Last week (Romans 5:6-8) we talked about God’s amazing love for all people. For example, if he could love and forgive someone like Jeffrey Dahlmer, the Milwaukee Monster after all of the hideous things he had done, he can love and forgive anyone. The point of God’s amazing love is that he loves us regardless of our behavior. We cannot make God love us more by being good, or less by being bad. He loves us unconditionally no matter what we do and whether we love him back or not.
Incredibly, this is how he wants us to love each other. You may think, “I’m not God. I can’t love like that!” He knows that! So, he gives us his so we can love like he loves. He wants us to love all people just like he loves all people.
Years ago I read a about a Prison Fellowship volunteer who visited prison inmates in order to show them God’s love and to win some of them to the Lord.
There was a picture with the article of a “sixty-something” woman standing with a male inmate in his twenties with their arms around each other. The subtitle said that the woman had adopted the inmate as her spiritual son-in-the-Lord because she had led him to receive Jesus. Does this reflect God’s love? Sure it does – a kindly woman sacrificing some time to share Jesus with a criminal; that Jesus loves him no matter what he had done and would forgive him and save him if he wanted him to? Could you do that? Offer forgiveness to inmate? You probably could do that with some encouragement.
Well – let me tell you the rest of story. The person she was hugging and had adopted as her son-in-the-faith was none other than the man who had murdered her son. Initially, of course, she didn’t want to see him saved. She wanted to see him punished. But the anger, the rage and the bitterness that came naturally into her heart was ruining her relationship with Jesus, so she prayed and asked God for the strength to love her son’s killer with the love he loves us – His Son’s Killers. God gave her that strength! She never imagined she would actually visit him in prison and personally lead him to Jesus, but it was this love of Christ in her that he experienced that caused him to receive Jesus as his Lord and Savior! Could you do that? I couldn’t – not without his miraculous help and power!
This is Paul’s prayer for his brothers and sisters in Christ in Ephesus. Paul asks God to strengthen them making it possible for them to love in the same way God loves because they didn’t have that capacity without God’s help! God can and wants to give us the inner strength to love like this too!
A. Paul Prays for a NEW POWER in the Inner Person – verses14-17a
1. The Power to love others with God’s love begins with PRAYER!
Paul asks God to strengthen his friends in their inner being with power out of God’s vast resources. They already have the SAVING presence of Christ in them. Paul is now asking God to enable them to experience this power fully at work in them – Christ’s RULING presence. When God is ruling in our hearts he is controlling us from the inside out. We don’t like giving God control over our lives. We like having him along for the ride as our co-pilots, but we want to stay in the driver’s seat. If he is going to help us, we will need to let him drive.
To let him have control over our lives we must let him come in and fill up our lives. In Ephesians 5:18 Paul says, “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.” What happens when we are filled with alcohol? Everything we do is affected by it because our inner senses have been changed. For example, when a police officer conducts a field sobriety test of someone who is intoxicated he might ask him to walk along the yellow line and touch his nose with his finger. When he can’t, the officer knows the individual has lost control of his ability to function normally. When we are filled with the Holy Spirit we are controlled from the inside by his power. We are given the ability to love those we otherwise would not be able to love because we have been filled with God’s love. The dear lady in the prison was already saved but she needed the Holy Spirit’s indwelling power at work in her to enable her to love and forgive her son’s killer, since she couldn’t on her own.
2. The PLACE we need this power is in our inner being (man). The inner man is the control center from which we understand life and make choices. We call this our soul – which is actually (1) our mind (reasoning) – “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world (being unforgiving and unloving), but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2 (2) our will (choice) – This woman couldn’t love this man, but chose to let God change her heart so she wouldn’t have to live with the bitterness the rest of her life; and (3) our emotions (feelings). Love is not a feeling, it is an action! She didn’t feel like loving him, but loved him anyway which changed how she felt about him. Even though we are saved we still need to be transformed into Jesus’ image.
