The Wonders of Christ's Love - Brandon Scalf

Heritage Church Tulsa iconHeritage Church Tulsa

1 view

Ephesians 3:17b-19 Divine love defies measurement!

0 comments

00:00
During the great Napoleon's conquests there was one particular story where they were excavating, that is his army, a prison that had been used during the
00:16
Spanish Inquisition. In this prison they found the remains of a prisoner who had no doubt been incarcerated for his faith.
00:27
The dungeon that he was in was underground, it was dirty, and the only thing that really remained in that prison was the remains of the prisoners in it.
00:41
But there was one prisoner's cell that stuck out. The story goes that all they found were a couple scattered bones, but on the ankle of one of the leg bones was an ankle brace that held him chained to the wall.
01:04
And above him was a cross that he had carved into the stone wall.
01:11
And around the cross were the writings of what seemed to be a faithful soldier of Christ.
01:22
And the writings around the cross were this, of course in Spanish, height, depth, width, and length.
01:39
Here's what that story teaches us, that when this man was dying, when he was breathing his last breath, likely dying of hunger after having been beaten for some time, he thought about the love of Christ.
01:59
He thought about this very passage that we are looking at here today, verses 17 through 19, when it speaks about the love of Christ and how it is so immeasurable.
02:20
And here's why that's important. Because many of us are asking ourselves, or at least we should be, how do we live the
02:27
Christian life in such a way that honors God and helps us in this life, whether we meet joys or trials of various kinds?
02:40
Well, the answer to that question is not doing better and trying harder.
02:46
It's not obeying the law, though we must obey the law.
02:53
It's being dominated by the love of God in Christ Jesus.
03:01
Chains and whips and rule following will only get you so far.
03:10
That is why John Calvin has famously said before, it is not enough if the knowledge of Christ dwell on the tongue or flutter in the brain.
03:20
If it is going to sustain our lives, it must flood our hearts as well.
03:29
We must be floored, as it were, by the wonders of Christ's love if we are going to put one foot in front of the other in any way that honors the
03:41
God of the Bible. So if you would, please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy, infallible, and all -sufficient
03:48
Word. I will begin reading in verse 14 and read all the way through 21 so we get the full context of Paul's prayer.
03:58
This is the Word of God. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he would give you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power through his
04:13
Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you, being firmly 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.
04:44
Now, to him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.
05:01
Amen. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Amen. Amen.
05:07
Go ahead and have a seat. As we begin looking at the second half of verse 17, we are confronted with the reality that we are in the middle of a prayer.
05:19
We are in the middle of Paul's prayer that he started in verse 14. And in verse 14, we saw that Paul, of course, was posturing himself in a way that honored
05:33
God as both King and Father, and that he was praying for the people in Ephesus, and you and me by extension, that they would have, according to the riches of God's glory, power that is strengthened in them by him and for him.
05:54
His spirit working in our hearts so much so that that Christ would dwell in our hearts, that he would make a home there, and that he would rule and reign over our will and our affections.
06:11
And now we come to the second part of Paul's plea. He prayed and pleaded with God that this power might show up to cause
06:21
Christ to dwell in them more fully. Not that they didn't have it in the first place.
06:27
Remember, up to this point, he assumes the people he's writing to to have a changed heart. So he just wants it to deepen.
06:35
He wants the well to go deeper, as it were. And the second half of this plea is not much different than that.
06:47
But it is different. He begins in 17b by saying, "...and that you, being firmly rooted in, grounded in love, may be able to comprehend some stuff, namely the love of God in Christ."
07:05
But what do we do here with this second half of the sentence?
07:11
This word and here is supplied by the English translation. It's actually not in the
07:16
Greek. And so we must ask the question, is this a second or third plea, or is it a continuation of the previous plea?
07:31
Well, we get some hints. If you remember, in verse 18 of chapter 1, there is this interesting thing happening, at least in the
07:41
Greek language and in the Legacy Standard Bible, which is different from many of the other translations out there.
07:48
The way the syntax works in verse 18 of chapter 1, instead of it saying, as most translations do, that Paul is praying for the eyes of their hearts to be enlightened, it says that their eyes have already been enlightened, so that you, the eyes of your heart having been enlightened, will know what is the hope of his calling.
08:07
When we get to verse 17, this same thing is happening here. He is essentially saying that you, having already been rooted and grounded in love, that you may be able to comprehend the love of God in Christ Jesus.
08:23
Now, the follow -up question, then, is this. How is it already done?
