Good morning. Can we go ahead and turn to Ephesians Chapter 4? Ephesians Chapter 4.
Let us start off by reading verses 1 through 3.
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called,
with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing forbearance to one another in love,
being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Then, out of Ephesians Chapter 1—toward the end of the chapter—is Paul’s first prayer in this letter. We are not going to read the whole prayer, but I would like to read a couple of verses, more or less the heart of the prayer: Ephesians 1:18-19.
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened,
so that you may know what is the hope of His calling,
what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,
and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.
These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might.
Then back over to Ephesians Chapter 3. This is generally referred to as Paul’s second prayer. He actually has a few little prayers scattered throughout this letter, but there are a couple of bigger ones that get referred to most of the time. Ephesians 3, starting in verse 14 through the end of the chapter.
For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father,
from Whom every family in heaven 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,
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,
and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.Now to Him Who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us,
to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.
Let us pray.
Lord, we do rejoice that we have had this opportunity to remember You at Your table. We are thankful for Who You are, that Giver. We are thankful for the gift You gave. We are thankful for the privilege we have, in an unhindered way, to respond and give You thanks.
Lord, we come to Your Word in a similar spirit. You are the very Giver of those words of life. You have given us that great gift of Your Son in the living Word, and we do want to be giving You our hearts to receive the words that You have for us.
We are thankful that You still speak to us. We see the days we are living in, and it just points us more and more to Your soon return. So how we want to have ears to hear this day what the Spirit says to the churches. In Thy name we pray. Amen.
I previously shared out of Ephesians Chapter 4, those first few verses there, about being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Love is that perfect bond of unity, as it says in Colossians. As we are all very much aware, the unity of believers is very much under attack in these days.
There are a lot of things going on in the periphery, but the heart of the issue is that there is a great battle over the unity of believers. There is a battle over the testimony of our Lord Jesus Christ among the people of God. We are thankful that God has made provision for us in Christ to be diligent to preserve that unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
As I was considering this, it led me to Paul’s second prayer in Ephesians Chapter 3 that we first read. The burden of that prayer was that the saints—that we would all live in the fullness of what God has given to us, the fullness that He has for us. The key to living in that fullness was the love of Christ.
We know also that in this first prayer that we read, Paul prayed that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened. These two prayers are very different, but they really complement each other and enhance one another. You cannot have one of these prayers without the other if you want to enter into the fullness of God’s heart.
That first prayer is praying that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened. We would know what God’s purpose is. We would know His heart, His desire, His great plan. The second prayer is that, by the love of Christ, we would be captured in such a way that it would become reality—experiential reality.
The words in that first prayer, when it talks about knowing, are really speaking of knowing intellectually. There are two different Greek words between the first prayer and the second prayer. The knowing in the second prayer is experiencing the reality of it—not just a concept, but entering into the experience and reality of it.
How is that done? It is all by grace, and it is by the love of Christ.
There are a couple of people who have compared these two prayers. Brother Robert Govett summarized them in a very succinct way. He said that the first prayer speaks of the eyes of our heart being enlightened to know God’s plan, while the second is Christ dwelling in our hearts to give the knowledge of His love.
Light is good. Obviously, we need that light, that enlightenment. But fullness of power, fullness of knowledge of the love of Christ, is better. How we need these two mixed together, flowing together in a oneness.
Too often we approach things as an either-or situation, whereas in Christ they are inclusive. They are both. You cannot have one without the other. We want the fullness of Christ. We need that vision, but we also need the love of Christ. One without the other is not a complete fullness of Christ.
There is another dear saint, a sister named Ruth Paxton. As she compares the two prayers, she says that in the first prayer you have revelation, enlightenment, and light; but in the second prayer you have realization, enablement, and life.
Not just to have a revelation, but to have a realization of that revelation. Not just to have enlightenment, but to have an enablement to enter into the fullness of that. Not just light, but life. That is what our Lord is after.
To me, these summaries provide one of the keys that unlocks the whole book of Ephesians and helps us see the real heart of God. We are thankful how, in the first three chapters of the letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul very clearly lays out God’s eternal purpose in His heart—a purpose that has amazed us for years and years—and God’s call upon our lives in Christ and the church.
But the question is often asked: How do we enter into this? We can see the concept. We can hear the teaching, and we can know it. But how do we enter into it? We enter into it by knowing, in an experiential way, the love of Christ being lived within our hearts—that love which surpasses knowledge.
