Lord, we do worship You this morning. Lord, even as that psalm says, we are captured by Your beauty. When we have the honor and privilege of beholding You at the table, it brings such wonder to our hearts that the very Maker of the universe would come and walk upon this earth and redeem us back to Himself.
Lord, we thank You that, as the redeemed of the Lord, we can continue in Your presence today. As the redeemed of the Lord, we look to You to bless Your Word and send Your Spirit of life. Give us ears to hear what You are saying to us. Lord, there are so many voices in this day; we desire to hear that one small voice. We each give ourselves to You, Lord, in Your precious name. Amen.
The other time when I shared, we were considering Paul’s testimony of being constrained by the love of Christ. Let us turn back to that passage in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15.
To me, this is one of the keys to how Paul was able to testify at the end, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” This is one of the keys to how Paul was able to say, “I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race.” Throughout Paul’s life, there was this constraining power within him—not of Paul, but of Christ.
For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died;
and he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again.—2 Corinthians 5:14-15
Paul had this desire within his heart not to live for himself, but to live for the One who had died and risen again—to live through the enabling power of that resurrection life that we have heard of recently. This was the key and the secret within Paul’s heart.
Brothers and sisters, as we sit here today, we know how difficult the times are for each one of us in all our various situations. The Holy Spirit wants to encourage us that there is a way that we too can live for the Lord and not for ourselves.
When crises come within our lives, each one of us has a choice. Do we draw from our own natural strength and our own natural abilities? Do we allow our weaknesses to overwhelm us, causing us to faint and fall? Or do we allow the precious life of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has overcome all things, to rule within our hearts?
This was Paul’s secret. He allowed that life; he allowed that love of Christ to control him.
We are going to spend a few minutes reviewing a couple of thoughts that we shared before, just so that we are clear. When we speak about this love of Christ, we have to be very clear that it is His love for us that holds us, not our love for Him.
Our love for Him will fail, but His love for us will never fail. His love will never let us go. It is a secure love. It is an all-sufficient love, and in any situation, it is there.
In life, we encounter various kinds of love. We have self-love, and self-love loves self for its own self-interest. Even the law speaks of love. We have been studying it in Matthew, but even that elevates love only to loving someone as yourself. There is a parallel there.
But, brothers and sisters, the love of Christ loves that other one more than self. It does not consider its own interests. Christ, as He walked upon this earth, did not consider His own interests; He considered the Father’s interest and the Father’s heart. That drove our precious Lord all the way to Calvary.
Out of that death at Calvary came that wonderful resurrection power. That power and that life reside within each one of us today, brothers and sisters. The Lord wants us to know the reality of it in a fresh way and in a new way.
When we speak of the love of Christ, there is a quote from a brother that always comes back to me: when we are talking about the nature of God and His characteristics, we really cannot define them. When we define them, we end up confining them. What we do best with the nature and characteristics of our Lord is simply describe them.
All we can do is describe the love of Christ. Think of glory: for centuries, people have tried to define glory. We simply describe it. People have tried to describe grace as the matchless, marvelous grace of our Lord. We cannot define it; we simply describe it.
When we look for a description of the love of Christ, we simply have to look at His life. Here was One—the very Maker of the universe, the very One who spoke and everything came into being. He was there when those stars were put into place.
And He left all of that, took on the form of a man, and walked upon this earth. He went to Calvary. Throughout His life, we see rejection, misunderstanding, and all that was characteristic of His life. That is the love of Christ, brothers and sisters.
The greatest manifestation of the love of Christ that this world has ever seen was at Calvary.
We have a phrase that says, “Love is blind.” Brothers and sisters, Christ was not blind. He knew exactly what He was doing. He knew exactly what He was in for, and He knew exactly why He was doing what He was doing.
The love of Christ has its eyes wide open. It is not shut, brothers and sisters, because His heart was so set on doing what His Father would have Him do. Christ was constrained by the love of God, and Paul was constrained by that love of Christ.
We talked a little about what this word constraining means. There are two aspects to it. There is a negative side: restraining us from doing something. Self would want to do this, but there is something inside that says no.
But there is also the positive side: mastering us, governing us, pushing us on to live for Christ. This word constraining is such a precious word because it holds us back from our own self-interest and self-destruction, yet it draws us forward more and more into the precious love of our Lord.