08:34
Well, the answer comes in the verse prior.
08:40
Namely, he's praying that Christ would dwell in the hearts of those who love him through faith, and by that happening, by Christ ruling and reigning over our wills and affections, or their wills and affections, that they would be firmly rooted and grounded in love.
09:06
They would be firmly grounded and rooted in love.
09:13
Now, what this shows us, then, is that love is the byproduct of a Christ -dominated life.
09:21
In other words, if you are a Christian, you are going to love.
09:26
If Christ is dwelling in your heart, then you are a loving person. And if you are not a loving person,
09:33
Christ is not dwelling in your heart. But let's take this a little more slowly.
09:41
We have two phrases here that explain how we ought to be living in this love in our inner man.
09:51
Well, we ought to be firmly rooted in it and grounded in it. This word, rooted, is used two times in the
09:58
New Testament. One here, and once in Galatians 2 .7, which essentially speaks of agricultural metaphor.
10:08
To literally mean to cause to root. To make a rooted thing.
10:15
When it's used in the Bible, it's talking about the personal roots of believers, and it carries with it the idea of nourishment.
10:24
Grounded is another word that is used. It is used here as an architectural metaphor, which carries with it the idea of laying a foundation of a building.
10:38
So you've got the idea of being nourished and standing firm. The result of yielding to the
10:48
Spirit's power and submitting to Christ's lordship in our hearts is that we would be nourished, and that we would stand firm, and that we would be grounded in this love that ultimately comes from God himself.
11:07
This is God's love that is being spoken about here. It's not the love that we show, though we must show love.
11:14
Love is at the heartbeat of what it means to be a
11:21
Christian at all. And so before we can even talk about what it looks like to love other people, we have to know what it means that God loves us.
11:30
That is the ground for all love that exists outside of ourselves.
11:38
Right? 1 John 4 tells us that God is love. That means he gets to define it.
11:45
And this is our footing for how we interact with people around us.
11:51
Now when I was in the military, I loved Brazilian jiu -jitsu. I loved doing the MMA things.
11:58
And one of the things that they teach you on day one, if you get involved in any sort of Brazilian jiu -jitsu, is something called standing in base.
12:06
And what that means is you need to, if you get knocked over, to stand up in a certain way.
12:15
Because if you don't, you will get knocked down again very quickly. For instance, you get three points of contact, and you're always looking forward.
12:26
You push back with your hips, you're looking forward, you put one hand up to block in case any other thing is hitting you, and then you move and kick with one foot and move with your other hand.
12:40
Why? So that you have a firm foundation in case you get kicked over again, and you're blocking blows as they come.
12:48
That's what's being talked about here. It's as if Paul is saying, or praying rather, that you need to have this base.
13:02
I'm praying that God would so strengthen you with power, that Christ would dwell in you, and that having
13:09
Christ there, his love would ground you.
13:16
He would plant you, and you would be able to then see some other things.
13:24
This is replete throughout the New Testament. God is all about love in John 13, 34, and 35.
13:36
He says a new commandment, I give to you that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
13:45
By this, all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
13:52
So not only does love come from God, not only is he the source, which is point number one here, the source of love, when we love one another, we also prove that source, to be truthful.
14:10
Now he's truthful regardless of whether or not we love, but we are imitating
14:16
God. And so he continues on. He prays that they would be strengthened with power through his
14:25
Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in their hearts through faith, and by consequence, they would be firmly rooted and grounded in love.
14:35
Now let's pause here. This word love, it's agape in the Greek, and it literally means love.
14:44
It is an attitude of selflessness or selfless giving. If you remember when we talked about love earlier on in the sermon series, we gave it a specific definition when it was brought up in chapter 1, and we said that it meant that it was seeking the ultimate good of someone, even if it costs you something.
15:04
But I want you to consider a new definition. Bodhi Bacchum has said this about love.
15:10
Love is an act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object.
15:20
I want to say that again because oftentimes we don't take love biblically for what it actually is, and I think he nails it here.
15:29
Love is an act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to an action on behalf of its object.
15:41
Very simply, what he's getting at here is that love is a type of verb. It's an action.
15:46
It's not a fuzzy feeling. It's not something that we wake up in the morning just feeling.
15:54
It's something that we get off of the couch and do. It's an action. Jesus did not say, for instance, in John 15 13, greater love has no one than this, than to have warm feelings for his friends.
16:13
No, no, no. He said greater love has no one than this, that one laid down his life for his friends.