It is not that knowledge is not important, but knowledge in and of itself is not the end. It is leading us into the fullness of everything that He wants to express through His life.
We are very thankful. We have been so blessed that over the years we have heard much about God’s eternal purpose. We have heard much about the need for vision, for revelation, and we pray for that. But we have to ask ourselves: We are thankful for the portion of that which we have experienced, but why have we not entered into more of it? Why have we not entered into more of the fullness of what God is after in this day and time?
I think the key to that is found in this whole matter of the love of Christ. The more that love—the love of Christ—captures our hearts, the more we will be entering into what is upon His heart and what is His desire. The more we can be those who are really captured by Him, the more we will enter into that.
It is interesting, as I was thinking about this matter of the love of Christ, that it is obviously the Greek word agape. Agape can be a noun: the love of Christ. It can be a verb: Christ loved us and died for us.
I am an accountant, so I have to explain nouns and verbs to people—any other accountants in the room? I am not picking on you. I know you are just a guest. Wrong timing on that one.
But we see this thought of agape, that divine love. It made me think: In which of Paul’s writings did he use agape the most? My first thought went to 1 Corinthians, that great chapter on love.
In 1 Corinthians, you have sixteen long chapters, and Paul uses agape, either as a noun or verb, sixteen times. Then I thought, perhaps Romans. In Romans we see that love abroad; we see the great love that brought about so great a salvation. Love is used in Romans seventeen times in those sixteen chapters.
But in this little book of Ephesians—only six chapters, compared to those other two books of sixteen chapters—agape is used twenty times. If you tried to carry that out proportionately compared to Corinthians or Romans, it would be over forty times.
We see how, just in these six little chapters, Paul uses this word that describes divine love over twenty times. To me, that showed something of the very essence and heart of what God was after: for the fullness of His purpose, the fullness of the life of His Son, and that corporate expression to be made manifest.
The key to it is His love working in all of our hearts and all of our lives. Without that love of Christ coming into our hearts and lives, there is not going to be that fullness that He is so jealous for and that He is after.
The more I thought about the key of love, and how much Paul poured his heart on this matter into the church of Ephesus, it also shed a little more light on what the Lord instructed John to write in Revelation 2 concerning those in Ephesus.
They had the knowledge. They had the works. They had all the good deeds. But what had they left? They had left their first love. The very thing that Paul had poured into them over and over again—twenty times—was the thing that they ended up leaving.
They had much that they had been doing, much in which they were faithful, but they had left their first love. Seeing how Paul had related that to them in such a wonderful way over and over shed new light on Ephesians—the vital nature of first love, especially in the days and times that we are living in, where there is such a battle for this.
I was thinking about Paul’s life also in this regard. We know in Acts 9 Paul had that dramatic conversion experience on the road to Damascus. He saw the Lord, and the Lord revealed Himself to him. Many refer to that as a heavenly vision that Paul had.
Later we see how he writes of the fullness of this vision in the letter to the church in Ephesus. But what happened between Acts 9 and the time Paul wrote that letter to the church in Ephesus some years later?
One of the keys that we see is found in 2 Corinthians 5. Paul shares a wonderful testimony there of what controlled his life. Since we have been studying that, most will already know it, but I will read it again.
For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died;
and He died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him Who died and rose again on their behalf.
The love of Christ controlled Paul. What the love of Christ did within Paul’s life was to take that vision he had on the road to Damascus and bring about a full realization of all that God had for His people.
That vision and that love of Christ coming together brought about the revelation that Paul was no longer living for himself. He was no longer just doing his own thing, but he was living for the One Who loved and died for him.
Paul is not speaking of his love for Christ. We know Paul had a love for Christ, but our love has ends and bounds. He was speaking of the love of Christ. That love of Christ controlled Paul in such a way that he was able to enter into the fullness.
He was able to write about this surpassing knowledge and surpassing love—all of the superlative words that he used throughout the letter to the church in Ephesus. I think Paul, even through what he was seeing, saw that he was still only seeing in part. There were things far beyond. There was so much more.
It created within him a jealousy, as he writes about in Philippians, of pressing on to know Him more and more. That jealousy Paul had to press on came out of experiencing the love of Christ in his heart, and it drove him into a fuller and greater revelation of Christ Himself.
With this background on Paul’s second prayer in the letter to the church in Ephesus, I wanted to go into some of those specific verses of that chapter in a little more detail. The first question is this: We are talking a lot about the love of Christ, but what is the love of Christ?
