Scripture Introduction
One of the most famous intellectuals in the church in the last 100 years was Karl Barth. Near the end of his life, he was lecturing at the University of Chicago Divinity School. When Dr. Barth completed the lecture, the school president noted that Dr. Barth was exhausted, so that rather than allowing students to ask lots of questions, the president asked one on behalf of all: “Of all the theological insights you have ever had, which do you consider the greatest?”
Here was a man who had written tens of thousands of pages of some of the most sophisticated philosophy ever put on paper. The students sat poised to record the premier insight of the greatest theologian of their time. Barth closed his eyes and paused, deep in though. Then he smiled, opened his eyes, and said: “The greatest theological insight that I have ever had is this: Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so!”
All study, all theology, all ministry culminates there; there is nothing deeper.
That is why the Apostle Paul, when praying for the believers in Ephesus, asks the Father that they might comprehend the breadth, the length, the height and the depth, and know the love of Jesus Christ. This love changes lives; this love overcomes fear; this love overwhelms uncertainty. The love of Christ converts doubting Thomases into courageous martyrs; the love of Christ propels missionaries into the Muslim world; the love of Christ presses a husband into self-sacrificial and single-hearted service to his wife and children; the love of Christ pushes fearful church members out as faithful witnesses into their communities.
Read Ephesians 3.14-21. Pray.
Scripture Introduction
I’m surprised that Paul prays for us to have “strength to comprehend” the love of Jesus (verse 18). Why do I need special strength to comprehend love? Here is the most simple and fundamental gospel teaching, yet Paul falls to his knees to plead with God for our help here. Saying that we need a special work of the Holy Spirit in order to understand Christ’s love is almost insulting!
But listen to 1Corinthians 2.14: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
Here is a shocking revelation: the more simple and fundamental the truth, the more spiritual strength is needed to accept and believe. Peripheral ideas have a place in preaching and teaching, but they do not so readily strike the very vitals of our self-sufficiency. The great truths, those at the very core of the gospel, these offend us as they demand we place our whole hope and trust in Christ alone.
1. We Must Draw Strength from Jesus’ Love (Ephesians 3.17b-18a)
Paul uses two word pictures to show how the love of Jesus affects us. First, we must be “rooted in love.”
Have you ever seen landscapers transplant a really large tree? They did it out of the ground and then wrap the ball of roots tightly in a burlap bag. For those trees to survive, they must quickly get their roots working again. Once they are placed into the ground, their roots must immediately begin to absorb water and nutrients (actually sucking life into itself) from the soil in which it is placed. Paul uses that same image to describes us. Our spiritual life and vitality depends on our roots drawing life from Christ’s love.
I like the way Michael Card explains giving:
We show a love for the world in our lives
by worshipping goods we possess
Jesus has laid all our treasures aside,
"love God above all the rest"
’Cause when we say ’no’ to the things of the world
we open our hearts to the love of the Lord,
and it’s hard to imagine the freedom we find
from the things we leave behind
Where are your roots? Have your roots been planted in fear? Performance? Duty? This passage offers us the freedom from those life-controlling idols by rooting ourselves in Jesus’ love. May God give us strength to draw every drop of spiritual life from the well of Christ’s love for us.
The second word picture is equally powerful: we are to be grounded in the love of Jesus Christ.
When my dad was alive, he had a beach house on the Gulf Coast. In a week’s time, the ground can rise or fall several inches as sand blows. To keep the carport and boardwalk passable, we had must clear away the shifting sand. And if the beach house itself were built directly on the sand, it would be ripped apart. But the first step in building a beach house is pounding pilings through the sand, deep into the bedrock.
Are your life’s pilings driven into the rock of Christ’s love? Or better yet, “Do you know your own self well enough to be aware of the ‘shifting sands’ which control your emotions, moods and attitudes?”