I was reading this past month, as I was thinking about this matter of the love of Christ. On Wednesday nights, we have been praying much for the nation of France, and I was reading some of the history of France. One person really captured my attention and my heart.
A little background: in 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had provided freedom of religion within France. He said, in effect, “No more. You worship me.” It was even called the king’s religion.
At that point, many Christians fled. So many were fleeing France that it became illegal to flee. Guards were posted around the country. We try to keep people out of here; there, they were keeping people in. If they caught you trying to flee, you were sent to the galleys of the ships, where you rowed oars for the rest of your life.
Yet hundreds of thousands fled France—the best and brightest, the merchants, and the skilled workers. Those who did not flee, but stayed and still tried to worship the Lord, were persecuted severely.
If you were found in a meeting—and they met out in the woods, in what was called the church of the desert—and you were the leader of that group, you were put to death, hung in the city square. If you were one of the followers, the men went to the galley ships and the women went to prison in a tower for the rest of their lives.
The only way out was to recant and say that you believed in the Catholic Church and the king. Most would not do that. They suffered death.
Within about twenty years, the king thought that he had totally exterminated Christianity within France. That was his goal. Historically, you see hardly any gatherings or meetings at all—one or two here, one or two there. It was like sheep scattered without a shepherd.
But in 1715, thirty years after the Edict of Nantes was revoked, there was a young man, nineteen years old, who was constrained by the love of Christ. Age does not matter. His name was Antoine Court.
He was living in Switzerland at the time, and he would hear reports of how the believers in France were suffering. He had such a burden. As he read the Scriptures, the Lord caught his heart in such a way that he said, “How can I live here in Switzerland, with so many privileges, books, and freedom of assembly, while our dear brethren are suffering so much in France?”
So he and about twenty other brothers studied the Word together for about six months so that they would be prepared. Then they went back into France, knowing that this was basically a suicide mission.
Almost all of them were killed during the next twenty years, martyred in many different ways. Somehow, by the grace of God, Antoine Court was never captured, though many times they came close.
One time, when soldiers were coming, he went down a well to hide. The soldiers were so persistent in chasing these ones that whenever they saw a well, they would climb down a rope to chase after them, knowing that the believers hid in wells.
Often, at the bottom of the well, they had dug a little tunnel to the left or right and placed dirt over it. When they got in, they went down the tunnel and put a layer of dirt over the entrance. Antoine escaped that way one time.
It was not all glorious, serving the Lord. Excuse me for this one, but one time they hid him for twenty-four hours in a pile of manure—for the love of Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, he was captured by the love of Christ.
By 1729, he eventually passed away from physical exhaustion. But the records indicate that these twenty, captured by the love of Christ and having gone back into France forsaking everything, had labored for fifteen years.
The records state that there were over two hundred thousand Christians in southern France, throughout Languedoc and the Cévennes. There were over one hundred and fifty assemblies. These were scattered assemblies, but they had been raised up.
Simply a few young brothers, loving not their lives unto death and captured by the love of Christ and His love for the brethren, followed Him in such a way that they were able to keep the testimony of Jesus going in a dark and dreary land.
Brothers and sisters, when we think about those throughout history and our heritage who have gone before us in such a wonderful way, it encourages us. This love of Christ had captured Paul’s heart in such a way that he was a poured-out drink offering.
He was so zealous for the Lord that at times they had to hide him and get him out of the city. He travailed so deeply that Paul was in agony at times. You can hear in his prayers his desire that Christ be formed in the saints.
The love of Christ had captured Paul’s heart, and it transformed his life.
We shared earlier how this phrase, “the love of Christ,” is used in three different epistles of Paul. In Romans 8:35, nothing is able to separate us from the love of Christ. That speaks of the security found in the love of Christ.
In 2 Corinthians 5, we read of the love of Christ constraining us. In 2 Corinthians, we see the sufficiency of the love of Christ.
In Ephesians 3:19, which we will read in a moment and spend most of our time considering today, we see the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge—the surpassing greatness of the love of Christ.
If we look at the security of the love of Christ, Paul gives his wonderful testimony in Romans 8:35-39 that there is absolutely nothing that can separate us from the love of Christ. How we need that to be settled within our hearts.
