Love

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 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.

Today we come to our final Sunday, our final week of the season of Advent. As I have said before, these four Sundays before Christmas have traditionally been used by the church to not look back at Christ’s first coming, but instead we look forward to his second coming, his second Advent, in light of what Christ did during his first Advent.

In our first week, we looked at the hope we have in God through Psalm 33. (Light the Hope candle) Biblical hope is not wishing for an outcome as the world defines hope today, but is a trust in God that he keeps his promises.

In our second week, we looked at the peace that we have in God as our caring shepherd in Psalm 23. (Light Peace candle) Our peace is not a lack of trouble and strife, but it is a knowledge that God is with us through the valley of the shadow of death and in the presence of our enemies.

Last week, we looked at Psalm 16 to see the joy that we have in being God’s children. (Light Joy candle) We saw how, like hope and peace, joy has nothing to do with our current circumstances. We can have joy in our Heavenly Father because we know the end of the story! We also saw how Jesus endured the suffering and shame of the cross, taking God’s wrath upon himself for your sins and mine, because of the joy set before him. He knew how it would end, and so endured the cross.

The fact that Jesus was willing to go through that for us can be very hard for us to wrap our minds around. But Jesus did that because of his love for his people. (Light the Love candle)

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Big Idea: The love of Christ is more than we can comprehend

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Ephesians 3:14-15

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,

Paul has just finished writing about how he was commissioned by God to bring the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. This has always been a part of God’s plan, which Paul calls a “mystery hidden for ages.” (Talk about the Gentile women in Jesus’ genealogy)

It is interesting to see the how Jewish people in the Old Testament, as well as in the Gospels, were so afraid that Gentiles might make them unclean. This stems from the teachings of the Pharisees who were so zealous to follow God’s laws that they created rigid rules and boundaries (that were not part of God’s laws) in order to keep people so far away from even looking like they might sin by coming close to maybe breaking this law or that.

And yet, I find it more interesting that there are three Gentile women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew chapter one. Tamar was a Caananite woman who had twins with her father-in-law Judah after she pretended to be a prostitute. Rahab was a prostitute in the city of Jericho who had agreed to hide the Hebrew spies as they were checking out the Promised Land. The Lord spares her family and she becomes part of Jesus’ line. Finally, we have Ruth. She was a Moabite woman whose Israelite husband died, and she followed her mother-in-law back to Israel and ended up marrying Boaz, the son of Salmon and Rahab. Ruth was the great-grandmother and Rahab the great-great-grandmother of King David.

There were actually laws for how Gentiles could become part of the Israelite people, and so it was not uncommon for Gentiles to convert…but it was a process.

In our passage today, Paul is telling this Gentile church that this mystery of the Gentiles becoming part of God’s people would happen en masse. The rituals and such were no longer needed because of the work of Jesus on the cross.

Since God is now making this mystery known, that Gentiles are co-heirs with Israel in the promises of God through the gospel of Jesus Christ, Paul tells his readers that he is in prayer to the Father. He describes God as the one from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. We are all image bearers of God, created by God for his purposes.

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Ephesians 3:16-17a

…that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith…

Paul prays that the Ephesians would be strengthened with power. He describes this power as coming through the Holy Spirit dwelling within the Ephesian Christians. The result of this Paul says in his prayer is that Christ would dwell in the hearts of the Ephesians by faith. Using the word dwell, which comes from the Greek word kateikeow, this word carries a sense of residing permanently. This sounds like Paul is praying for the salvation of the people in the church in Ephesus. In salvation we are regenerated by the Holy Spirit and through faith Christ dwells within us. We start to conform to his image.

Now, I know that there were true believers in the Ephesian church. I think that Paul is wanting everyone in this church, everyone who hears the word of the Lord, to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. However, there are those who will spend their whole life going to church and never be converted. This is why Jesus told his followers that in the last days some will come to him saying, “Lord, Lord.” And Jesus’ response to them will be, “Away from me, I never knew you.”

By Paul telling the Ephesians of this prayer, it encourages them, whether they are truly converted or not, to cry out to God for this transformation within themselves. This is where Christians get power, through the transformative work of the Holy Spirit in our lives as we are brought out of spiritual death and into spiritual life. This power is not a power to rule over others, but to be used in service to others. The power that resides within us is what gives us hope, or trust, that God will keep his promises and will provide for those he loves. This power gives us peace in troubled times. This power gives us a joy that not only helps us see past our troubles, but recognizes our trials as God pruning and preparing and sanctifying his people.

The bestowing of this power is according to the riches of God’s glory. From GotQuestions, “This glory involves His nature and his active engagement with believers. The glory of God provides a spiritual treasury of blessings for those who trust in him.” These riches are found in Christ when he dwells in our hearts through faith in him.