Many have said throughout the years that if you try to define it, you confine it, because the love of Christ really cannot be defined. What we end up doing is trying to describe it. You start to describe it, and you cannot fully describe it.
It is a love that left the splendor of heaven. Out of a heart for His Father, a heart for mankind, and a heart for His church, He left all the splendor and beauty of heaven.
It was a love that enabled Him—a love that kept Him—to go through all the humiliation of being born in Bethlehem, of suffering the humility of being born in a manger. It gets so glorified in the next month or so, but we see how there was that love that allowed Him, that gave Him grace, to go through the humiliation.
It was a love that enabled Him to go through those hidden years of Nazareth. Most of His life upon this earth was hidden. We do not know much about it. But there was a love that kept Him, because we can imagine that within Him He was bursting forth to be about His Father’s business. Yet He also knew when His time was to come.
He had that desire to be all that the Lord had called Him to be upon this earth, and that love held Him in a hidden way. Self and the flesh hate to be hidden. We want to be seen. If anybody had a message to be told to the nations, it was Christ. But He had to be hidden.
Somehow, we have something we want to share, and maybe we are hidden away for a while, set aside. Paul had to be set aside for a while. Moses had to be set aside for a while. Are we willing, as the love of Christ constrains us, to be hidden? Or do we have to be seen and known?
It was a love that enabled Him to go through the rejection in Judea, where it says that He came to His own, and His own received Him not. It was a love that held Him through rejection. When we are rejected, what is our first thought? Revenge? Or is the love of Christ holding us through those times of rejection?
It was a love that held Him through times of misunderstanding, when He would be sharing and was so misunderstood, so mistreated. It was a love that held Him through that. It was a love that held Him through Gethsemane, enabling Him to pray, “Not My will, but Thy will be done.”
It was that love within His heart that enabled Him to go to Calvary, to suffer and die in that humiliation. It was also a love that raised Him to the throne in victory. Praise God.
That love of Christ does not end at Calvary. The love of Christ ends on that throne in victory, and that is what we have been brought into.
Sometimes people in this world talk about love and paint it in such a beautiful, snowflake-type way. There are no problems. Love is great. You will never have any problems. If you get hurt, it is not love. But no—look at the love of Christ.
There is rejection. There is humiliation. There is suffering. All that we could come into the fullness of what He has called us to. That is the love we are talking about.
The love of Christ is not a thing. It is Christ Himself. Christ Himself is the personification of God’s love. That is what we are desiring to be, and that is what He desires His church to be: the very personification of His love seen upon this earth in this day and time.
As we look at this second prayer, I am going to read again four verses, from Ephesians 3:16-19, because this is what we want to focus on.
That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man;
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,
and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
This is Paul’s prayer, and really in verse 16 you see Paul’s great burden for those in Ephesus: that Christ would increase within them and that they would decrease. He prays that they would be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man.
The whole issue that Paul was after was that within the inner man, within our life, the life of Christ would be in control. It is the battle over who is in control of our life. Through His Spirit—that power dwelling within us—we would decrease and He would increase.
Not that we might decrease, but as John the Baptist said, “We must decrease, and He must increase.” This is the burden in this prayer.
Paul continues: Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and 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, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
When he talks about Christ dwelling in our hearts, this Greek word for dwelling does not refer to a visitor. It means making a permanent residence there. It means taking up home. It is somebody who lives there permanently, not somebody just coming in for a brief visit.
This is Christ living as the permanent Master of our hearts and within our lives. With Him truly being Master within our lives, we would be rooted and grounded in love.
When we think about being rooted and grounded in love, it is His love that He wants us to be rooted and grounded in. He is not talking about being rooted and grounded in works, knowledge, or doctrine. It is His love—the very love of Christ being lived within us—that we are to be rooted and grounded in.
When you think about being rooted, you think about something living: a plant, trees, things like that. What are the roots for? The roots go down into that rich soil and draw forth nutrients and living water from that soil so that they can grow and bear fruit.
There is a going down and a bearing fruit upward. Remember the parable of the sower. After the seed was sown, what was the issue within each one? It had to do with their roots. Either they ended up developing no roots, or there were shallow roots, or tangled roots.
It was the roots going down. The more we go down into the love of Christ, the more we allow that life within Him to go down, and the more we are rooted and grounded in it, there is a drawing forth of nutrients. There is the coming forth of the fruit of the Spirit, the coming forth of the fruit of His life.
