Knowing the Unknowable Love of Christ

BLANK SLIDE TO BEGIN RECORDING (Please don’t wait for Matt to be on podium.)

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Introduction and Scripture Reading

Scripture Introduction

I’ve been in my fair share of airplanes in my day—large and small—but my favorite experiences are sitting in the cockpit of twin prop or turbo planes where I can see all the instruments and talk with the pilot. Some of these flights have been at night where I get to see just how the pilot lines up for the runway. Pilots call this the approach, and they use a variety of systems: radio checks, bright lights, compass, altimeter and more to ensure their going the right direction, speed and are descending at the right pace to touch down smoothly on the runway.

As a passenger who’s gotten to sit in the cockpit there’s a whole lot I haven’t understood. But one is clear, the Approach Light System which allows the pilot to transition from using instruments alone to visual references. At the beginning of the runway there’s a row of lights with crossplates that adjust what you can see from varying altitudes. It begins with three, then as the plane descends and gets closer it becomes two lights and finally a single light when the airplane comes close to the threshold of the runway.

There’s an approach to the Lord in prayer as well: a focus we’ll see that helps us adjust our perspective as we approach the Lord in prayer.

Open you Bibles with me to Ephesians 3:14 as we return to Paul’s pastoral letter to the churches in and near Ephesus. As we read this, let’s also make it our prayer for one another. Feel free to keep your eyes open to see the text and pray it quietly with me as I read it and pray, or close your eyes and listen with agreeing hearts.

Scripture reading

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Ephesians 3:14–21 ESV

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

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I. The believer’s posture in prayer (14-15).

Our approach to God and posture in prayer is fueled by God’s revelation

I want you to see something about the way Paul prays, that should greatly impact how you pray. When you and I pray, like Paul, we don’t know the outcome. We don’t know how circumstances will change. We don’t even know if Jesus will return to gather His Church today. (Wouldn’t that be wonderful!)

Remember the beginning of Ephesians (1:3), Paul gives praise to God, saying that He has

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“blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places...” He goes on to say that we should be “to the praise of the glory of His grace.”

We may not be certain of many things, but of those that are most important we sure are: we know who God is, what He wants for us, we know that he has given us every spiritual blessing so that you and I may live to the praise of the glory of his grace! And so, like Paul, we pray with confidence.

A. “For this reason I bow my knees ...” (14a)

1. Prayer involves your body

a) A person bending their knees shows humility, respect, honor for the one to whom they bow.

b) In Acts 7, Stephen uses the term “stiff-necked” to refer to those who resisted the Holy Spirit.

Why do we bow our heads when we pray? We tell children, “bow your head, close your eyes and fold your hands,” and we just hope they’ll make it through prayer undistracted. We bow our head, we bend our knees, we even lay prostrate on the ground to show our Father in Heaven how highly we esteem Him.

c) In this case we refer to bowing, but it’s quite appropriate to lift your hands in praise or hold them out in surrender. Consider the ways you may be subtly distancing yourself from God in prayer by failing to engage your whole body in prayer.

B. Paul bows his knees “...before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (14b-15)

a) Paul takes us back to creation. We have one Creator God who has created, named, clothed, called and equipped His children.

b) We’re immediately thrust out of the realm of the immediate, to the greater family:

Jew and Gentile

Rich and poor

Male and female

Young and old

…and everyone who has even perceived legitimate reasons to be at odds with another…we are united in Christ.

c) Through the family as a whole God’s great purpose of making known his manifold wisdom is fulfilled.

d) This is our God . . . to whom we pray! Those of us with a lot in common, with only this in common; those of us who don’t like each other. This is our God and we are His children; one family!

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II. The believer’s power for spiritual strength (16)

In the context of suffering, the essence of Paul’s prayer is for spiritual strength.