The heart in ancient Greek and Jewish thought represented the essential aspects of existence and identity. The heart was where intellectual activity was thought to have taken place. That is why the Proverb says to “trust in the Lord with all your heart.” Paul is praying not only for the salvation all those in the Ephesian church, but that Christ would be on the forefront of the Christian’s mind, that Christ would be the focus of a Christian’s thoughts, actions, and words — everything about us.

Remember last week as we went through Psalm 16 where David said, “I keep the Lord always set before me.” This should be our attitude and mindset when it comes to our walk with Christ.

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Ephesians 3:17b-18

—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth (of the love of Christ)

There is a continuing progression in Paul’s prayer that we must see. He prays that the Spirit would strengthen believers, SO THAT Christ would dwell in their hearts through faith, SO THAT they would be rooted and grounded in love.

The apostle uses two metaphors here to describe how he is praying for the Ephesians.

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Keep slide up for next two paragraphs

Two Metaphors:

Agricultural - Rooted

Architectural - Grounded (or Established)

The first metaphor is agricultural - rooted. The love of Christ provides a stability for us like the thick deep root system of a tree. Though the winds may come, that root system holds the tree in place so that it will not fall. (parable of the sower and shallow roots)

The second metaphor Paul uses is an architectural one - grounded (some translations - established). Christ’s love also provides stability like a well fortified wall around a fortress. That wall can take a beating and yet keep standing to protect those within the walls.

This rootedness and groundedness in love can only come from faith in Christ. Can non-Christians show aspects of love toward other people? Absolutely! Since every human is an image bearer of God, the work of the law of God is written on our hearts, which is why everyone, even non-believers, have some framework of love, justice, or morality - though that is often distorted by sin. However, true love and the knowledge of what that is only comes through faith in Christ.

Paul prays that when the Ephesian Christians are rooted and grounded in the love of God, they would be given the strength to be able to comprehend, just as the saints, all Christians before and after them have, how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. Paul wants his readers to understand just how great Christ’s love actually is, not just in its power, but in its scope.

There is so much to understand about the love of God that is found in Christ.

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John 3:16

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

John 15:13

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

What we see in the love of God, and the in the love of Christ (which are the same), is that love has nothing to do with what the person who is giving or showing that love may get in return. The love of God is not about what he may get out of it. It is a gift that he gives to us. We are the recipients of his love. Christ is also a recipient of the Father’s love.

When we love someone else, or show them acts of love, those actions are selfless. They are not about us.

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True love is selfless

Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 13. Many know this chapter of the Bible as the “Love Chapter”. It is often read at weddings. But this passage has nothing to do with weddings. This entire chapter of this letter is in the middle of a section where the apostle is talking about the various spiritual gifts in the church and how they are to be utilized because the people in the Corinthian church were trying to show each other up based on the spiritual gifts they exercised.

In the beginning of chapter 13 he says that if he were to speak in the languages of angels, but did not have love, that he would be no different than a noisy gong (explain a gong) or a clanging cymbal. Without love, that speaking in the tongues of angels is just noise.

He then states that if he were a prophet and could understand all the mysteries of the universe, or even had the faith to remove a mountain by his belief, but didn’t have love, he was nothing!

Finally, he says that if he gave up all of his possessions and had gave himself up to be burned (like the Romans were doing to the Christians at the time), but didn’t have love that he would have gained nothing.

What the apostle is trying to get the Corinthians to understand is that these gifts are not about them. These gifts are about serving others and pointing others to Christ. The people cared about their gifts in selfish ways - there was no love in them. So Paul tells them what love actually is.

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1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love is patient (Love does not work on its own timing) and kind (love shows gentleness); love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude (Love is not harsh, caring only about itself). It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[b] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. (Love does not make light of sin or of people doing wrong, but takes wrongdoing/sin/unrighteousness very seriously, weeping at it, but celebrating the truth of who God says he is and who he says we are in him) 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (Love protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres in the midst of trial and hardship.

I believe that the greatest earthly example of how this SHOULD play out in human relationships is the love between a husband and wife. Paul describes this in Ephesians chapter 5 (you don’t need to turn there because I am just going to summarize).

Paul tells his readers that wives should submit to their husbands as they do to the Lord because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. So Christian wives should show their husbands how we as the church should love and submit to Christ. This submission also shows the love of Christ to God the Father in the way he prayed in Gethsemane, “Not my will but yours be done.”

Now I understand that the idea of submission tends to make people really uncomfortable. But Biblical ideas, and themes, and teachings tend to grate against our own ideas of how we think the world should work. Submission here does not mean that the wife should be railroaded by her husband, but should do her best to trust the authority of her husband that Christ has placed on him in their marriage. Not second guessing every choice that he makes, but learning to trust him as he seeks to lead in a Godly manner.