That is what it is all about. When you speak of a plant and its fruit, the fruit is not for the plant. It is always for others. It is always for others.
That is what Christ’s life was: always for others. Sadly, I know in my own life, a lot of times my life is for me. That is why I think I have been touched so much by this love of Christ, because I am tired of living for me. I want to be living for Him more and more.
Then it speaks of being grounded, or some translations say founded. This speaks of the foundation of a building. Why does a building need a foundation? I have four S’s: strength, security, support, and stability.
I am not going to touch much more on foundations because we have an expert over here who can handle it. We have heard through the years about the necessity of a foundation. We need that foundation because it provides strength, security, and stability during the storms of life.
It is interesting, when huge hurricanes come, where do you see the weather people? They are either on a parking deck or in some very secure building. Most of them are not standing by a mobile home to watch a tornado come. They are somewhere else.
A foundation is normally hidden, but it supports the whole structure. It carries the weight of the whole structure. That is what the love of Christ is doing. It is carrying the whole weight. It carries all of our weight. It keeps us stable through any storm and provides the security and strength that we need.
Being grounded speaks of that place of security, stability, and safety that we have in Christ. Do you ever stop and think of the secure love we have in Him?
If you do, go over to Romans 8, starting around verse 35. The question is asked, “Who can separate us from the love of Christ?” It goes through this wonderful exposition, but the bottom line is absolutely nothing. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. That is the secure place we have.
Tragically today, many believers—and I have been convicted myself—are not taking the time to get rooted and grounded in Him. That is why, as Ephesians says, when every little wind of doctrine comes along, we are tossed about.
“Oh, here is a new teaching. We can go over here. Oh, here is a new teaching.” Or a natural disaster or something like a pandemic comes along, and we get wiped out by this. Brothers and sisters, our Lord in His great love wants us to be rooted and grounded in Him.
Allowing that love to nourish us, strengthen us, and flourish us, so that in the midst of the storm we would be people who are a testimony unto Him.
I love when weather stations go back after a huge hurricane and find one building, or perhaps one strong tree, still standing. They point out something where you have one house standing or one tree standing and everything else is destroyed and faded away.
Would that be our testimony in the midst of the storm? That it was not I, but it was Christ. Through the tragedies of all that we are going through in this day, would our roots be so rooted and grounded in Him that we could stand and be the testimony He is calling us to be in this hour?
That is a great need among believers. That is why I have appreciated how, in recent days, there has been more and more emphasis on praying for the church.
The election has awakened us in many ways, but the beauty of it is that I see so many believers praying more intently in these days. There is a reviving of prayer among God’s people. My prayer is that it does not fade away after Tuesday.
We need to be praying just as hard after Tuesday, regardless of what the results are, just as hard for God’s testimony and God’s people after Tuesday as we do today, before Tuesday. We are seeking for His kingdom to come. That is the real prayer.
So I will encourage you: Let us be here tonight. We get a chance to pray. I was not able to be here last week, but I am planning on being here tonight. That was verse 17—my little advertisement there.
Let us come back to verse 19, where it says, “To know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.”
I appreciate how Paul prays that we would know the love of Christ. This knowing here is experiential knowing. It is not just head knowledge, but knowing because you have experienced this in life.
To me, that is the testimony of Paul in Romans 8, when he talks about nothing separating him from the love of Christ. He is not just waxing poetically in some beautiful way. He is talking about things he has been through and experienced in life. He knows there is nothing that can separate him from the love of Christ.
That is how we can enter into that fullness of Christ. It is interesting that Paul uses a paradoxical term: he is praying for us to know something that surpasses knowledge.
What he is really trying to get our attention to is that we would be those experiencing this more and more. Do not wait until we have a full apprehension or comprehension of it. Rather, experience it and allow it to develop more and more.
I was thinking of it like a child knowing a parent’s love. When a child grows up in a home, they cannot really comprehend or know the full love that a parent has for them. They just have this sensing, this feeling, that their parents love them.
They may not even know what the word is, but they know there is a place of security, a place of safety, a place of comfort, a place where they can grow in the environment of love that their parents provide.
Because of that, they can grow in love, even though they do not fully comprehend their parents’ love. Quite often, I did not know how much my parents loved me until I was about thirty years old and began looking back.
