The Depth of Christ
The Depth of Christ's Love
October 21, 2007
Ephesians 5:1- 2
From the days before ready access to vaccines comes this story:
The doctor looked down at the little girl in the hospital bed. He knew that her only hope was to receive blood from someone who had recovered from the same disease.
Quickly the doctor found the anxious family, and knelt beside a small boy. “Johnny,” he said, “your sister needs your kind of blood to make her well. Would you be willing to give your blood so that she can live?”
Johnny’s eyes grew big. The doctor watched them well with fear, but the little boy hesitated only long enough to swallow the lump in his throat.
“Sure, Doctor, I will do it,” he replied.
After the needed amount of blood was taken from Johnny’s small arm, he remained quiet for a few minutes as he had been instructed. Then he stood up, and asked softly: “Well, Doctor, when do I die?”
Only then did the doctor realize the extent of the child’s sacrifice. Johnny had offered his life to save his sister, Jesus declared that there is no greater love.
Greater love than this no man has, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).
Let’s read today’s key passage from Ephesians 5:1-2: “Therefore, be imitators of God as dearly loved children
and live in love, just as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God. “
If love for one another is going to flourish and grow in our church, we must be rooted more deeply in Christ’s love. In other words becoming a loving person means living with the roots of your life sunk deep in the love of Christ for you. Being loved by Christ is the ground of becoming loving. And the root that you send into that ground is the faith that you are loved.
There's a phrase in 1 John 4:16 that describes this root:
We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us.
“We have believed the love that God has for us." Believing the depth of God's love for me is the key to my growing into a loving person.
And the key to believing the love that God has for us comes after seeing it revealed in the word of Scripture. A few people were allowed to see Jesus in the flesh and touch him and watch him teach and heal and suffer and die and rise. We might feel envious that our faith in the love of Christ can't be based on that kind of first hand sight and touch. But that was not God's plan. When Jesus prayed for his disciples in John 17:20, he said, " "I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony,” It was the plan of God that we come to faith, not by seeing the love of Christ in the flesh, but by seeing the love of Christ in the word of those who knew him.
My aim in this series is that our love for one another and for those outside would grow and deepen. But this will happen only as we are rooted - - that is, as we believe—more and more deeply in the love of Christ for us. And that belief comes by seeing the depth of Christ's love for us revealed in his Word. So I want to direct our attention to the depth of Christ's love for us.
As I have pondered the love of Christ, and the different ways that the Bible presents it to us, I have seen four ways that the depth of Christ's love is revealed.
First, we know the depth of Christ's love for us by what it cost him: he sacrificed his life for us. That assures us of deeper love than if he only sacrificed a few bruises. So we will see the depth of Christ's love by the greatness of what it cost him.
Second, we know the depth of Christ's love for us by how little we deserve it. If we have treated him well all our life, and have done all that he expects of us, then when he loves us, it will not prove as much love as it would if he loved us when we had offended him, and shunned him, and disdained him. The more undeserving we are, the more amazing and deep is his love for us. So we will see the depth of Christ's love in relation to how undeserving are the objects of his love. Romans 5:5-8 says: “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Third, we know the depth of Christ's love for us by the greatness of the benefits we receive in being loved. If we are helped to pass an exam, we will feel loved in. If we are helped to get a job, we will feel love another way. If we are helped to escape from an oppressive captivity and given freedom for the rest of our life, we will feel loved in a greater way. And if we are rescued from eternal torment and given a place in the presence of God with fullness of joy and pleasures for evermore, we will know a depth of love that surpasses all others. 1 John 3:1-3 says “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” So we will see the depth of Christ's love by the greatness of the benefits we receive in being loved by him.
Fourth, we know the depth of Christ's love for us by the freedom with which He loves us. If a person does good things for us because someone is making him, when he doesn't really want to, then we don't think the love is very deep. Love is deep in proportion to its liberty. So if an insurance company pays you $40,000 because you lose your spouse, you don't usually marvel at how much this company loves you. There were legal constraints. But if your Sunday School class makes all your meals for a month after your spouse dies, and someone calls you every day, and visits you every week, then you call it love, because they don't have to do this. It is free and willing. So we will see the depth of Christ's love for us in his freedom: "No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord" (John 10:18).
That's what I see in the New Testament. There are specific texts that stress each of those four ways of seeing the depth of Christ's love for us. And if you pray earnestly, and seek the Lord, then perhaps God will answer the prayer of Ephesians 3:14- 19 which says: “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, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height-- to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
The objective, then, is that we would be rooted and grounded in Christ's love and have power to comprehend the height and depth and length and breadth of his love—and so become like him in his love. And isn’t this what we want more than anything – to be like Christ, to have the mind of Christ. That is our goal, isn’t it? But can we know the mind of Christ without knowing the words of Christ, anymore than we can be like Christ without knowing what He’s like?
Today I want us to see the depth of Christ's love revealed in its costliness. Let's look at Ephesians 5:1-2,
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.
Be sure to see four plain and wonderful things here. First, be sure you see that Paul is showing us the depth of Christ's love for you. Verse 2: "Christ loved you, and gave himself." The giving of himself is the demonstration of his love. Second, notice that the cost of his love was himself—his life. It was not just money or time or energy or inconvenience or even suffering; it was the full extent of sacrifice. He gave himself. Third, notice that this love and this self-giving was for you. "Christ loved you, and gave himself.” Paul is talking about believers. He gave himself for you as a gift. As Ephesians 2:8 tells us: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is a gift of God.” Finally, notice that God the Father was pleased with this act of self-sacrificing love. Verse 2: "Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma." When God bowed down over the love that his Son poured out for us on the cross, it was a fragrant aroma to him. God loves the Son's love of us.
