Scripture: Ephesians 3:18-19
Date: October 2, 2011
Speaker: Sean Higgins
We’ve been talking about God’s love from John 3:16 the last couple Lord’s day mornings. It is a love like no other that we need to wrap around our minds.
Knowledge of Christ’s love was indispensable to John Bunyan. His heart was stricken with guilt and he often despaired of being accepted by Christ. This seemed to be, according to his autobiography, Grace Abounding, one of the devil’s most used attacks, to rub his face in his unworthiness to receive any good thing from Christ. Bunyan had great need of knowing and living on the unseen love of Christ. He is not alone.
Bunyan wrote a book to feed Christians with this knowledge titled, The Saint’s Knowledge of Christ’s Love, or, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ. It has also been published recently under the title, All Loves Excelling. The entire book is a forrest fire of goodness sparked by Ephesians 3:18-19.
These two verses are the final part of a paragraph of prayer which Paul began in verse 14. Having received God’s Spirit, having been rooted and grounded in love, the apostle prays that the Ephesian believers
may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
These verses aren’t crutches or a wheelchair for weary and wounded hearts, they are two new legs. The passage is part of the “inner man’s” makeover (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:16), “strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (Ephesians 3:16).
The final part of Paul’s request is entirely about Christ’s love, but something about Christ’s love is not easy or obvious to know. We need an increase in bandwidth to download the full file of Christ’s love rather than the truncated version often transmitted today. Paul began by asking God to provide strength, that God would enable them to understand the unfathomable. Only God can give insight into this love. Paul describes it like two arms of a vice grip clamping onto one object.
The first phrase seeks strength that Christian pilgrims may apprehend the extent of Christ’s love.
to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
The four terms refer to dimensions, to measurable, discoverable ideas that, in this case, have no boundaries. Each term suggests the outer limits.
BREADTH, and LENGTH, and DEPTH, and HEIGHT, are words that in themselves are both ambiguous, and to wonderment; ambiguous, because unexplained, and to wonderment, because they carry in them an unexpressible [sic] something; and that something which far out-goes all those things that can be found in this world. (Saint’s Knowledge, 3)
Before we go any farther, an important question to answer is, comprehend “the breadth and length and height and depth” of what? The object (or objects) that is so broad and long and high and deep is not mentioned in verse 18.
Various interpretations have been suggested. Maybe “the breadth and length and height and depth” refer to God’s power. Maybe they refer to God’s wisdom. Maybe they are in reference to the mystery of salvation. A long line of interpreters have suggested these along with other more fanciful options (e.g., the for arms of Christ’s cross, the heavenly Jerusalem, the cosmos). Bunyan himself seems, to me, to border on being carried away in his comments on these four words.
So what does “breadth and length and height and depth” refer to? The first clue is that, in Greek, one article (precedes and) governs all four. The article welds the four elements together in Paul’s mind. He wasn’t thinking about four things, but the immensity, the vastness, the incalculability of one thing. But what is that something?
I believe the one thing is Christ’s love. The ESV and NAS make it seem that verse 18 and verse 19 are two coordinating thoughts. They are connected, but in a way that the second phrase in verse 19 expands and explains the first phrase in verse 18. Context clarifies Paul’s concern. While the NIV may not be the most accurate translation, it does emphasize the appropriate sense.
may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
There are clear parallels between verses 18 and 19. In verse 18 Paul prays that they would comprehend, in verse 19 that they would know. It was rational, but also personal knowledge. In verse 18 it is “the breadth and length and height and depth,” and in verse 19 it “surpasses knowledge.” So the two verses are scratching at the same itch.
As for the terms themselves, breadth refers to area. Christ’s love covers the widest span. Length refers to distance, how far things are apart. Christ’s love reaches the farthest intervals.
Do not though go about to measure arms with God,…do not thou conclude, that because thou canst not reach God by thy short stump, therefore he cannot reach thee with his long arm. (The Saints’ Knowledge of Christ’s Love, 6)
Depth refers to the bottom. Christ’s love descends to the lowest levels. It is unfathomable. Height refers to the top. Christ’s love soars above the tallest.
The vastness of Christ’s love is emphasized first, and Paul wants them to comprehend it. This is impossible. Comprehend means grasp, get a hold of the whole matter. But the cosmic dimensions make it impossible to get our head around it. We can’t get to the bottom of it. We can’t see the whole picture of His love. His love is too large to frame, and even if it were, there isn’t a wall large enough to hold the frame. The magnitude of Christ’s love cannot be measured. Imagine the most oversized, mega-gargantuan container you can; now double-it; now multiply by the next number higher than you can conceive. You’ve just taken a mathematical baby step toward comprehending Christ’s incalculable love.
This is an encouragement, because there are times and circumstances that seem too large to get around or too deep to understand or too high to overcome. These difficulties are opportunities for us to see the unseen love of Christ.