16:20
Wrapped up in this idea of love is sacrifice, action, doing, so that we would be rooted and grounded in the doing of something, loving.
16:40
This is why self -love, for example, is so unbiblical. Love, in its biblical context, is completely others -focused, and when we ever take that love and we point it outward, we're acting like God.
16:58
We're showing God to be the source of it, but when we point it inward, well, we're flipping the idea of it upside down, and we're proving that we're actually not of God in the first place.
17:09
If we are strangers to love, if we are not good lovers of people, we must be strangers to the
17:15
God who is love. The principal evidence that Christ truly is dwelling in our hearts, by his
17:23
Spirit, in the presence and overflow of love in our lives. First to God, and then to his people.
17:36
1 John 4, 12. No one has beheld God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.
17:46
1 John 4, 16. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has in us.
17:53
God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God. And God abides in him.
18:00
Here's what I'm getting at, if it's not clear. If Christ is truly dwelling in your hearts, then
18:09
Paul is saying that the next consequent prayer, after he has controlled your will and your affections, is that you would be firmly rooted, you would be grounded in a self -sacrificial love that has been modeled for us by God, and comes from.
18:36
And here is what the subsequent passages that I brought up show us, then, in context with what has already been said, which is that heart heresy is as serious as head heresy.
18:52
Now, we who love the Bible, love good expository preaching, love to hear verse by verse what
18:57
God has to say in his Word, are very good at hunting down who is saying things that may not line up with Scripture.
19:06
Oh, maybe he didn't say this how the Confessions said them. Or here's what's wrong with his idea of the
19:14
Trinity. Maybe he believes in EFS, the subordination of Jesus Christ, not just in the economy of redemption, but the second person of the
19:26
Trinity in the Godhead ontologically. Well, let's slap heresy on this guy, and let's check out everything he has to say.
19:35
And there's nothing wrong with that. We need to be precise in our language, and we need to guard the church from error.
19:44
But we also need to take seriously that our hearts, if we are not loving, are proving not a, necessarily, maybe not a heretical head, but a heretical heart.
19:59
And we don't take this seriously because when was the last time someone was put under church discipline or had a really good stern talking to them because they weren't loving enough?
20:08
I know not too many because the internet is crazy. But if it's true that if Christ dwells in your heart, and he is governing your affections and your will, and the
20:23
Scriptures are really causing you to flow into praise and worship, then we must ask the question, maybe, why aren't we being so loving in this area or that?
20:39
Ought we not to sort out our salvation with fear and trembling? Paul's prayer is not that they would know some more information or facts, rather, but that they would be strengthened in power by the dwelling of Christ in their heart, and that they would love better.
20:59
Many of us don't need to read more books. Many of us just need to put what we've already read into practice.
21:10
Or, as the argument is going to be made in this passage, we need to maybe lean in and look at how
21:23
God has so richly loved us. So the first thing that I had you note here is the source of love.
21:34
The source of love is God himself, by Christ dwelling in our hearts. The second thing that I want you to note is the theater of love.
21:44
The theater of love. Continuing on, he says this. He prays in verse 17 that the
21:52
Ephesians would be firmly rooted and grounded in the love that comes from Christ dwelling in their hearts, and that they may be able, verse 18, to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth.
22:11
So he continues on and says, standing in this firm foundation of the love that comes from God, I'm also praying that out of that you would be able to comprehend.
22:30
Now, may be able is one word in the Greek, and what it's actually trying to get at is he's praying that they would have the strength that he has already prayed for that would enable them to comprehend this immeasurable love.
22:52
This word comprehend is in the Greek used 15 times, and it literally means to capture, to seize, or to overtake by force.
23:02
Now, that really causes this to pop out, does it not? He's praying that they would be able, that is, that they would be able to have the strength that has already been prayed for to capture, to seize, or to overtake by force with all the saints this immeasurable love.
23:27
To take it to themselves, that is mind -blowingly wonderful.
23:39
That they would not just be passant recipients of it, but they would go after it, that they would seize it, that they would make it their community's goal to understand the un -understandable, the immeasurable.
23:57
That though they would never fully grasp it, they would truly grasp it. Though they may never actually understand the depths of God's love in its entirety, they would truly be able to see some of it in its glory.
24:18
And he says here, and this is what I'm getting at when I say the theater of love. It's not in isolation.
24:26
He says, continuing on in verse 18, with all the saints.
24:33
With all the saints. Paul understands, what we need to understand as a church, that the life of faith is at heart a corporate and communal life.