Sometimes we are so familiar with spectacular it doesn't move us as it should. We have to look at something lesser, be amazed, and then look back to really feel the wonder of the original. Chuck Colson told the story of a group of American prisoners of war during the second World War, who were made to do hard labor in a prison camp. Each had a shovel and would dig all day, then come in and give an account of his tool in the evening. One evening twenty prisoners were lined up by the guard and the shovels were counted. The guard counted nineteen shovels and turned in rage on the twenty prisoners demanding to know which one did not bring his shovel back. No one responded. The guard took out his gun and said that he would shoot five men if the guilty prisoner did not step forward. After a moment of tense silence, a nineteen-year- old soldier stepped forward with his head bowed down. The guard grabbed him, took him to the side and shot him in the head, and turned to warn the others that they better be more careful than he was. When he left the men counted the shovels and there were twenty. The guard had miscounted. And the boy had given his life for his friends.
Can you imagine the emotions that must have filled their hearts as they knelt down over his body? In the five or ten seconds of silence the boy had weighed his whole future in the balance—a future wife, an education, a new truck, children, a career, fishing with his dad—and he chose death so that others might live. Look back at John 15:13, Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." Do you remember a few years back, the plane which crash landed in the Potomac River in Washington, DC? One man dove under the water numerous times to rescue fellow passengers. When all were safely rescued and counted, one passenger was missing – the man who relentlessly pursued each passenger to rescue them. Do you get the picture of what sacrifice entails? Jesus loved us to death! To love is to choose suffering for the sake of another.
Jesus has loved you this way. Only, O so much more! Consider the life he laid down. One of the reasons Chuck Colson’s story hits us so hard is because the boy was nineteen years old. If he had been 89 years old and the others nineteen, we might say it was a beautiful act of love, but with a full life behind him it would not feel like the same kind of sacrifice as when your whole life stretches in front of you. The man who dove into the frigid waters of the Potomac was unknown by his fellow passengers. Yet he was compelled by love to rescue all he could. Now consider the life that Jesus sacrificed for you.
First of all, he was young too. He was about 33 years old. His ministry was three years old. He was cut off, as we say, before his prime.
Second, he was the oldest son of a widowed mother. One of the last acts of his life was to see that she be taken care of.
When Jesus saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, "Woman, behold, your son!" Then He said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" (John 19:26- 27)
The life he was giving up for you was young and, from a human standpoint, it was a life needed by his mother.
Third, he was the most kind and caring and wise and courageous man who ever lived. Peter testified, "He committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth" (1 Pet. 2:22). Even his enemies knew they could find no fault in him (Matt. 22:16) "I find no guilt in him," Pilate said (John 19:6). So the life he gave for us was no ordinary life of human value—which would be great enough. It was a sinless life. A life of perfectly balanced joy and sorrow, tenderness and toughness, justice and mercy, grief and anger, speech and silence, prayer and action. This life, of all the lives that have ever lived, was the most valuable life. The most worthy of living, the least worthy of dying. This is the life he gave for you—that you might live.
Fourth, he was the Son of God. Which means he was God as well as man. United to his human nature was a divine nature, in the mysterious unity of one person. The dignity and worth of this life was not just relatively superior to other human lives. This life was of infinite value—not the way other humans are of value, but the way God is of infinite value, namely, as the basis of all human value. Humans have value to the degree that we reflect the image of God. But that means that if the image has so much value because of the original, how much more value must belong to the original. With this life Jesus went to the cross for you. This is how much it cost to cover our sins against the holiness of God. And he paid it willingly so we could live. How much did He love us? This much! (stretch arms wide apart)
Fifth, as the Son of God Jesus was supremely loved by his Father in heaven. "This is My loved Son," the Father said, "with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!" (Matt. 17:5). Suppose that nineteen-year-old prisoner of war was the son of the Prime Minister of Canada—and he knew that there were powers available to him to escape not only the death he died but also the prison camp—and suppose that you find out that his father, the Prime Minister, not only had a massive love for the boy, but also approved of his dying for you, and wanted to meet those of you for whom he died, and give you some of the boy's inheritance. Would not the worth of that life be so unspeakably precious as to make you feel absolutely overwhelmed with love?
And consider now not only the life that Jesus sacrificed for us, but consider also what the sacrifice involved. To get to the point where he could die, Jesus had to plan for it. He left the glory of heaven and took on human nature so that he could hunger and get weary and in the end suffer and die. The incarnation – His birth - was the preparation of nerve endings for the nails of the cross. Jesus needed a broad human back for a place to be scourged. He needed a brow and skull as a place for the thorns. He needed cheeks for Judas' kiss and soldiers' spit. He needed hands and feet for spikes. He needed a side for the sword to pierce. And he needed a brain and a spinal cord, with no vinegar and no gall, so that he could feel the entire excruciating death—for you.
The nineteen-year-old boy was a wonderful picture of love. But compared to Jesus he was only a picture. His death was quick and relatively painless. Jesus' death was one of the worst kinds of torture devised for human pain. So when Ephesians 5:2 says, "Christ loved you and gave himself up for us," don't breeze over the words: "gave himself up." His love is great in proportion to the costliness of his sacrifice. And his sacrifice was horrendous.
We should ask in closing, how personally should we take this demonstration of love? Should you feel personally loved with sacrificial love this morning and later on today and tomorrow morning? Or should it remain a kind of general, great, historic wonder that you look at from a distance with admiration—like the depths of the Grand Canyon? The answer is given by the testimony of the same writer, Paul, in Galatians 2:20b, “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.”
This is what the apostle and the Lord himself is calling you to this morning. To see the depths of the love of Christ for you. To believe the love that he has for you. And to send the roots of your life down, down, down into this bottomless love. So you can say with Paul, “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me [me, personally],and gave himself for me.”