God is high above all things and can do whatever it pleaseth him. But since he can do so, why doth he suffer this, and that thing to appear, to act, and do so horribly repugnant to his word? I answer, he admits of many things, to the end he may shew his wrath, and make his power known; and that all the world may see how he checks and overrules the most vile and unruly things, and can make them subservient to his holy will. And how would the breadth and the length, and the depth, and the height of the love and mercy of God in Christ to us-ward, be made to appear, so as in all things it doth, were there not admitted that there should be breadths, and lengths, and depths, and heights to oppose. Wherefore these oppositions are therefore suffered, that the greatness of the wisdom, the power, the mercy, and grace of God to us in Christ might appear and be made manifest. (Knowledge, 9)
We don’t always see it, but Christ’s love is “busily engaged for this and the other child of God, yet they themselves see nothing of them” (Knowledge, 10-11). Would that we were better expositors of providence. “Some shall suck honey out of that, at the which others tremble for fear it should poison them” (Knowledge, 11)
Come behold the works of the Lord towards me, may every Christian say. He hath set a Savior against sin; a heaven against hell; light against darkness; good against evil, and the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of the grace that is in himself, for my good, against all the power, and strength, and force, and subtlety of every enemy. (Knowledge, 9)
Would it not be amazing, should you see a man encompassed with chariots and horses, and weapons for his defense, and yet afraid of being sparrow blasted, or over-run by a grasshopper! (Knowledge, 13)
Christ’s love covers it all, and then some.
As I said, this is the second leg, not a second person. It’s the second arm of the pliers holding onto love. And the prayer is not that we would love Christ more, but rather that we would know His unknowable love for us.
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,
The paradox is profound. To try to get a handle on what is simply beyond us, let’s ask four scrutinizing questions.
We’re supposed to fill up the pages of our mental book with His love. So what is His love? Bunyan lets us copy from his work.
Christ’s love is steady and endless. Unlike our love waves that ebb and flow, unlike our love machines that rust and quit, Christ’s love stays strong and lasts forevers. “God is love; Christ is God; therefore Christ is love, love naturally. Love…is essential to his being. He may as well cease to be, as cease to love” (Knowledge, 16). The chain of His love never falls off the gears no matter how hard we pedal.
Christ’s love is impartial and righteous. Unlike our love glasses that look for loveliness, Christ’s love for others depends on Himself, not the others. That’s headline news, because our loveliness is buried on the last page in the smallest typeface—if printed at all, and certainly not worthy of His love. We wait to love until the person pleases us, and we withhold love when they hurt us. His love is unconditional, independent of the person. Also unlike our love that is often spent in the wrong direction, on things our flesh wants, on things that are contrary to God’s will, Christ’s love is always righteous. He’ll never be caught sneaking unlawful loves.
Christ’s love is personal and sacrificial. We put on our love coats to make us look good. His love serves and saves.
That a person so great, so high, so glorious, as this Jesus Christ was, should have love for us, that passes knowledge. It is common for equals to love, and for superiors to be beloved; but for the King of princes, for the Son of God, for Jesus Christ to love man thus: this is amazing. (Knowledge, 16)
It is amazing to consider that in God’s love and in His plan to save, He did not throw His love at us from a distance. He Himself took on flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). He Himself suffered and bled as our substitute, His enemies (Romans 5:6-11; 1 John 3:16). He Himself got involved and gave His own life.
Had this Christ of God, our friend, given all he had to save us, had not his love been wonderful? But when he shall give for us himself, this is more wonderful. (Knowledge, 19)
These are just a few ways to think of Christ’s love.
Paul states that the love of Christ surpasses knowledge. It is beyond our ability to comprehend. No saint can know it fully. All the saints together cannot know it fully. The saints in heaven don’t know it fully. The angels don’t know it fully. We could grow wings and plant a flag on the moon as soon as we could bolt down every corner of His love.
Were all the saints on earth, and all the saints in heaven to contribute all that they know of this love of Christ, and to put it into one sum of knowledge, they would greatly come short of knowing the utmost of this love, for that there is an indefinite deal of this love, yet unknown by them. (Knowledge, 23)
What is it about Christ’s love that goes beyond our knowing capacity? Among other reasons, here are a few.
Christ’s love is eternal. It is eternal, because as God, He is eternal. Therefore, His love had no beginning. It always was, and that means we’ve missed approximately 6000 years of earth time, let alone the eternity before the beginning of time, of knowing His love. We also, of course, cannot track His love all the way out in the future. We can say the words, we can try to imagine the “no end” concept, but our time-bound, finite brains cannot see or hold that much.
It is as possible for a spirit to drink up the sea, as for the most enlarged saint that is or ever shall be in glory, so to see God as to know him altogether, to the utmost, or throughout. (Knowledge, 24)
Christ’s love covers our sin. The cross is the ultimate display of love, the atonement the greatest work of love. But we do not completely grasp the significance of His sacrifice because we do not know the extent of our odious offense to His holiness.