Even sin does not separate us from the love of Christ. Surely, it hinders fellowship and affects holiness, but it does not separate us, because while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Paul went through rejection, famine, starvation, and all the things he endured. Through all of that, he was able to testify, “I am persuaded. I am convinced.” He knew that nothing could separate us from the love of Christ.
Brothers and sisters, this love of Christ is a secure love. It is a love that will never let us go. We need to know daily that we have an older Brother holding the rope for us. Our older Brother holds the rope.
Paul also testified in 2 Corinthians to the sufficiency of the love of Christ. In every situation—whether in despair, shipwreck, beatings, or affliction—he knew that love. He even despaired of life.
He wrote of how everybody had forsaken him, yet the Lord stood with him and strengthened him, as he says in 2 Timothy. Paul knew the sufficiency of the love of Christ in every situation.
He knew that security. He knew that sufficiency. That was the foundation of his life, and that has to be the foundation of our lives.
We ask the question: Where do we find our sufficiency? Where do we find our security? We must know the security and sufficiency of the love of Christ before we can begin to comprehend the greatness and vastness of the love of Christ.
Do we find our security and satisfaction in the world, family, education, or the many things that pull us this way and that? We can allow our hearts to be drawn there.
But even within our Christian life, where do we find our security? As we serve the Lord day in and day out, where do we find our security? Where do we find our satisfaction?
I want to bring this down to a practical level and ask some questions. I trust that, as I ask them, I will be understood. All the things I am going to ask about are necessary and essential within our Christian life, and they are the fruit of being constrained by the love of Christ.
Do we find our security and satisfaction in His blessings to us? What do I mean by that? It is a blessing to gather together like this. It is a blessing to attend meetings. It is a blessing to come together in a few weeks for a conference.
The Lord has blessed us so much, even in the speakers for the conference this year—having Stephen and Lance and different ones available.
But do we find our security and confidence in the blessing of having a conference, in who will speak at the conference, or in going to meetings? Or do we find our security in the Blesser, the One who provides all of this?
Brothers and sisters, it is a subtle shift, but subtle shifts can throw us far off in the long term. We need to thank the Lord for all the blessings because He provides them all for us. But we do not want to allow the gifts He gives us to distract us from the Giver.
May His blessings not distract us from the Blesser, because the Blesser is our security. The Blesser is the One who will see us through to the end.
Let me ask another question: Do we find our security and satisfaction in our service to Him?
We should all serve the Lord. We have so many wonderful opportunities for service: children’s classes, the nursery, tape ministries, and service at the summer conference. The love of Christ should constrain us into service as we look to Him to serve Him.
But is our confidence and satisfaction in serving Him? Do we think we are better Christians because of our service? Or is our confidence and satisfaction in the Master?
Brothers and sisters, our confidence and our security are in our Master. We need to serve, but our security is not in our service. Our service is the fruit of being captured by the love of Christ.
Do we find our security and satisfaction in our knowledge of Him, or our knowledge of His Word? Are we secure because we know so much of the Word?
Now, we should know the Word. The Word should reside in our hearts. The Word should be very living within us. But our security is not in our knowledge of the Word. Our security is not even in our knowledge about Him—not in our knowledge of great doctrines and teachings.
Our security is in knowing Him, and in knowing that He knows us. “I have called thee by thy name.” “I fearfully and wonderfully made thee.”
Brothers and sisters, I trust the Holy Spirit will not bring confusion through these words. But I feel there are subtle things that, if we do not allow the Lord to touch them in our lives, may become a great calamity when the going gets tougher in the days ahead.
The only thing that gets us through is our foundation in Christ. Our works, our knowledge, our feelings, our experience, our history, and our relationships will not get us through. Simply being rooted and grounded in Christ will get us through to the end.
It is His love that has kept us to this point in time, and it is that love that will continue keeping us. May we know the all-sufficiency of the love of Christ in every situation. Whichever way the wind is blowing, the love of Christ is sufficient.
May we truly be rooted and grounded in Christ, and not draw false security even from the things of Him. I trust the Lord will cover this and not allow the enemy to bring confusion, because this is essential.
Let us continue this morning as we look at Ephesians 3:17-19. We come now to this matter of knowing the love of Christ and the surpassing greatness of that love.
This is Paul’s second prayer in the letter to the Ephesians. His first prayer was in Ephesians 1.
