0621 GRASPING THE LOVE

JUNE 21 = EPHESIANS 3

THE CRUCIFORM LOVE OF GOD

“And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.”

Let’s explore today why Paul would describe God’s love in four dimensions. What is the significance of each of those directions of Paul’s description? And what should we have the power to grasp about it all?

Let’s try exploring this three-dimensional image that Paul uses. God’s love is wide, long, high and deep.

How wide is the love of God? It spreads from shore to shore. As John describes it in the Revelation, God’s love includes people from every tribe and language and people and nation. Every local sub-grouping, found as a tribe, or village, or extended family. Every culturally-distinct grouping of people who share a common language. Each language may be setting a people apart, but in the end, each one of those languages will be swallowed up in a new and better way, as God reverses the curse of Eden to bring all nations back together through the blood of His Son.

It also separates our sins from us as far as the east is from the west. Interesting that Paul and God both agree on which direction to describe width. If the psalms had told us that God removes our sin as far as the north is from the south, that would be a long way, but it’s still a finite distance. But east to west? That goes on forever. Which means, I guess, that God removes our sins So completely that you can just keep going forever and never dig a forgiven sin back up again. 

Paul then says that the love of God extends, not just wide, but also “long.” I picture “wide” as going side to side (left to right), while “long” would go forward and backward. It is equivalent in distance, if you can measure such things. But it is long. Long, as in the journey of a thousand miles. Long, as in time.

God’s love would go so far as to chase you down. Like the Hound of Heaven, God pursues you as far as it takes to find you, in spite of how far you have gone astray. Like Adam, who had gone astray and lost fellowship with God. But God went looking for Adam, asking, “Adam, where are you?” Like Jonah, whom God pursued across the sea, bringing a great storm, preparing a great fish, and depositing near a great city, all to bring the people of that far-away city of Nineveh to repentance. Like the prodigal son’s loving father, who stood day after day scanning the horizon, waiting for a distant glimpse of his rebellious son, the young man. God’s love is LONG, as in distance.

God’s love is also long, as in time. His love is long suffering. He does not become impatient with waiting, even when he says that all day long he has held out his hands to a stubborn and rebellious people. His love goes back to before the foundation of the world, and extends for all of eternity.

How high does the love of God reach? In answer, let me ask, “How high is heaven?” As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God’s thoughts higher than our thoughts, and God’s ways are higher than our ways. In other words, you might say that just as with east and west, there is no ceiling to stop the height of God’s love. It reaches up to bring a simple, single person up to the throne room itself. As he called to John in Revelation, “Come up here, and I will show you what is to come.” In the same way, he calls us higher, up the mountain, up to heaven itself, to join in fellowship with him.

God’s love reaches higher than we can imagine. Mountains and hills bow down before him in worship. Beyond sun and moon and stars. Beyond the highest position on earth—kings and all those in authority. God’s love does not ever fall short, whether in integrity or intelligence, strength or beauty, service or sacrifice. Nothing is higher than the love of God. Nothing is higher.

Then Paul uses the word “deeper” for God’s love. No one can be so far in sin that he is not reachable. No one can be so far enslaved that he is not redeemable. Nothing is beneath the “son of man,” as Jesus referred to himself. 

I’m saying that you cannot sin enough to be beyond the reach of the love of God.

The cross itself thus demonstrates the immense power of the love of God in Christ Jesus. The cross shows just how wide, and far, and high and deep is the love of God, especially when seen through the eyes of one watching the Lamb of God being slain from the foundation of the world.

 He then urges for the saints there.