24:46
In other words, love is a community project. If you remember in verse 20 through 22 of Ephesians chapter 2, it tells us that we are the church, and we are a building being built together into a dwelling of God in the spirit.
25:11
And this is a very vital reason why all Christians should prize the local congregation of Christ and commit themselves to its life, its worship, and its service.
25:24
We need one another. Paul understood that, and we're going to get into that ad nauseum in chapter four.
25:36
But God is not just interested in, and Paul is not interested in praying for, that we would just know the love of God in Christ in our prayer closets.
25:47
In order for us to understand love, we must experience it. We need one another to display
25:53
God's love in Christ, and we need one another to experience God's love in Christ.
26:01
Growth in the individual believer cannot occur in isolation, but must be accomplished in the context of a local church.
26:13
This is why rogue Christianity is so horrible. People who will not give themselves to a local church, because it cuts you off from being able to love one another as they ought to be loved.
26:28
If you jump around to church to church to church, and you just say, look, I'm just trying out churches,
26:34
I'm hearing good sermons, I'm a part of the universal body of Christ, and I don't really have to plug in anywhere, then what you've done is you've chopped yourself off from God's way of sanctifying.
26:48
Here's what I mean. Not one of you is likable a hundred percent of the time, including myself.
26:58
None of you are sinless. When you grow in relationship with people, that's when people see the parts of you that aren't very likable, or the parts of you that maybe you'd rather cover up, or the parts of you that need love extended to you.
27:25
It's easy to love someone you don't know, kind of, but we're sinners.
27:33
But it's a lot harder to love the people that sin against you on the regular.
27:40
It's harder to love people when you see their insecurities and their flaws. It's harder to love people when you're walking hand in hand with them through life, and you have to trust them, and they let you down, or you let them down, and they trusted you.
27:56
So you see, you can't actually learn what love looks like unless you are bound to people in relationship.
28:13
Yes, of course, the scriptures teach us what love looks like. In 1 John chapter 4, it says, in this is love, not that we love, but that God loved us and gave his son as the propitiation of our sins.
28:26
Translation, love looks a lot like death. It looks self -sacrificial. But God uses his people, that's why it says here, with all the saints.
28:43
He uses all of his people because his people are one body to show his love.
28:52
This is why, for instance, when one member suffers, all suffer. When one member rejoices, all rejoices.
28:58
You can find that in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 26. And this helps us to have a more robust understanding of what the local church is all about.
29:11
It's not just a place to get full, but to fill and to commute, to love one another and to be loved.
29:24
Now, some of us are really good at loving other people in terms of serving them, but sometimes a lot of us are not really good at receiving that love.
29:36
And if God, let this be a pastoral admonishment, if you will. Not only do we need to show love to others in the context of the local church in order to display
29:50
God's love, but we need to be willing to receive the love of others so that God's love can be made known among the saints.
30:05
It's blessed to give and to receive, and that means love as well.
30:15
And so getting back to our verse here and getting more contextually relevant, love with the saints means that we love
30:25
God with the saints, but it also means that we ought to have love for the saints.
30:34
1 John 4, 20, 21 says, if someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love
30:43
God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, that one who loves God should love his brother also.
30:55
Likewise, in 1 John 3, 16, it says, by this we have known love that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
31:03
But whoever has the world's good and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?
31:12
Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and in truth.
31:19
You see here, the scriptures are pointing back to the same reality that we said what love was starting in chapter 1 up until this very moment, that it is self -sacrificial, that it is actually doing something.
31:31
In verse John here, it's essentially saying what James says. If your brother is suffering and he needs a coat and you don't clothe him, then your love is meaningless.
31:41
It doesn't mean absolutely anything. Love meets people where they're at and gives of themselves.
31:50
So not only does it mean that we love God with the saints and toward the saints and for the saints, but it also means a love for future saints.
32:02
Now, I know that sounds strange, but I want you to hear me out here. It's not just enough to love past saints when we read the
32:08
Bible and appreciate their faithfulness. It's not just enough to love our brothers and sisters here in the context of our local church.
32:17
We also need to love whom God is choosing to make himself known to.
32:26
And so if we are to love our brothers and sisters faithfully, we are to love those whom
32:31
God has foreordained to set his love and affection on and go after. This means we give ourselves not only to the communion with the saints, but the proclamation and evangelism of the gospel.
32:45
Charles Spurgeon says it like this. If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies.
32:51
And if they will perish, let them perish with our arms around their knees, imploring them to stay.
32:57
If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled with the teeth of our exertions and let no one go there unwarned or unprayed for.
