is the climax. To be filled with God; to be per- vaded by his presence, and controlled by him, is to attain the summit of all created excellence, blessedness and glory.