That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.—Ephesians 3:17-19
What a precious prayer. What a powerful prayer. I think that prayer echoes each one of our hearts: how we desire to be filled unto all the fullness of God.
When we consider this letter to the church in Ephesus, we see the love of Christ manifested throughout it. In Ephesians 5, Paul writes that Christ loved each one of us and died for us individually.
But in this letter, we also see that Christ loves the church and gave Himself up for her. We see the interrelationship, the essential nature, of the believer and the church woven together. They are not two separate things—an individual life and a church life. There is an interrelationship.
Christ died for the individual, and He died for the church. We will fellowship more about that later.
Paul begins this prayer by asking that we would be rooted and grounded in the love of Christ. He uses two metaphors: rooted, which comes from a plant or tree, and grounded, which speaks more of a building being firmly founded.
When Paul speaks of being rooted in Christ, he is speaking of a tree or plant whose roots go deeply into the soil for stability, nourishment, and strength. The roots find what they need in the soil where they are planted.
He calls us to be rooted in love—to be rooted in the love of Christ—because that is where we find our nourishment. That is where we find our daily bread.
The love of Christ is a Person. It is His character; it is His nature. The Lord wants us to be so rooted that we can feed upon Him, knowing Him as our daily bread.
There is a saying today: “You are what you eat.” So what are you? How many malnourished believers are there because we are not feeding on the Bread of Life?
I have been working in the yard lately, planting plants. The soil needs to be good soil. It needs nourishment and fertilizer in the right balance. You can get 10-10-10 and all kinds of combinations, whatever your yard may need.
But, brothers and sisters, Christ has a perfect combination of life for you. He knows each one of us individually. As the roots of our lives go into Him, He nourishes and feeds us in a very special way.
You look around this room: everybody is different. You look outside and see that all the trees are different. The Lord feeds each one. He knows the right nourishment for each one of us, and He has provided for us. May we truly feed upon Him.
Paul also speaks of being grounded, like a building built upon a solid rock. No matter what comes upon it, that building is immovable, as in the illustration of Matthew 7.
An earthquake can come. We had an earthquake in Seattle, and you could tell which buildings had a solid foundation. They swayed, but they did not break.
Brothers and sisters, as earthquakes come upon believers, there may be much swaying. But those who are solidly founded and grounded in our Lord may sway, yet they will not break, because the love of Christ is holding each one.
Being rooted and grounded is foundational and essential for individual life. But being rooted and grounded—knowing the security and sufficiency of the love of Christ—is also essential if we are to comprehend the love of Christ with all the saints.
We have to be rooted and grounded in the love of Christ if we are going to comprehend it with all the saints. Why? Because only as we are constrained by the love of Christ can we go through this process of comprehending His love with all the saints.
Only as we know the love of Christ and His keeping power will we be able to stay together and continue with all the saints.
If we do not know the love of Christ, we find that when things arise, we get offended. We get our feelings hurt. We have differences of interpretation over certain things. I am still trying to straighten Baganovich out on a couple of things. There is hope for these West Coast believers with different doctrine—but we can still love the Lord and go on together.
There are all sorts of things we can divide over. Brothers and sisters, the greatest contrast between the love of Christ and self-love is division. The love of Christ always unites.
Look at Christ. He saw total chaos. He saw a great division between man and God. What did the love of Christ do? It came and walked upon this earth that we might be one.
He prayed in John 17 that we could be one. That was the prayer of His heart, a prayer of love. The nature and characteristics of the love of Christ are unity. The love of Christ brings us together and holds us together, no matter how difficult things become.
Surely, we hurt one another. We can do much harm to each other. We are not only our own worst enemies; we can be one another’s worst enemies. If we do not know the love of Christ holding us, we will scatter our own way because self-love looks out for self-interest.
Self-love takes its little bundle and goes off to play by itself. It says, “It’s my party; I’ll cry if I want to.” Fine—see you later. I show my age with that one.
We have to laugh because it is so tragic. But when these hurts and differences come about, that is actually the most tremendous and wonderful opportunity for the love of Christ to be manifested. That is when it has to be worked out.
What do we need the love of Christ for if we always get along? But the Lord loves us so much that He is going to shake that which can be shaken. It is a hand of love that shakes us.
