The Measure of Love Ps 14; 2 Sam 11:1-15; Eph 3:14-21; John 6:1-21

Introduction  https://youtu.be/d0NWG7TMrwA

We saw last week from Ephesians 2:11-22 that the Church is a living temple[1] whose dimensions in the Spirit will in the End fill the new heavens and earth (Isa 65:17; 66:22; 2 Pet 3:13; Rev 21:1). Ephesians 3:14-21 teaches that this temple will be full of the power of God’s love[2]. This glorious truth[3] raises a sharp question, “Why do so many Christians not experience the love of God?”. This is a part of scripture we would do well to memorise[4].

Paul’s Prayer Request

v. 14 “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,”

“for this reason” relates back to what Paul has said about our access to the Father through Christ in the Spirit (Eph 2:18). We confidently pray to our Father, rather than to “God”, because Jesus always prayed this way[5] and taught us to pray, “Our Father” (Matt 6:9). Christ’s death and the gift of the Holy Spirit have brought us into the enjoyment of his intimate family relationship with God (Rom 8:14-16; Gal 4:4-6). To bow in prayer is an act of humility (2 Chron 6:13; Psalm 138:2; Daniel 6:10)[6]. Once upon a time Anglican churches all had kneelers. Why have they all disappeared?  Since in his time of distress in Gethsemane Jesus knelt to pray (Luke 24:41) we should always feel likewise free to kneel in prayer.

15 “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,”

“Every family on earth” recalls the promise to Abraham that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:3), all angelic “heavenly families” were likewise created and blessed by God[7]. Since God’s ability to name whatever he has made means he has sovereignty over them, nothing in heaven and earth can impede Paul’s prayers reaching God’s throne and being answered[8].

16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,

God is glorified in empowering us in the same way as he was glorified in raising Jesus from the dead[9]. This S/spiritual empowerment means an invigoration of our whole beings[10]. Our enlivened “inner being” is who we are deep inside. In the Old Testament God made his people “stronger than their enemies” (Ps 105:24). Today we are all daily assailed by tiredness, sickness, misunderstanding, despair, anxiety, slander….partners, friends and relatives who do not accept our faith. Much of the opposition which assails us in “everyday life” is stirred up by evil powers (Eph 6:10)][11]. It is not an easy thing to be a human being. As one of our church members said to me the other day, “Life is a bitch which comes back to bite you on the bum.”  To stop this being the dominating dimension of our experience we need potent inner spiritual renewal every day (2 Cor 4:16). We need daily fortification, not by the outside-in strategies of alcohol or comfort food or screen-time but strengthening by the power of God. We need the power of the Holy Spirit is to live the Christian life with all its demands and opponents, human and demonic[12].

17a so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—

Paul’s prayer is for an intensification of the life of Jesus in our hearts. Not in our thinking or feeling but in the very centre of who we are, our hearts. The evangelical tradition which teaches that to ask Jesus into your heart as Lord and Saviour (cf. Rom 10:9) is conversion is basically correct. Since the heart is the centre of a person (Prov 4:23) the more intensely Christ indwells us the more we become like him.  Who wouldn’t want that?

17b that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

I remember a friend who enthusiastically came to Christ, but just as Jesus foretold in the “Parable of the Sower”, when trouble and persecution came because of his faith he quickly fall away (Mark 4:16-17) because he lacked deep roots in the Lord. I think if there were financial penalties for following Jesus[13] many professing Australian Christians would stop coming to church. To be “grounded in love” means to have the love of Jesus and his Word as the unshakeable foundation[14] of existence (Matt 7:24-27). When he is our rock[15] the storms of life might batter us, but they will never destroy us. I remember coming home from a prayer time some years ago and saying to Donna, “I feel like I’m having a breakdown.” To which she replied in characteristic and accurate fashion, “You won’t, God won’t let you!” This was the exact recentring on Jesus I needed at the time. Paul keeps petitioning the Father.

18 (that you) may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God[16].

The only way to comprehend the incomprehensible is to have a heart filling with the immensity of God’s love. This, according to Paul, is the inheritance of “all the saints”. We are all included. Hallelujah. In using four dimensions, breadth, depth, length, height, rather than three, we are assured of the immeasurability (Eph 1:19) of God’s power, love and glory for us in Jesus. But how is it possible for a mere creature to be “filled with all the fullness of God.”? The short but best answer is that Jesus was and is. We are told in Colossians, “in him the whole fullness of God lives in bodily form, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.” (Col 2:9-10). In God’s eternal plan a body was prepared for Jesus (Heb 10:5)[17] that was designed to receive the whole being of God, so that in our union with him we might share this same dynamic fullness[18]. The language of fulness is the language of a temple[19] being filled with the presence of God without measure. Elevated by the Spirit in his own prayer Paul breaks into a doxology.

 

Doxology

20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

If God raised Jesus from the dead (Eph 1:20) he is able to do anything by his power already working in us. Whatever the Lord has promised he will fulfil. Decades ago we used to sing this rousing song of faith based on Jeremiah 32:17[20], “Ah, Lord God, Thou Hast Made The Heavens And The Earth By Thy Great Power; Ah, Lord God, Thou Hast Made The Heavens And The Earth By Thine Outstretched Arm. Nothing Is Too Difficult For Thee, Nothing Is Too Difficult For Thee; Oh, Great And Mighty God, Great In Power And Mighty In Deed, Nothing, Nothing, Absolutely Nothing, Nothing Is Too Difficult For Thee.” All this is true, in Jesus.

Paul ends on such a high note because his prayer is that the Lord might be glorified in the Church and in Christ Jesus as this is the reason why God created everything. The fulness that God designed for his new creation was Jesus + the Church filling everything with his richest presence forever and ever.

Conclusion

Many Christians live in and out of a crisis of faith, not so much about whether Jesus lived, died and rose again, but a crisis about whether God loves them. I can say this forcefully not primarily because people tell me this pastorally, though they do, but because the revelation of the love of God always moves us to a life of obedience (2 Cor 5:14-15). There are large areas of all our of lives which show little or no evidence of being filled with God’s love. Areas of weak discipleship e.g. prayer, Bible reading, evangelism and an inability to totally trust God with time, relationships and resources. This is symptomatic of a crisis in knowing the love of God.

Do you realise dear brother/sister that God does not have two levels of love, his fatherly love for his Son is no greater than his love for us as his eternally chosen and adopted children (Eph 1:4-5)? When Jesus prayed to the Father[21] …“I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” (John 17:23), he taught us that all the love which the Father has for him is ours in him. How do we grasp this, how does this grasp us? The remedy for not feeling loved by God isn’t to look at our lack of feeling loved, it is to ask for God’s help to reveal who Jesus is for us, especially in the sacrifice of the cross[22]. This moves us from self-centredness to Christ-centredness.

Let me share something that Rick shared with me last week to illustrate. When he stepped on a nail he had some excruciating pain which reminded him, in a little way, of the physical agony Jesus endured on the cross to save us. Especially as men had to keep pushing down on the nail through their heel bones to stay upright so as not to suffocate. There is something about this sort of intolerable physical, emotional or spiritual pain that radiates through body, soul and spirit that penetrates to and through the whole heart/being. (cf. “The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” (Gen 6:6 NIV). Through this suffering the breadth, length, height and depth of God was filled with love for Jesus and us in him when Jesus died for us. “It is finished” (John 19:30).

Jesus is the full expression of God’s love, Jesus is love’s “breadth and length and height and depth”. It has been and always will be about Jesus (Col 1:16) and our place in him forever and ever Amen.

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