The Mystery of Love

Love Had No Beginning

The nature, attribute, perfection of God - 1 John 4:8 God is love

ἀγαπάω agapaō - God’s perfect love. Perfect affection and regard. Defines a special relationship between God and man. Self-sacrificing and unconditional in nature. Looking for the betterment of the recipient (us). Seeks God’s will for the benefactor.

Attributes at work. Holiness says they can’t approach God. Righteousness says they are unclean. Justice says someone must pay for sin. Love says let me embrace them. Holiness says the can’t approach God. Love say’s I’ll go down to them. Justice says sin must be paid for. Love says I’ll do it. Justice is satisfied. Righteousness says give them my robe. Love rejoices. Hosea 6:6 “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.” Matthew 9:13 “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”” Matthew 12:7 “But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.”

God’s Love Manifested

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

1 John 4:7–11 (KJV 1900)

7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

1 John 4:9 “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.”

1 John 4:16 “And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”

The Mystery of Love - Revealed

Pauls letter to the Ephesians was an opportunity to defines God’s purpose in uniting the body of Christ in love.

For this reason - Ephesians 3:1 thought completed in verse :14

Ephesians 3:14–15 “For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,”

Three “thats”

Ephesians 3:16 “that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man,”

What is this “inner man”

Romans 7:22 “For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.”

2 Corinthians 4:16 “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.”

Ephesians 3:17a “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;

John 14:23 “Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”

Romans 8:9 “But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.”

2 Corinthians 13:5 “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified.”

Ephesians 2:22 “in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

1 Corinthians 3:16 “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”

1 Corinthians 6:19 “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?”

Ephesians 3:17b “that you, being rooted and grounded in love,”

Psalm 1:3 “He shall be like a tree Planted by the rivers of water, That brings forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also shall not wither; And whatever he does shall prosper.”

Isaiah 61:3 “To console those who mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes, The oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; That they may be called trees of righteousness, The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.””

Jeremiah 17:8 “For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, Which spreads out its roots by the river, And will not fear when heat comes; But its leaf will be green, And will not be anxious in the year of drought, Nor will cease from yielding fruit.”

What does this entail?

Ephesians 3:18 “may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—”

Width - The worldwide love of God for all men (For God so loved the world)

Length - The love of God expressed through all the ages

Depth - Profound wisdom of His love which no man can fathom

Romans 11:33 “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!”

Height - Heaven is beyond the reach of any to deprive us

Romans 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”

Romans 8:35 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”