His love is not going to tolerate anything that is not of Him. He shakes us so that, in the end, the bride will be spotless. Brothers and sisters, as we have these opportunities, may we allow the love of Christ to come forward, not our own self-love.
Think of the One who was most offended, rejected, betrayed, and crucified. What did He say? “Father, forgive them.” That is the love of Christ. May that rule within our hearts.
We let such little things offend us. In our own eyes, they are big things; we make much of them. But, if we can see from His perspective, they are little things.
Throughout church history, these so-called little things have brought division. Baptism, the Lord’s table, whether there should be one cup, what kind of bread should be used, grape juice or wine, how many times we should partake—these become such big things that we split the whole church.
If we can come back to seeing the One who loved not His life unto death, the love of Christ will unite us and allow us to go on and find Him in every situation.
The love of Christ keeps us in proper perspective. It keeps our hearts focused on the one thing that is necessary. We do not become distracted by other things.
May our foundation be such that we are rooted and grounded in that love. When differences, hurts, and offenses come, may they become opportunities for the love of Christ to be manifested in a greater and fuller way within each one of our hearts.
Earlier, we said that the greatest manifestation of the love of Christ was Calvary. I would like to rephrase that. Today, brothers and sisters, another great manifestation of the love of Christ is when we deny ourselves and allow His love to come forth.
Just as Calvary was a manifestation of the love of Christ, the cross working within our lives is a great manifestation of the love of Christ. It is a tremendous testimony, not only to believers but to the world.
As we seek to share the gospel, one of the world’s greatest stumbling blocks is that there is no distinction between the church and the world.
The love of Christ is not a sloppy agape love that tolerates everything. He became sin on our behalf. He hated sin; He did not tolerate it. But He dealt with it, and He forgave it.
To the woman caught in adultery, He said, “Go thy way; from henceforth sin no more.” Yet He forgave her.
Brothers and sisters, the love of Christ manifested in believers is the greatest testimony that we can have upon this earth today. May the Lord work that within us so that it would be a holy glory.
We would not have to worry about the gospel going forth. In some of the greatest movements of the Holy Spirit, there were no gospel meetings at all. There was prayer and there were other things, and we must keep all things in perspective, but it was the lives of believers.
It was the love of Christ coming forth among believers. That is the love of Christ that will hold us.
Paul prays that we would be able to comprehend this love. But it is comprehending it with all the saints, because individually we can only apprehend a small part. Together, we can begin to comprehend.
It reminds me of Columbus discovering America. He did not even know what he had. He had one little beachhead, yet he had North America. It took centuries and millions of people to comprehend all of North America.
Each one of us has touched a little bit of the love of Christ. But all of us together, throughout all eternity, still will not come into knowing the fullness of that love.
As we walk upon this earth and interact with one another, I take in a little bit of the love of Christ, and you take in a little bit of the love of Christ. You go through something and discover the love of Christ.
Then we come together and share: “Look what I found. Look what I found.” I look around this room at what different ones have gone through. There is an overflow in the love of Christ. The discoveries of the love of Christ within this room would allow us to have a testimony meeting that would not end.
Each one of us sitting here is a miracle, with no credit of our own. Each one of us is a testimony of the love of Christ.
The more we see of this love of Christ, the more it opens our hearts for an increasingly fuller measure.
Paul continues with the phrase that we would know “the breadth and length and height and depth,” but it seems to dangle there. What is he talking about? He does not really finish the sentence.
If you were trying to diagram a sentence, this phrase would drive you crazy. Again, I am showing my age with diagramming sentences. I am looking at some of these young men, and they are wondering what I am talking about. I am just picking on them.
But the phrase does seem to dangle there. What is it speaking of? It is amazing how brilliant people can analyze a phrase. One brother wrote ten pages on this phrase. I read it a couple of times, and I could not figure out what he said at the end of the tenth page.
Some say that the breadth, length, height, and depth speak of the love of Christ. Others say they speak of Paul’s burden in this chapter: the mystery of Christ, God’s eternal purpose, and the family of God.
But actually, both are the same. The love of Christ is the very nature and characteristic of God’s heart and purpose. You cannot separate the love of Christ from God’s eternal purpose.
If we try to separate them, we end up with knowledge. We may have knowledge of His purpose, but we do not have the heart of His purpose. We do not have the One Himself.
