Isaiah - Verse By Verse | Walking through Ephesians

Walking through Ephesians - Day 63

versebyverse | January 09, 2008 20:54

Thought: To me, the human mind needs to keep stretching its concept of the capacity of Christ's love--there is always more "room to grow."

Question: Does love have size and dimension and therefore "limits"?

Scripture: Ephesians 3:18 (NIV): "may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,"

Paul is asking for us to "have power...to grasp" a spiritual truth; that Christ's love is huge! We will succeed in our Christianity only to the degree we comprehend Christ's love. Can we grasp how big it is? Some might say "no"; that our finite minds are not able to comprehend the full "size" of God's love; that only in Heaven will we be enlightened. But this prayer of Paul's seems to indicate otherwise. We can obtain the "power of God" Himself to enable us to grasp the fullnes of His own love. If success in Christianity is based on love, then we need to be able to grasp this truth; that Jesus' love is very wide, spreading way out past His own human contacts made by Him when He was alive on earth as a man, reaching every tribe, tongue and nation; that Jesus' love is very long, enduring, long past His time on earth, in fact, existing eternally, before time was ever invented, or, in the sense of length in measurement, His love is way beyond the "long" we could measure; that Jesus' love is very high, stretching up to impact Heaven itself, causing His own Name to be exalted "above every other Name" and drawing our souls up into Heaven with Him to be co-heirs; and that Jesus' love is very deep, in His plunging to the lowest recess of hell to save us, becoming sin in order to do so, being overcome temporarily by death to bring all of us everlastingly into life. As our understanding and appreciation of all these truths grows through our study of God's Word and the personal guidance of the Holy Spirit, we continually develop further our comprehension of His love. We begin to realize that we truly cannot plumb the extent of God's love--we will forever be discovering that it is always bigger than we thought. Christ's love is like Himself: unlimited in power, immeasureable in scope and eternal in endurance.

Paul prays that we all, both Ephesian Christians and "all the saints", will grow in understanidng this love. To know love is to know God because God is Love.

Prayer: Oh precious Lord of Love, by Your power, bring Your love to me in all its deep dimension, that I may know You better. Amen.