When I was growing up, what they called love I did not think was very lovely. Of course, some of it was brought on by my own actions. But you can look back and see the great love that parents have.
In many ways, that is how we grow in Christ. We do not fully comprehend it. We do not fully apprehend everything about this love, but we touch different aspects of it. We grow in that, and we continue to grow in it in a fuller and greater way.
That is what leads us into the fullness of Christ, that full expression of Who He is and everything. It is a powerful life. It is a powerful love that we have been brought into, and He is so jealous for it.
If we go back to verse 18, Paul prays that we may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.
English scholars have difficulty with this particular verse because it is called a dangling phrase. “What is the breadth and length and height and depth,” and then it just stops. That gives expositors and commentators great delight in debating what exactly Paul is speaking about here.
Some say it is speaking about God’s purpose, God’s eternal purpose. That is true. When you start to think of all that God has within His purpose, His realm, and His desire, there is a breadth, length, height, and depth to it that is beyond comprehension.
Others say that it relates to the love of Christ, and that is true too: the breadth, length, height, and depth of His love. But to me, it is not an either-or question. It speaks of both because they are interrelated.
Why is the love of Christ so critical? The love of Christ is so critical for us so that we can enter into the fullness of God’s heart and purpose. If we only have God’s heart as teaching, if we only have the knowledge of it, all we have is a concept. All we have is a teaching. Perhaps we even have an idol of some concept.
But once the fullness of His heart comes in, that is what we are brought into. We cannot be absolutely sure that this passage speaks only of the love of Christ or only of God’s purpose, but we will look at it today in relation to the love of Christ because I believe it speaks of both.
With that long explanation, which most people probably did not even need, it is amazing how, even when you look at the love of Christ, some commentators can make such an argument over it. Do not anybody ever write a commentary unless you like to argue with people or debate. Maybe Daniel could—he loves debating. I will pick on Daniel and embarrass him, and he will have to forgive me because he loves me.
But as you look at this verse, one of the things that caught me was how it speaks of comprehending with all the saints. I think that is so critical, because no one saint can comprehend the fullness of Christ. No one assembly can comprehend the fullness of Christ.
Do we ever stop and really think about how much our Lord wants this relationship—this love of Christ for which He died for us? Do we ever stop and think about how jealous He is for this relationship with His bride?
There is a love that motivated Him. Have we ever stopped to see the significance of that love and how we have been brought into this? We talk about the bride being made ready. How is she made ready? It is by the love of Christ working within our hearts and lives.
When Adam first saw Eve, he said, “This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” I believe that when the bride is made ready, it will not be so much about bone of bone and flesh of flesh, but it will be heart to heart. There will be a love relationship there.
That marriage will be the full consummation and culmination of all that love. The love of the bride for what the Lord is after, and the bride’s love for the love of Christ, will merge more and more into a oneness, into all that He is desiring. This is what He is after.
We have experienced some of it. We want to experience it so much more.
Paul uses words that we would call measurements: breadth, length, height, and depth. This does not imply that God can be measured. Do not anybody think there is a breadth, length, height, and depth to Him. No. What it shows us is the vastness of His love.
It shows us how His love is beyond measure. There is a vastness to it. Naturally, we love to put God and His love in a box and say, “This is how God operates. This is His love.”
We do it unconsciously, or sometimes consciously. Most of us, when we think we have a concept of how God works, have a little box. “This is how He works in here.” Then, when something operates outside that box, we cannot see it or recognize it.
But God, in this hour and the day we are living in, is shattering all of our little boxes. Praise God for that, because that is setting us free to serve Him and to love Him in a fuller and greater way.
As I was considering this, I was listening one night, and I heard someone ask the question, “Is there anything God cannot do?” My initial reaction was, “No, God can do all things. He is all-powerful. He can do everything.”
Their answer was, “There is one thing that God cannot do, and that is to love you any more than He already does.”
God cannot love any of us any more than He already does. By our good works, we cannot gain or earn any more of His love. His love should produce good works. Love wants to be expressed. But our works do not make Him love us any more.
By our sinning, neglecting, or disobeying Him, He does not love us any less. It might grieve Him and hurt Him, but He does not change anything toward us.
He can never love us any more than He already has. He has loved us from eternity past, and He loves us to eternity. That is the same.
In one way, that is a hard thing for our natural self to accept: to know that God cannot love me any more. We always feel like we have to do something to earn more. “If I do this, He will love me more.” No. God cannot love us any more. Can we accept that?