That is one of the greatest prayers for each one of us as we prepare our hearts for the summer conference. The Lord wants to speak in a fresh way about what is upon His heart. What is His purpose? What is His desire?
Do we go there to acquire knowledge, or do we go there to learn of the heart of God? “Prepare our hearts, O Lord. Prepare our hearts to really hear what is being said.”
We have used this phrase several times today: “with all the saints.” Who are all the saints?
The love of Christ opens our hearts to see who all the saints are. It enlarges our hearts. The more we see who all the saints are, the more enlargement comes to our hearts.
If we say, “all the saints,” who are they to you? Our mouths would say, “All believers,” but what are our actions saying? As a man thinketh, so is he.
Brothers and sisters, all the saints, in a simple definition, are all the saints. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. It is all the saints.
We do not have any problem saying that. We say, “All the saints—wonderful, spiritual.” We sing songs about all the saints singing in glory, and we put on rose-colored glasses and imagine the saints going on forever and ever.
But then the Lord brings us together with another saint, and suddenly we begin to wonder whether he is really a saint.
The problem is that the Lord, in a paradoxical way, has chosen to put a treasure in earthen vessels.
We go through this life in these earthen vessels, sinning, making mistakes, and doing much harm. Do you think it was easy for the saints to live with Peter? Do you think it was easy even to live with Paul? Think of Paul and John Mark. There was great zeal there.
We can look at the early believers romantically, through rose-colored glasses, and not see the reality. These men were often contending with one another. Read the book of Acts. We have much trouble living together in these earthen vessels.
We will continue to have trouble living together in these earthen vessels except for one thing: there is a treasure within each one of us, brothers and sisters.
That is our hope. That is our confidence. This treasure within you and this treasure within me took the initiative, came and died, that we might be one.
That treasure—the very life we have within each of us—is working for His character to be formed. May we be merciful to one another as the Lord is in this process of forming us into His image.
May we be understanding with one another in a fresh way. May we not destroy one another by looking so much at the earthen vessel, looking so much at the outward, that we do not see the treasure within.
May we begin to see and comprehend with all the saints this fullness of the love of Christ. We need each other. We need fellowship. We need all the saints.
Again, when we say all the saints, what are we thinking of? Are we talking only about Group Six? Group Six rocks, but is that all the saints? Or is it everybody in this room? The city?
Brothers and sisters, all the saints are all the saints. That is whom the Lord is calling us to experience. Obviously, we cannot be with all the saints physically.
But there are saints at work, in neighborhoods, in schools, in Bible studies, and even here. There are ones in all these different places whom the Lord brings across our paths.
As we touch the Lord in each one of all the saints, we comprehend more and more of the vastness of the love of Christ. We comprehend more and more of the vastness of the body of Christ—of who all the saints truly are.
May we not limit in our own minds who all the saints are. By His grace, may we come into seeing the fullness of that.
Paul continues in this prayer that we would know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. He is praying a paradox. He says, in effect, “I want you to know something that is unknowable.”
It is an unanswerable prayer because of the vastness of the love of Christ. Individually, we cannot take it in; even with all the saints, we will not be able to comprehend that vastness. Yet He is calling us to press on.
When I think of comprehending and apprehending the love of Christ, I think of a child’s love for its mother. A child knows that the mother loves, but that little child does not comprehend how much. The child does not know all of the mother’s heart, but knows that the mother loves.
That little part which the child has is sufficient as the child grows up. As the child matures, he or she knows more and more of that mother’s love.
If there are several children, each child touches a different part of that mother’s heart. Each experiences it differently and comprehends something different. Together, they can apprehend a part of a mother’s love.
But what is the key to knowing this love? What is the key here in Ephesians? Brothers and sisters, this love Paul speaks of is a revelation. This love is knowing His heart.
In the book of Ephesians, Paul uses the word love more than in any of his other epistles. He uses agape, or a form of it, more in Ephesians than in Romans, with its sixteen chapters, and more than in Corinthians, which contains the great chapter on love.
We say that Ephesians is the high-water mark of the Lord revealing His heart and purpose to us. So here we have two things: love and revelation. You cannot have one without the other.
We want revelation, brothers and sisters. The key to revelation is knowing the love of Christ.