33:09
Of course, God chooses whom he saves and goes after. But let it not be said of us that we did not proclaim his excellencies and love those whom
33:19
God was chasing down. Love in a self -sacrificial way should encompass our entire lives.
33:30
It's the very heartbeat of what it means to be a Christian. It is the outworking or the byproduct of Christ dwelling in our hearts.
33:42
And it's so wild that he says that we would be strengthened to seize with all of the saints, all of those who are named by the name of Christ.
33:55
What is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth?
34:00
And here, of course, it's speaking of God's love. Now, I will say this.
34:10
When you look at the commentaries in relationship to verse 18, it gets insane.
34:21
There is a lot, a very weird ideas, and I don't feel like rehearsing them all for you, but some of them make absolutely no sense.
34:30
Others of them are essentially trying to say that what's happening here is there's a theological laying out of the measurements of the future temple in the new heavens and new earth.
34:46
I don't even know how you get there. Or they'll talk about the four different types of love that God has, and they'll carry in these different Greek words and commit all kinds of exegetical fallacy where they're like, you know, agape is this type of love, and that's the breadth.
35:04
And phileo is another type of love, and that means length. As interesting as these ideas might be,
35:15
I don't think that is what Paul is trying to do here. Remember, we believe in the perspicuity of Scripture.
35:22
We believe that the Scriptures are clear at all that it teaches in terms of what we need to know to be saved and to be sanctified.
35:34
And I don't think Paul is in the habit of creating some kind of weird riddle that's helping us understand the measurements of some future temple or trying to parse out different ideas of Greek love.
35:48
And actually, when you look into that, I mean, I know a lot of of I believe it's the gospel of Mark.
35:57
And he's talking to, Jesus is talking to Peter after his resurrection, and he asks him, do you love me?
36:03
And Peter's like, yes, I love you. And he's like, but do you love me? And he's like, yes,
36:08
I love you. And he's like, do you love me? Yeah. I mean, so many preachers will say, well, he's using a different Greek word every single time he says love.
36:17
And that's true. He is. But then they will conclude he's asking them if he loves them in all these different types of ways.
36:27
But that's a misunderstanding of the way that first of all, the Greek is used, but also just language in general.
36:34
I mean, we live in America, in English, where every word has three other related words.
36:40
It's the same concept. Jesus is just giving him a chance in that moment to make up for his three times of denying him.
36:49
He's not putting in all of these different categories of love. Love looks different, certainly in different circumstances, but it's all rooted in who
37:00
God is. And it's always an act of the will accompanied by emotion, not emotion that prompts you to act.
37:15
So what is being said here? Well, we can look in other places. For example, in Romans chapter 8, verse 39,
37:24
Paul uses very similar language when he says, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our
37:36
Lord. Now, of course, he's not saying with this type of love or this type of love or any other created thing be able to separate us from the love of God.
37:46
That doesn't make much sense, right? So what he's getting at here, I think, is simply this, that divine love defies measurement.
37:58
Divine love defies measurement. It is deeper than you think it is.
38:03
It is more beautiful than you think it is. It is more exquisite than you think it is. It is broad enough to embrace the world,
38:10
John 3, 16. It is long enough to last for eternity. It is high enough to list us to heaven, and it is deep enough to reach the most degraded of sinners.
38:25
In other words, love goes in every direction and to the greatest distance, especially when it comes from God himself.
38:32
It goes wherever it is needed for as long as it is needed. Do you feel that way?
38:44
Children, would you look at me for just a second? If you love Christ, if he dwells in your heart,
38:55
God loves you more than you can possibly understand.
39:01
I want you to think how much your mom and your dad love you. It's a lot, isn't it?
39:08
They tell you all the time, I'm sure, and they show it by giving you food to eat and clothes for your back and toys to play with.
39:19
Well, God's love is even bigger than that. It's even better than that.
39:28
That's mind -blowing, isn't it? It's so immeasurable. It's so big you can't even understand it, children.
39:36
That's incredible. Absolutely incredible. So what kind of love is immeasurable?
39:45
What kind of love defies measurement?
39:50
Well, it's the kind of love that has been spoken about literally this entire letter. It is the type of love that, according to verse 3 of chapter 1, blesses us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
40:04
It is the kind of love, as it continues on, that chooses us before the foundation of the world, though, according to chapter 2, we are dead in our transgressions and sins.
40:18
It is the type of love that makes us holy and blameless in God's sight, according to verse 5.