We know that we are accepted in the Beloved. That is a whole other message; we will not go there. But see this great love He has for us.
You know who shared that? It was Joyce Meyer. Now, I am not endorsing her ministry, but I am not writing it off either. She is a sister, and I am to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace until we all attain to the unity of the faith. That thought she shared has really meant something to me.
When we think of God’s love, to me one of the greatest displays of God’s love has been 2020. This whole year, I have been so thankful for it. It has shown us one of the greatest displays of God’s love in recent times.
Do you know why? Because He is shaking us to get our attention—shaking us to set us free from the things that are hindering us from loving Him in a fuller way, shaking us from getting settled down and being so comfortable in complacency.
He is shaking us with a pandemic, shaking us with lawlessness, shaking us with natural disasters, shaking us with the election. Whatever can be shaken is going to be shaken. We are all getting shaken out. If one of them does not get you, the other one does.
Out of your comfort zone—whatever you were comfortable in, it is being shaken. Things you like to do and do not like to do are being shaken. Our concepts are being shaken. Even our religious concepts and our economic security are being shaken.
Everything is being shaken because He has a desire that we would not find security in anything else but Him. He is giving us this opportunity to draw closer to Him, come to Him, and bring forth a growth of our life within Him.
When we go through all of these various shakings, what comes out? Fear, uncertainty, anxiety. We have to do things we do not like to do. We feel helpless. We feel frustrated. Our minds wander into all the “what ifs.” What if this happens? What if that happens?
We find that many things we experienced in the past are changing, and we are not comfortable with change. But God has said, “I want to be your comfort. I want all of your comfort to be in Me.”
It is really testing our hearts, even testing our hearts for the gospel. We see so many people out there rioting and protesting. I do draw a distinction between rioting and protesting, but what do you feel toward those who are rioting? Are you angry? Are you disgusted? Or do you have compassion and pray for them for the gospel?
You may have all three feelings at the same time, but we have to make sure the gospel is in there. That is the heart. That is the love of Christ that we need to be brought into.
The circumstances of this year have brought to light, for many of us, things we were not even conscious of: various thoughts, opinions, and preferences. Things are coming to light. We have always had injustice, but now all of these injustices are coming to light.
They touch many areas in our lives, but this is where the love of Christ wants to be shed abroad in our hearts.
As we look at the love of Christ—at the breadth, length, height, and depth of it—we want to consider for a moment the different ways that it impacts our hearts and lives.
When we think of the breadth of God’s love, or the love of Christ, it is as broad as the entire human race. He died for all. Ken even mentioned John 3:16 this morning.
That is the breadth that reaches to the unlovely. It reached to Judas. It reaches to Hitler. It reaches to Bin Laden. It reaches to murderers, abortionists, rapists, addicts, and on and on. It reaches to every one of us.
There is no limit to the breadth of His love. He loves all mankind. God so loved the world—the whole world, not just the good part of it. He died for all.
How about the breadth of the love of Christ in us? Who does it reach to? Does it reach beyond our family, beyond our circle of friends, beyond these four walls? Or is our love of Christ confined within these four walls?
Does it reach beyond a circle of assemblies with which we are involved? Does the love of Christ in our hearts reach to all the saints? It finds us out pretty quickly.
That is the beauty and glory of the things that are shaking this year: that the love of Christ would truly have a breadth expressed through the people of God. What is the testimony of Jesus? What is the church? It is the expression of His life.
His life has a breadth to it. His love has that breadth to reach all mankind and all the saints—not just those who believe like we do, but all of us. May the Lord help us.
The length of His love is timeless and changeless. It never began, and it never ends. Praise God. Think of the extreme length He went to save us. We sang about some of it this morning.
See the extreme length He went to. There was nothing that would hinder Him from coming and dying for us.
How about the length of Christ’s love in us? Does it have boundaries? Do we have limitations when we are misunderstood, when we disagree, when someone has a different opinion, interpretation, political belief, or personality?
We all have built within us, in that old natural man, instant preferences and prejudices. A person can walk into this room, and immediately, based on our own experience, preferences, and prejudices, we have an evaluation of that person in our natural self.
The love of Christ sees beyond that and sees them as a person—either a saint or a potential saint. We want to be those who have that great length there.
The height is the glory that He takes us to: to be seated with Him in the heavenlies. One brother described His love as like a spiral staircase by which the guiltiest may climb from the dark dungeon to the royal palace.