Circumstances move and sway; one day a business meeting goes well, and we are happy and a blessing to friends and family. But the next day is liable to bring a fender-bender, an angry customer, a surely coworker, a bad cough, a report of cancer, a problem here and a disaster there. Then we are no longer happy—now we are a terror to husband and child, an enemy to our friends, and, quite honestly, you do not even want to be around yourself. That describes a life grounded only the shifting sand of circumstances.
God wants to ground us in the love of Christ! A love which is safe and secure and sure and solid, regardless of circumstances. A love which sustains through temptations and turmoil and troubles.
Listen and be encouraged by the unstoppable love of Jesus which Paul describes in Romans 8: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8.38-39).
When troubles come (as they surely will), do we begin with, “Why me?” or “What have I done wrong?” or have we the strength to comprehend this: “Even in this trouble, I am a conqueror through Jesus who loves me”? So how do we become grounded and rooted in such life-giving love?
2. The Love of Jesus Christ Dwells in our Hearts by Faith (Ephesians 3.17a)
Many answers are proposed as to how we might know and experience the love of Jesus. Some say it is by joining the correct church. Others suggest it is only by taking the Eucharist or being baptized in a certain way. Some have said that you can really only know the love of Jesus through the experience of speaking in tongues. All of those may have a place; but none is the key to knowing Jesus’ love. Paul’s key to living the Christian life is this: Christ dwells in your heart through faith.
By believing Jesus; by believing his promises and his proof of love (his self-sacrifice on the cross); by believing his Word, which teaches his love; by believing in his acts of compassionate love—by believing all that is true of the Christ, this is how you become rooted and grounded in love. Nothing more; nothing less: “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”
If that is not your experience this morning, or if you would like to increase your experience of his love, here are 3 simple steps.
1) Ask Jesus to give you new life and the knowledge of his love for you, personally. Not simply knowing about God and Jesus and religion. It is like the difference, for you young folk considering marriage, between knowing a particular boy would be a good and godly husband and knowing him as your husband. You may have much religion and church, but do you know Jesus personally? I know it is humbling to have to pray and ask Jesus to give you life. But please do not allow pride to keep you from this amazing love!
2) Read the Bible as God’s personal letter to you. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. Are you hearing Jesus through his word?
3) Commit to a group of believers who are passionately seeking to know the love of Jesus. It does not have to be this church. But know this: the experience of the love of Christ is not found in solitude. Paul prays that we might comprehend, “with all the saints,” the love of Jesus. Are you part of a group of people seeking to be rooted and grounded in this glorious love?
3. The Love of Jesus Christ is Greater than we would have ever dared hope (Ephesians 3.18b-19)
What is the breadth of the love of Jesus? It is a wideness of love that embraces the entire world! All people, in all places, in all times, can know the love of Jesus: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3.16). You are not beyond the grasp of the love of Christ. His arms are sufficiently broad to hug and hold you. It does not matter your sin; what matters is your faith. Will you believe that Christ’s love is broad enough to encompass you?
Not only is it broad, but it is also a long love. What is the length of the love of Jesus? A love which stretches into eternity. The love of Christ does not save you today so that you can earn his favor and kindness tomorrow. The love of Jesus holds you forever and ever. How long is the love of Jesus? Too long for you to outlive; long for you to exhaust; too long for you to drain dry; so long that you will never come to its end.
Not only is it broad and long, but it is also high. What is the height of the love of Jesus? It is a love which reaches all the way to heaven. A love which carries sinners into the very presence of God! A long high enough to reach from the hell we deserve to the heaven we long for in the depth of our hearts.
Not only is it broad and long and high, but it is also deep. What is the depth of the love of Jesus? It is a depth which loves all the way into the darkest recesses of your soul. Remember those areas you are afraid will one day come to light? The sins and attitudes and motives which embarrass you and make you fearful of ever knowing God’s favor? His love is deep enough to cover them.
Broad, long, high and deep—this is the love of Jesus!
4. Conclusion
God wants each of us to know that love, so that we will be filled with the fullness of God. God’s fullness comes to us, not by church membership, officer ordination or preaching of sermons, but by the love of Jesus. God provides, we receive this by faith. Just as we do the Lord’s Supper.