40:25
It is the kind of love that purchases for us, according to verse 7 of chapter 1, redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of our sins.
40:39
It is the type of love that makes us trophies of God's grace.
40:46
It is the kind of love that gives us, according to chapter 1, the
40:52
Spirit. When the word is proclaimed, it is, yes, to the praise of God's glorious grace.
41:01
But as we've already talked about, His grace is love, and His love is grace.
41:11
And it's the kind of love that begods us.
41:17
In chapter 2, verse 4, though we are influenced by the devil and the world, and though we are governed by our flesh and unable to respond to stimuli, this love, it says, verse 4, but God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which
41:37
He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, He regenerated us.
41:42
He made us alive together with Christ, with all the saints, right?
41:53
And it's the kind of love, Paul has said, that has taken the Jew and the Gentile, and where there was once animosity by the blood of Jesus Christ, has made them one new man, the church.
42:09
And what Paul is saying is, if that doesn't put gasoline in the tank for the
42:17
Christian life, nothing will. Nothing will. Nothing will, friends.
42:29
I want you to think back on that prisoner in that jail cell, beaten, broken, hungry, tired, and wasting away, and died as a prisoner.
42:43
It was the love of Christ that sustained him, friends. It wasn't how much he knew, how many books he read.
42:58
It wasn't how many degrees he had. It wasn't his job.
43:05
It wasn't how well he was at loving other people.
43:10
It was Christ's love for him. And he did that in a jail cell.
43:25
Need I remind you that that's where Paul is writing this letter from. It teaches us that love is a far better motivator than chains, whips, or white knuckles.
43:47
It's a far better motivator and sustainer than just knowing a lot of stuff.
43:54
The Christian life is not about knowing a lot of things. It's being mastered by one thing, namely, the love of God in Christ.
44:11
This is truly why you go to some churches, and though they don't have expository verse -by -verse preaching that we would check the box on and say faithful, though they may not have a shepherd's institute, though they may not have all of these other amenities, if you will, they still have godly men and women who are sanctified far beyond many of the theologians walking around this earth.
44:51
Why? Because they're mastered by the love of God in Christ. A song that Lacy was listening to this morning called
45:03
The Love of God is kind of playing through the household. And I want you to think about one of the verses that said this about God's love and how immeasurable it is.
45:24
It said, Could we with ink the oceans fill, and were the skies of parchment made, were every stalk on earth a quill, and every one a scribe by trade, to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole, so stretched from sky to sky.
45:58
Here's what I'm getting at. I'm getting at what John Flavel wrote in the beginning of his book on the love of Christ.
46:12
He said, I don't have enough ink.
46:19
I don't have a big enough brain. I don't have a big enough heart to explain to you.
46:27
The love of Christ, the fountain of love that God has for us.
46:35
He said, I write as if by moonlight. Friends, if you're thinking, man,
46:44
I wish he could be more clear about this love. Friends, I wish I could be more clear about this love.
46:50
It's immeasurable. Its breadth and its length, its height and its depth is not something that we can plumb.
47:00
It's too beautiful for our eyes to truly behold. In fact, we will spend the rest of eternity seizing and attempting to take by force the comprehension of this love.
47:17
Which brings me to my third point, which is the person of love.
47:23
Love, though it's somewhat been talked about like this, is not so much an ethereal idea.
47:30
It's a person. Well, first and foremostly, it's God. God is love. But Jesus, according to Hebrews 1, is the perfect reflection of the nature of God.
47:40
And it's in Christ that this love is put on display.
47:47
And the most beautiful and mesmerizing way, he goes on and he says, and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge.
48:05
Now, at first glance, this is a contradictory statement.
48:15
He's praying that the Ephesians and us by extension would have a knowledge of Christ, specifically in regard to his love, which surpasses knowledge.
48:33
He's praying that the Ephesians and us by extension, that they would know the unknowable.
48:48
That they would know that which cannot be completely understood.
48:54
So before moving further, we have to settle this. What have I always said, children?
49:00
Look at me. If there seems to be a contradictory statement in the Bible, that is something that seems like it cannot be true, because one truth is combating the other truth, then what do we do?
49:16
We assume the problem is where? Here, right? The problem is never the book.
49:23
The problem is always us. And so he's not saying that we would come to exhaustively know the love of Christ, because it's unknowable.
49:39
It's unplumbable. But just because something cannot be fully known does not mean that it cannot be truly known.
49:53
Because Jesus, and because his love is so divinely immeasurable, we can't know it exhaustively, but we can know it truly.