Paul had prayed earlier that the eyes of their hearts would be opened. What does the heart speak of? The heart speaks of love. When we say that someone is heartless, we mean that they have no love; they are cold.
To truly know someone is to know their heart. If we want to know the heart of God, it is the love of Christ that will reveal it to us.
Within the heart of God is His great love. True revelation and vision come from this love relationship with Him.
Now, you may say, “Mac, are you saying that we do not need the Word?” No, no. The love of Christ is all-inclusive. Love includes knowledge. Love includes understanding.
The Word is in our hearts. We have thoughts in our hearts. This is not merely emotional sentiment. We are so distorted in our understanding when we talk about love in this world today. We are speaking of the love of Christ.
Love includes knowledge, but knowledge does not necessarily include love. Knowledge puffs up. We can gain more and more knowledge, and knowledge will puff up.
You can acquire all the great doctrines. You can study and read books about God’s eternal purpose. Knowledge puffs up, and it does not know when to stop. It keeps puffing up until it explodes, and then there is a great catastrophe.
But love builds up.
Paul had touched the very heart of God. Because he knew the heart of God, he was able to write so freely of all the revelation of God in the book of Ephesians.
Think of Moses, David, and Paul. Moses knew the ways of God; he knew God’s heart. The people of Israel only knew His acts. They were looking at what He did, but Moses knew His ways.
David was a man after God’s own heart. God spoke to David’s heart and revealed His secrets to him.
Brothers and sisters, this is the relationship the Lord wants. He wants our hearts captured by His love. He does not want our hearts distracted by so many things in this world.
He wants our hearts to see and be encouraged by those who have gone before us. When we see how Moses, David, and Paul were so captured, we see all they went through—not only for themselves, but for God’s interest in the time in which they lived.
The surpassing greatness of the love of Christ captured them in a way that enabled them to go through anything placed before them by the enemy: the warfare, the challenges, and the great difficulties of their day.
They were able to go through because the Lord had captured their hearts, not only for themselves but for His purpose.
Brothers and sisters, as the Lord captures our hearts, because we are rooted and grounded in Him, then we will be able to comprehend with all the saints the length, breadth, depth, and height of the love of Christ. We will be able to continue pressing on.
When we think of how the love of Christ has kept people throughout the centuries, it causes our hearts to melt.
Brothers and sisters, I think we all have to confess that none of us really apprehends the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, individually or collectively. But we thank the Lord that we can be encouraged, because He is calling us forward.
I appreciate what was shared a couple of weeks ago: winter is over. In that great love letter from the Song of Solomon, it was love that drew the maiden forward. The love of Christ captures us and allows us to go forward.
As she rose up and went forward, the Lord was able to transform her life. May, as we rise up and go forward, the Lord transform our lives.
We have a choice. We can remain where we are. We can stay where we are in life. Perhaps we are very comfortable where we are. We can stay in our comfort zones.
But the love of Christ wants to get us out of those comfort zones into a fuller, more complete expression of His heart and His desire.
We have a choice. We can stay offended. We can stay unforgiving. We can stay discouraged. But the love of Christ wants to get us out of our rights and get us on with His heart, His purpose, and His desire.
In these last days, it says that the love of many will grow cold. Something must have been hot at first, but it grew cold.
But if we look at the love of Christ, His heart never grew cold. His heart never grows cold. His heart will never be cold. We have that heart. We have that very life within us.
May we not quench it, but may we allow that love of Christ to be manifested in a fuller and greater way.
Oh, brothers and sisters, the Lord has brought us together in a wonderful way. The love of Christ has kept us together. Much has happened—much heartbreak and much sorrow—but the love of Christ is forever the same.
We do not know what is ahead, but we know Who is ahead. We know that the love of Christ, as it has kept us and as it is keeping us, will continue to keep us, that Christ may be formed in us.
May we, in a fresh way, continue to offer ourselves to the Lord.
As Paul concludes this prayer, I will read Ephesians 3:20-21 as our concluding prayer. It gives us hope and encouragement. As the love of Christ has captured the hearts of the saints, Paul looks unto the One with a wonderful declaration.
Brothers and sisters, this is our declaration as we go forward: He can work within us as we give ourselves to Him.
Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
unto him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever. Amen.—Ephesians 3:20-21