Paul then turns to husbands and says that they should love their wives in the same way that Christ loved the church - and how did he show us love to the church? He gave up his life for the church. He literally sacrificed himself for the good of his bride, the church, that we may be found holy and blameless in the sight of God. Paul says that husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies, like Christ loves his body, the church. Husbands are to show their wives, and also their children, what sacrificial love actually means. As Christ washed the feet of his disciples, husbands are to wash their wives in the Word, presenting them as pure and holy and blameless before the Lord.

Husbands, when you get home from a long day of work and are exhausted, but your wife has had it up to (here) with the kids and desperately needs a few moments of peace, showing your wife the love of Christ is giving her the break she needs and playing with, or disciplining the kids, depending on the situation, even when you are exhausted.

After hearing of his cousin, John the Baptist’s death, Jesus tried to get away to mourn but was followed by a mass of people that wanted to see him and hear from him. In spite of his grief, Jesus had pity on those people who were hungry and tired. He healed their sick, and fed them, turning five little loaves of bread and two fish into a meal that would feed 5,000 men, not including women and children. Though all circumstances are different, husbands, lets show the love of God to our wives and families by putting their needs before our own.

Notice that when Paul gives these instructions to husbands and wives, he does not say, “Only if they deserve it.” Christ did not love us because we deserved it. We deserve hell and the grave for our rebellion against God. And yet, the God who is so rich in kindness, mercy, and love sent Jesus to pay the price for our sin.

That just scratches the surface of how wide and long and high and deep God’s love for us is.

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Ephesians 3:19

…and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Paul prays that the Ephesians would not just comprehend the love of Christ, but to know it. This goes beyond head knowledge and into heart knowledge. There is a difference in having a lot of Scripture memorized and being able to recite verses off the top of your head and knowing how it has impacted you and changed the way that you think, act, and live. You can know all of the many aspects of Systematic Theology and how all the different aspects of God interplay together, but if that knowledge has not changed the way you see yourself in light of who God is, then that knowledge is of no value to you. Just like Paul told the Corinthians, without love, everything is useless.

When we know this love that surpasses anything we could possibly understand cognitively about it, then we will be filled with all the fullness of God. Paul mentions fullness multiple times in this letter to the Ephesian church. Here he mentions being filled to fullness of God. In 4:13 he mentions the fullness of Christ. In 5:18 he mentions the fullness of the Spirit. Paul prayed for Christians to be as like God as our feeble efforts and minds and bodies can.

The great Welsh preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in preaching on this passage of Ephesians made the connection between having this fullness of God to the parable of the talents that Jesus told his followers. If you remember, the one with 5 talents earned 5 more, the one with 2 talents earned 2 more, the one with one talent buried it and ended up having it taken away from him and the talent was given to the one with ten already. After that Jesus says this:

To him who has much, more will be given. But to him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.

The connection that Martyn Lloyd-Jones makes is that when we have the love of Christ within us, when we have repented of our sins and submitted to his will, we will receive even more of his love. We will experience it in even deeper ways than we have before.

But for those who do not have the love of Christ in them, those who have not repented of their sins, are not submitted to God, even what they think they have (their money, their job, their family, etc) even that will be taken away. In the end, those things are meaningless in the light of knowing Christ Jesus as the Lord of our lives!

What makes this love so great, beyond realizing that God would seriously love someone as wicked as myself, is that no matter what trial or tribulation we all face in this world, it can never separate us from this love. Paul says so in Romans chapter 8:

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Romans 8:35-39

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;

we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure 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.”

Paul is stating here that no matter what we are facing, whether it be persecution for our faith, or war, or famine, or nakedness, or danger of any kind, none of those things can separate us from the love of God. Growing up in the church, I remember hearing multiple times in youth group this saying:

If they hurt us, God will heal us. If they kill us, we will be with God.

As image bearers of God who are fully submitted to the will of God, we should project the love, mercy, grace, and glory of God in such a manner that we will get two possible reactions:

It will draw others to see the beauty of Christ and to submission to him

It will repel those who do not desire the love of God and they will either ignore you or attack you.

That second reaction is the one that tends to prevent us from sharing this love with others. But again, we must remember that the persecution or attacks we may receive from others for sharing our faith is nothing compared to the love we receive from the Father fo being his children.

Maybe today, you are here and you do not know this love. You may believe that Jesus loves you but you have been afraid that he may take that love away. Today, you can know the love of Christ, a love that can never be taken away from you. You can know a love that will be given to you in greater and greater measure as you continue to hope in him. If that is you:

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Next Step: I will submit my life to the love of Christ

If you are making that declaration for the first time today, I want you to know that the elders and I will be available to you after the service. We would love to talk with you, pray with you, and encourage you in this journey of seeking after Christ and the love that he has for you.

Let us pray.

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