50:01
And we can know it truly because God shows it to us in the person of Christ.
50:08
So Paul is arguing here not for a theoretical theological understanding of what God's love is in Christ, but an experiential knowledge of his love in Christ, something that reading books can't do for you.
50:29
It's a work of the Spirit, which is why Paul is praying for it. So why do we pray that people would come to know
50:40
Christ in the first place? Because God can do it.
50:48
And why is Paul praying that those who he believes are already Christians, to have their knowledge of him deepened, to be strengthened in power, that Christ might continually govern their wills and affections, that they would be grounded in the love that is given to them by God?
51:11
And why is he praying that they would come to know truly, but they can't know exhaustively?
51:19
Because God can do it. And he has shown he can do it through the person and work of Jesus Christ.
51:27
It's the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge This is why 1
51:35
John says in 4 .10, and this is love, I've already mentioned this, that we have not that we have loved
51:41
God, but that he has loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.
51:49
So Jesus loved us, as we will get to in Ephesians chapter 5, as his bride dying for us, paying for our sins.
52:01
Hebrews chapter 12 says, for the joy that was sat before him, he endured the cross. That joy that was motivated by the accomplishment of salvation for those whom he.
52:22
This is why it's so important that we love one another. Because to habitually be unloving must mean that we habitually resist
52:34
Christ as the Lord of our hearts. And if we habitually act unloving, it's because we do not understand the love of Christ.
52:54
And sometimes you just run out of words. I mean, we've talked about what it looks like that God loves us in Christ for two years now, as we've walked through the book of Ephesians.
53:07
And even Paul gets here, and he's more acquainted with the love of Christ than maybe any of us.
53:14
I mean, he has been given the divine word, and been given the divine office of apostleship.
53:20
And he gets to talking about the love of Christ, and he just goes, it's incomprehensible.
53:28
It's so deep, it's unknowable. In Romans chapter 11, verse 33, right before he gets into how we ought to live, transitioning from doctrine to duty, as he's about to do here, he says the exact same thing.
53:41
Oh, the depth and the riches and wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways.
53:47
Sometimes, as good Calvinist people, we need to be reminded that we bump up against things that are too big for us to understand.
53:54
And one of those things, whether we like to admit it or not, is the love of God in Christ Jesus. It can be known truly, as it's been shown fully, but it cannot be known exhaustively.
54:08
But that doesn't mean that we don't keep going. It doesn't mean that we stop digging.
54:15
It doesn't mean that we give up. It means that we spend our lives doing just what he has prayed for, that we would seize and take by force the comprehension of such.
54:41
How do you do that? You do that, firstly, by standing in awe of the finished work of Jesus Christ.
54:52
You do that by looking at what he has done for you. God has put his love on display by slaughtering his son so that you may walk in a newness of life, so that you may be regenerated, so that you would be able to look at sin in the face and say, not today.
55:17
How else do you do that? You do that by displaying God's love in a
55:24
Christ -like way to the brothers and sisters around you, with all the saints, both in this church and everywhere else, past, present, and future saints.
55:39
And you do that by continuing to seize, to overtake by force.
55:49
The fourth thing that I want you to see before we close is the fullness that love produces.
55:57
The fullness that love produces, just like everything else that the
56:05
Apostle Paul has talked about, just when you think he's going to stop, he doesn't.
56:13
There's always something more. He continues on and he says, not only that they, or and we by extension, would come to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge, he also says that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
56:41
And this here is the climax of his pleas. All of this culminates in this one thing.
56:54
We will be filled up to all the fullness of God.
56:59
Well, I know everybody's first question because it's, it was my first question. And if it's not your first question, then
57:09
I don't know. But my first question was, what in the world does that mean?
57:16
What does it mean that we would be filled up to all the fullness of God? Well, you might be shocked to know, or maybe not so shocked to know, that a lot of people take this verse in different religions and in different sects of Christianity to try to teach that, you know, we could become
57:32
God or we could be like God, right? As we grow in love, we become God -like.
57:40
Well, it's not teaching that. We most certainly cannot be
57:47
God. This is not teaching that we can become God in his fullness. What it's teaching is that the things that make up God would fill us.
58:00
The things that make up God would fill us, right?
58:07
So God's attributes, some of them are communicable, some of them are incommunicable. That means that some of them we do not have, we cannot possess, and some of them we have and can possess, especially as we have been saved by Christ because we are made in the image of God, right?