In Galatians 4:19 Paul said, “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” This is what Paul is wanting for the Ephesian Christians too. Paul, the caring and loving pastor was laboring, like a woman in childbirth, to see their transformation. After we’re saved we need to be transformed; to grow up into Christ.
3. The PROPORTION of strength God gives is His Glorious Riches. We don’t need to come to God for just a few crumbs of His Holy Spirit’s power, but for as much as we need to love like he loves. One writer says, “God’s love is a wellspring from which believers are nourished . . .” The lady in our story is a good example of this. Are you lacking any love today for someone; for yourself?
B. Paul Prays for A NEW UNDERSTANDING of Christ’s Love – verses 17b-18
Paul asks God to help them grasp how vast Christ’s love is. Understanding Christ’s love is like a guy who tried to explain Schizophrenia to someone who had never experienced it. He said, “It’s like trying to define a color to someone who has never seen that color.” Paul is trying to encourage them to love Jesus more intimately since only by experiencing his love can they become people who can love like Him.
Christ’s love is Multi-Dimensional – which is hard to comprehend! Paul prays for them to have the power to grasp it; which is my hope for us today. Someone used the Cross to help us comprehend the vastness of Jesus’ love for us. The horizontal beam represents the WIDTH of his love. His love is offered to all people versus human love which tends to be more selective. Jesus died for whosoever would come to Him. His love includes us all. The beam also represents LENGTH to which God’s love will go. He stretched out His arms giving His all for all of us.
The vertical part of the Cross shows the HEIGHT of Jesus’ love. I used to tell my daughter, “I love you with a love as big as the sky!” This meant that my love for my daughter had no limits. Christ’s love knows no limits. He loves us with a huge, an everlasting love.
The vertical part of the Cross also represents the DEPTH of Christ’s love as it shows how far God will descend in order to reach those he loves. He descended to the earth to become a man and to die on a cross for us. He will descend to the depth of our sin as well. As Corrie Ten Boom said, “There is no pit too deep that His love is not deeper still.” There is nowhere we can go to get away from His love. Do we love like this? Can we love like this? Yes, with the power of the Holy Spirit.
C. Paul Prays for A FRESH FILLING of God’s Fullness – verse 19
Paul wanted them to KNOW this love that surpasses knowledge. This sounds contradictory. Knowledge is general understanding; knowing about something. For example, I have a general knowledge of Communism. I know what it is even though I have never participating in it. Lots of people know about the Love of Jesus and even admire Jesus for His love, but they’ve never experienced in it. They are only SPECTATORS.
Paul wanted them to know Christ’s love in a way that surpassed general knowledge. He wanted them to have intimate knowledge of Christ’s love. He wanted them to be PLAYERS who experienced God’s love so they may be filled and transformed by it (filled to the measure of all the fullness of God).
The intimate knowledge of God’s love that surpasses any general knowledge of it is what forms Christ in us. This is what transforms us into mature Christians. For example, marital love is the most intimate knowledge possible between people apart from God’s love. This is the kind of love where two people are completely known by each other and loved anyway! It is wonderful. This is the way we can know His Love, by a fresh filling of His fullness. It’s like a ship filled with its cargo is abundant. He wants us filled with the cargo of his love.
Do you know this love of God, or have you only heard of it? Would you like to experience it? All you need to do is to pray and ask God to fill you with his Holy Spirit. Pray with me: “Father, I want to know, to experience your loving presence deep within my heart and life. Please forgive me of any sin and selfishness, and fill me with your Spirit. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.”
Do you love all people with this Christ-Love? Would you like to be made able to love others, even those who have hurt you deeply? Just admit your need, be willing to be filled and pray with me: “Dear Lord, please give me your love for everyone; even those who are not very lovely. Lord, I do not want to bear any grudges or feel any bitterness for anyone. I want to love like you. Please fill me with your Holy Spirit that I may be changed from the inside out to become like Christ; to be formed in his image, I pray. Amen.”
