WEDNESDAY 25th
Ephesians 3:14-21
NIV (v19) – ‘. . . and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’
ESV (v19) – ‘. . . and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.’
1) That they may be strengthened with power (v16)
2) That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith (v17)
3) That they may be rooted and grounded in love (17-18)
4) That they may know the love of Christ and the fulness of God (v19)
5) That all the glory goes to the Lord Jesus (v20-21)
In yesterdays devotion it was about being rooted and grounded in love, in todays it is about knowing the love of Christ and the fulness of God. If this phrase is a continuation of yesterdays, then it means that being rooted and grounded in love is essential to our being able to have strength to comprehend (with all the saints) what are the dimensions of the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.
The more we love the more we will understand the love of Christ and yet we will never be able to fully comprehend it because it surpasses knowledge. But because it surpasses knowledge it does not mean we should shrug it off, but we should make every endeavour to understand it as much as is humanly and spiritually possible.
I am going to borrow from someone else today looking at the dimensions of the love of God, its width, length, height, depth.*
1) A love which is wide enough to embrace the world. John 3:16 tells us, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’
2) A love which is long enough to last forever (1 Corinthians 13:8 ‘Love never ends . . .’). As Spurgeon said, ‘It is so long that your old age cannot wear it out, so long your continual tribulation cannot exhaust it, your successive temptations shall not drain it dry; like eternity itself it knows no bounds.’
3) A love which is high enough to take sinners to Heaven (1 John 3:1,2 ‘See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.’)
4) A love which is deep enough to take Christ to the very depths to reach the lowest sinner (Philippians 2:8 ‘And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.’)
* Ephesians: the mystery of the body of Christ (p 117). R. K. Hughes
The verse continues to say, ‘that you may be filled with the fulness of God’. If we want to be filled with the fulness of God then clearly from these verses ‘love’ is the key, the love that caused God to send his Son, the love that caused the Son to lay down his life, the love which God’s children should have and show toward one another. The more we love the more we will be rooted and grounded, the more we are rooted and grounded the more we will begin to understand his love and the more we understand his love the more it will be evidenced in our lives.
To close this devotion a lengthy but important portion of Scripture, from the apostle John, ‘Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.’ (1 John 4:11-21)