58:23
So for instance, we cannot be omnipresent. We cannot be omniscient. We can't be all -powerful, and we can't be all -seeing and all -knowing.
58:37
We can be loving, right? We can be wise. God tells us, or James tells us, that God delights to give us wisdom.
58:46
There are attributes that God possesses that are communicable to us as creatures made in his image, and what he's saying here is if Christ dwells in your heart, and if Christ dwelling in your heart produces a love for God and his people, and if you come to truly know the love of Christ, not exhaustively but truly, then you will continually be filled with love, continually filled with strength and power.
59:37
So the prayer essentially is, I'm praying that God would give you all these things, and that he would keep giving you all of these.
59:51
Maybe it'll be helpful if I give you an illustration. I want you to think about an ocean, for example.
01:00:00
If I were to take you to Huntington Beach, the most beautiful place in the
01:00:06
United States, and I took a cup, and I put it down in the water, and I held it up, and I said,
01:00:22
I have all that the ocean is, or I have the ocean in my cup.
01:00:33
All of the ocean is in this glass. You would say, no you don't.
01:00:42
You have a glass of water that came from the ocean. But if I was to take that same cup of water, and I dipped it in again, and then
01:00:56
I held it up, and I said, I have in this glass all that the ocean is.
01:01:07
Well, that would make more sense. That would be a true statement, right?
01:01:16
Because the ocean is filled with the stuff that's in that glass.
01:01:22
The stuff that's in that glass is what fills the ocean. But the ocean can't fit in the glass, but the glass can contain what the ocean contains.
01:01:35
In the same way, Paul is praying that we would be filled with the stuff that God is, namely, love.
01:01:51
Like, also, everything that goes along with love in Galatians 5, 22, 23, and when it speaks of the fruit of the
01:02:07
Spirit. Notice it doesn't say fruits of the Spirit, it says fruit of the Spirit. So when you talk about love, and you talk about those communicable attributes, you're also talking about joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.
01:02:23
And against such things it says there is no law. When you understand the love of God in Christ Jesus, it begins to transform you, to change you, to fill you up with that stuff that God is.
01:02:43
What this means for us, especially when we think about it in the context of a local church, is that God's people are not a static reality.
01:02:49
They aren't just saved and then there they are. He indwells each of us so that he might increasingly fill all of us.
01:02:57
The more we know that is, according to this text, the more we experience the love of God in Christ, that love which surpasses all knowledge, the more we will be filled with all the fullness of God.
01:03:12
This is why it's a lifelong pursuit. There are two trajectories for your life, people.
01:03:22
The one that is more Christ -like, which leads to a more loving and gentle spirit, or one that is more bitter and angry at the world.
01:03:37
One is leaning into the love of God in Christ and one is leaning away from.
01:03:47
So what is he getting at? Ultimately, that we will be filled and filled and filled and filled and filled and so on forever as God, out of his infinite resources, increasingly pours himself out into those sinful but now redeemed creatures he has rescued through the work of Christ.
01:04:14
Is your gospel big enough for that? Is your gospel big enough that God not only saves you from wrath, hell, but he is by that same work of Christ showing you love, giving you love, and promoting his love throughout the world and continually filling you up with that love so that you can be more loving?
01:04:47
That's a mind -blowing concept. It's a mind -blowing
01:04:52
God and it will only continue throughout eternity.
01:05:01
And so in closing, I want those of you who do not know Christ and you know that you can experience this love as well.
01:05:16
All it takes is for you to throw down your pride and to receive the love.
01:05:33
And when you understand the cross, it's not divine child abuse, which some arrogantly and stupidly say, or some religious dogma, or just some stuff some
01:05:45
Christians got together and invented, but you see it as what it is, the love of God for you, then that changes your posture like it does.
01:06:04
It'll cause you to fall on your knees before the creator king, your father.
01:06:12
And for those of you who know Christ, this should cause you to ever change in your posture towards God and to others.
01:06:23
When you realize that God loves you in Christ right now, in your sin and in your filth and in your needing to be redeemed -ness, just as he much on your most sanctified day in the future, then you've got it.
01:06:44
While we were still weak, Christ died for the ungodly.
01:06:50
While we still needed to be saved, he loved us more than you can comprehend.
01:06:56
The divine love, as immeasurable as it is, this height, this breadth, and this depth is there on your worst day.
01:07:07
It changes the way that you live. It changes the way that you breathe. It changes the way that you eat. It changes the way that you fight sin.
01:07:17
So how do you fight sin? Not with white knuckles, but by a heart that is filled with the love of Christ.