Praise God, He has taken us out of that dark dungeon and brought us into a royal palace. What a height He has brought us into.
The greatest example of the height and depth of His love in a person is Jacob. You see the height of His love in the name Israel. You see the depth of His love in the name Jacob—the depth that He went to.
Are we experiencing the height of His love? The power of His love frees us from everything that would drag us down to this world of discouragement. The power of that love sets us free from the things of this world.
The power of His love sets us free from anger, frustration, and all that may arise when there is a certain brother with whom we have difficulty, or someone whom we simply do not like. Is the power of His love greater than that? That is the testimony.
There is a depth to His love. It is the depth He went down to in order to redeem us and raise us up. There is no sin so profound, no despondency so low, and no misery so abject that He cannot go down and bring us up.
In Psalm 139, it speaks about how, if we make our bed in Sheol, behold, He is there. There is a depth to His love.
How is the depth of our love displayed? How about toward the dear one who has fallen again and again, when we think they should know better? Do we still go down and reach to help them come up?
I was talking with a brother this week, and he gave me a Chinese proverb. He said, “Just because it takes three bowls of rice to fill one’s stomach, it does not mean the first two bowls are not working.”
What does that mean? Maybe you are trying to help somebody in a certain situation. You help them one time and do not see much reaction. You help them a second time and do not see much reaction. But then the third bowl brings some response.
It does not mean those first two times did not count. After we go the extra mile for one, are we willing to go the extra second mile? Are we willing to go the extra third mile? That is the depth that God went to in order to grab each one of us. May we be willing to do that also.
It is easy. I have experienced it in my own life: “Well, I tried once. They did not respond.” What is God calling us to? Maybe He is calling us to respond again.
Back in verse 17, it talked about Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith. Do we really believe that there is no end to the breadth and length of His love, and that there is no end to the height and no end to the depth? Do we really believe that?
Then we have the question: How does the reality of this love get worked out in our life? What was the greatest display of the love of Christ?
The greatest display of the love of Christ is the cross. That is the greatest display.
At Calvary, we see the Lord denying Himself: “Not My will.” The more and more we want to enter into that love of Christ, there must be an allowing of that cross to work within us.
Every time I read the Gospels, toward the end of them, when you come to the last couple of chapters and see how much the Lord had to suffer, all He went through, that enduring love—I get convicted. I see how shallow my love is.
It is a good habit: go back and read the end of the Gospels, from Gethsemane on. Throughout the whole Gospels we see His love, but then toward the end you see the greatest display of His love, right there at Calvary.
That is how this becomes reality: the love of Christ. Are we willing to do that? If we are constrained by Him, that is what Paul said in his testimony: “I am constrained by the love of Christ, that I am no longer living for myself, but for Him Who loved me and died for me.”
That is the cross. That is the cross working in reality within Paul, allowing that love to come forth. Would the cross be working within us?
He has made every provision for us. In the situations God brings us into in life, He has made every provision for us in Christ. He has given us not only His abundant love, but abundant grace to come through.
One of the things we were challenged with in 2 Corinthians was not taking the grace of God in vain. Sometimes I hear believers say, “I cannot do this. I will not do that.” To me, when I hear, “I cannot, I will not,” that is a real challenge.
Are we taking the grace of God in vain? His love is there. His grace is there. It is simply us denying ourselves. “I cannot” is a true statement. I cannot, but He can. That is where our sentence needs to continue.
“I cannot love that one. I cannot be with that one. I do not like that person.” That is true. There are people we do not like. Sometimes they are hard to be with. But do we press on and say, “I cannot, but God can”?
The love of Christ within me has a breadth, length, height, and depth. I am going to prove God, prove that love to overcome. That is overcoming in His life.
As I mentioned, in this day and time He is doing a lot of shaking so that we can see everything we have been trusting in and finding security in. Because of what we are going through, we see that we do not like change.
Even within an assembly, at times, some of our diversity has come forth in ways that we had not really seen before. We have a lot more thoughts and opinions than during so-called normal times. During 2020, many thoughts, opinions, and perspectives have surfaced.
We are not comfortable with diversity. We are not comfortable with change in ourselves. But do we allow that love of Christ to help us through that and keep us through that?
If not, we can fall into the trap of judging one another, having preferences over one another. If someone has a certain perspective or opinion, we say, “Well, I am right; they are wrong.” They may just have a different perspective. That does not necessarily mean it is right or wrong.