Besides, there are many sins committed by us, dropping from us, and that pollute us, that we are not at all aware of; how then should we know that love of Christ by which we are delivered from them? (Knowledge, 25)
We can’t fully know His love because we don’t fully see our sin for what it is. The lyrics are no modest exaggeration: “I’ll never know how much it cost, to see my sin upon that cross.”
Christ’s love protects us from the evil one. Satan, through his demons and through the world system that he controls, seeks our harm. He is a roaring, prowling lion seeking prey. But we don’t see him. Neither do we see the spiritual principalities and rulers that we wrestle. Therefore, we have no idea how many times and ways that Christ has guarded us and preserved us out of His love for us.
No “not-God” being, no finite Christian can fully comprehend the love.
Paul is praying that we know Christ’s love, after all. That means God Himself, through the Spirit, can illuminate the truth to our minds.
Here is also a good place to poke the postmoderns in the eye, and remember that it is possible to know something correctly, even if we don’t know completely. 2 + 2 = 4 is always correct, though that doesn’t mean I know everything about math. In other words, we can know truly if not fully. A baby is truly human, though not fully developed. We depend on it every day. I know enough to know that my car doesn’t run unless there’s gas in the tank. I have an idea how some things work more than others.
We can appreciate the nature of God’s love even if not entirely. Loving through 40 years is different than 4 days. Seeing more of our sinfulness helps us appreciate more of His love. “People naturally think that the knowledge of their sins is the way to destroy them; when in very deed, it is the first step to salvation” (Knowledge, 28). Being sinned against helps us appreciate more how He was offended.
We grow in our understanding by degrees. That’s part of the pilgrim life, and our knowledge will increase eternally. We don’t know everything about the Bible yet. But we can work on it. We don’t see God’s holiness and abhor evil as He does, but we are being sanctified (and it’s a process). Our condition at conversion is not (hopefully) our continual condition. He is conforming us into the image of Christ and, the more we’re like Christ, the more we’ll be able to appreciate His love.
Even in heaven we’ll never exhaust His love. His love excels all loves. The fact that we can’t fully understand is no problem with His love. What we don’t discern is no discouragement, just the opposite! I’m not less impressed with the ocean because I can’t see past the horizon. So while we can appreciate and grow in appreciation, we can always marvel and take courage in all the unseen love.
We don’t know Christ’s love exhaustively, and we’ll never exhaust Christ’s love. It may be inscrutable into infinity, but it is knowable in its certainty.
Knowing that there is a breadth and length and height and depth that we don’t even know about enables peace when we feel unlovely. He has more love than your unloveliness can imagine. “We think Christ loves us no more than we think he can…but this love of Christ that we think is such, is indeed none of the love of Christ” (Knowledge, 32).
Knowing love beyond comprehension also enables risk beyond comprehension. “By this knowledge, room is made for a Christian, and liberty is ministered unto him, to turn himself every way in all spiritual things” (Knowledge, 34). No opportunity to give, to serve, to sacrifice, to slosh grace, to die, is beyond the edges of the safety net of His love. By faith in this great love we have every reason for boldness because His love goes before us and beyond us. “By knowing of this a child of God has reserve for himself, at a day, when all that he otherwise knows, may be taken from him through the power of temptation” (Knowledge, 33).
Those are good effects, but verse 19 finishes the prayer with the intended purpose of knowledge.
that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Being filled means, at the least, that we are strengthened and that we are satisfied. There is no higher step that being filled with all the fulness of God. There is no more profound blessing. There is no way that He is more glorified.
It is not greater self-esteem or self-awareness or self-determination that makes a person more human or more mature. It is not being secure in our environment or our relationships that provides inner peace. The way to maturity, the way to peace, the path to being complete in Christ, is knowing Christ’s love for us. Through a growing grasp of Him and His love we are filled with His fulness.
Knowing more of Christ’s love now also effects greater anticipation for Christ’s love then.
The more a man knows, or understands of the greatness of [God’s love] towards him…the better he will be able in his heart to conceive of the excellent glory and greatness of the [unseen] things that are laid up in the heavens…They that know nothing of this greatness, know nothing of them; they that think amiss of this greatness, thing amiss of them; they that know little of this greatness, know but little of them. (Knowledge, 14)
I love Bunyan’s question:
Couldst thou (sinner) if thou hadst been allowed, thyself express what thou wouldst have expressed, the greatness of the love thou wantest, with words that could have suited thee better? (Knowledge, 37)
In other words, if someone asked you to describe the kind of love you hoped for, could you have imagined it this good?
Such men are, at this day, wanting in the churches. These are the men that sweeten churches, and that bring glory to God and to religion. (Knowledge, 35)
Are you a stranger to Christ’s love?
How are you working to know His love more? I was convicted reading Bunyan’s book. I’m often studying and thinking and praying, paying more attention to the pliers than what the pliers are holding.
What is distracting you, causing you to doubt Christ’s love? We must live on the promise 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).