We might say, “I can do this. I did this. I did that. Therefore, am I more spiritual than them?” Generally, it is the little actions in life that can bring about division. All the enemy needs for that seed of division to come in is a little crack.
Just a little crack, and that seed gets planted. It can divide brothers and sisters through various things. We have had plenty of opportunities for that to occur.
Whether you are talking about masks—everybody has opinions on masks—or whether you meet on Zoom or meet in person, praise God, we are meeting together. Some are in person, and some are on Zoom. Praise God for that.
We have some in our midst who are for Biden and some who are for Trump. Praise God, because that is a challenge for us. I am thankful that we are not one hundred percent for Biden or one hundred percent for Trump, because all of a sudden that can become one’s unity and oneness.
Anything other than Christ that unites us has to be shattered. People are entitled to have different opinions from a political perspective. We may not understand that, but does the love of Christ hold us through that?
Sometimes a young saint asks to sing a chorus. Us older ones, do we think, “Am I going to sing that, or is that just too shallow? I am too spiritual to sing that song”? Or perhaps an older person asks for a hymn, and a younger person says, “Oh, that is so dead. I am not going to sing that.”
If we are honest, we all have these thoughts and impressions when people ask for various songs, prayers, or other things. Can we rise above our thoughts and prejudices and, even in that, sing for the sake of the love of Christ?
Sing for the sake of the unity that we have. Sing for the sake of preserving the unity in the bond of peace, for the testimony that we can go on together.
As I mentioned, most of these are not major issues that bring about division. It is these small things that can creep in, and all of a sudden they can become something big.
May the actions of others not impact our hearts. So often, the actions of others impact how we think. I am not speaking now about the actions of people in the world. I am speaking about among brothers and sisters.
Do not allow the actions of a brother or sister to impact the love of Christ in our hearts. Would we rise above that and really see what God is doing in this day and time? He is shattering all of our little comfort zones.
Our little box that says, “God operates in this way,” is being shattered. I praise God for that, and that is why I am so thankful for this year.
I need to wrap it up, but may we see that His heart of love is so much better than our petty little things—these petty little things that at times we make so big. May His heart of love overwhelm us so that we can let those things go.
To reiterate, we need to know about His teaching. We need to know about His heart and purpose. But we need that vision to become reality within our hearts and lives by the love of Christ being worked out within us in a fuller and greater way.
We could then enter into being rooted and grounded in His love—rooted and grounded in a way that we would be the testimony He is calling us to be. We would be those who display in life the breadth, length, height, and depth of His love.
May we be those who do not take the grace of God in vain.
To me, this is one of the reasons Paul concludes this prayer with these two wonderful verses in Ephesians 3:20-21. As we allow that love of Christ to be working within us, he again returns and gives God the glory.
Now to Him Who is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we ask or think,
according to the power that works within us,
to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.
Praise God for that. The Lord can touch us, and we see the impossible. We ask for something, and He goes beyond what we ask or think, according to the power that works in us—the power of His life, the power of His love.
There is a power that has overcome death. There is a power seated on the throne, living within us. It is all for His glory.
When the love of Christ is seen in our hearts and lives, when the testimony of Jesus is seen, when we as an assembly and as a people of God are known by the love of Christ, He receives the glory because people are not noticing us.
I was talking with someone recently and heard something wonderful: when you serve and you are not noticed, there is a beauty there. Some, when they serve, love to be noticed. But there is a beauty when you serve and you are not noticed.
When that love of Christ is formed and lived out in our hearts and lives, we are not noticed because they see Christ. We are just there. That is what brings Him glory. That is what brings Him honor. That is what we are here for, brothers and sisters.
So in this day of great shaking and battle, may we stop for a while and reflect in a fresh way upon the love of Christ. May we allow it to touch the areas in our life.
When the Spirit is convicting us, will we take the time to allow that conviction to work deep within us, to set us free from anything else in our hearts and lives that we are trusting or finding comfort in?
Let us pray.
Lord, we are thankful for You first loving us. Lord, we are thankful how, in Your love, You reached down and redeemed each one of us.
Lord, we are thankful how Your love never ends. You are continuing day by day to work within us.
Lord, I am thankful, too, that You cannot love us any more than You already have. May we learn to be recipients, in a fuller and greater way, of that great love, which would all return to Your glory and honor. In Jesus’ name, amen.