(v. 16) “…that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being…”

Notice four realities of this power for strength. It is:

according to the riches of God’s glory (v. 16a)—The word translated “according to” points beyond the idea of source/origin (merely, “out of” his riches) to that of correspondence (i.e., in proportion to his riches; on a scale commensurate with God’s riches; God gives as lavishly as only God can; cf. Phil. 4:19).

with power (v. 16b)—To be strengthened with power according to glory may simply mean to be strengthened by God’s radiant power! Believers are not left to summon up strength from within themselves in order to be able to do God’s will.”

through the Spirit (v. 16c)—Divine power is in one sense synonymous with the Spirit and in another sense mediated by the Spirit. Commentator Gordon Fee rightly says,

“This passage also shows that for Paul the ‘power of the Spirit’ is not only for more visible and extraordinary manifestations of God’s presence, but also (especially) for the empowering necessary to be his people in the world, so as to be true reflections of his own glory” (695).

in the inner man (v. 16d)— it is “the interior of our being … the seat of personal consciousness, … [and] of our moral being” (Fee, 695–96) (Rom. 7:22; 2 Cor. 4:16)

= heart. i.e., “that part of them which is not accessible to sight but which is open to his energizing influence” (Lincoln, 206).

Let’s have a candid moment here. When we’re suffering a trial, none of shines particularly brightly on our own: our personal stamina or amazing kindness. It is in dark moments that we either:

retreat, and hang on to self, failing in that season to live to the praise of the glory of His grace, or

we press in to Him from Whom all blessings flow and find peace…with all we need to endure hardship with godliness.

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Paul says, “we are the aroma of Christ to God among all those who are being saved...” (2 Cor. 2:15).

Jesus, faced with the same and worse in the Garden, pressed into the same power of the Holy Spirit available to you and me.

And previously when He prayed that God would send the Comforter, or Holy Spirit, the word there means “one called alongside to help.”

So when Paul prays, “that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being,” this is no weak, rote prayer.

This is about appropriating God’s provision in Christ through the Holy Spirit! In Colossians 1:9-11 Paul prays a similar prayer:

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Colossians 1:9–11 ESV

9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11 being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy;

[Application] there is a temptation here, as we think about our failures. We can either:

continue justifying the ways that we previously responded to a particular trial, hurt or other circumstance, so that we feel accepted by God, while we’re actually working hard to counteract God’s grace which comes through conviction of sin, and which is to grieve the Holy Spirit; or we can

pause, humbly look to our mighty Father, acknowledge our sin and repent, which means to bear fruit in keeping with grief over our sin. When we do this, we worship God, thanking Him that our adoption and acceptance is not based on success or failure in this area, but on faith in the One lived perfectly and willingly who took the penalty for that sin and overcame it when He conquered death.

We all sin. And we all are affected by the consequences of others who sin against God. At each point we are given the opportunity to appropriate the strength that is ours through the Holy Spirit in our inner being, by contemplating the goodness of God and walking in obedience in the many ways that are spelled out in Scripture.

Here’s the engine where that happens…

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III. The believer’s abiding love

Paul prays that

A. (v. 17) “So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith…”

1. The heart (inner being) represents our entire being: mind, feeling and will…the whole person.

2. Though God already dwells within us, this present continuous tense means a continued indwelling that produces the effect of the one doing the indwelling.

3. This is what happens when we read the Bible and prayerfully meditate on God’s revelation. Listen to a few passages that speak of this:

Joshua 1:8 – This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Psalm 1:2 – but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

Psalm 77:12 – I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds.

Psalm 119:15 – I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.

Psalm 119:48 – I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.

The worshipful attitude in these verses is the overflow of hearts that love God and live in faith.

See, when you actively worship God by meditating on His Word, and responding in obedience through faith, Christ continually dwells in your heart through faith. Christian. Church.

B. Paul continues: (v. 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,”

1. Paul uses a mixed metaphor, which is when two usually incompatible metaphors are used to form a single metaphor. Sometimes it works…often it doesn’t, here it clearly does.

Example: We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

a) Combining, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” and “Don’t burn your bridges,” to come up with a phrase that means something like, “We’re ready to fight when the fight comes.”

2. But in this case Paul’s mixed metaphor is compounding, giving profound power to this phrase, “Rooted and grounded in love.”

a) In the first metaphor, love is pictured as something that nourishes, giving life.

b) In the second, it is pictured as a solid foundation upon which to build.

3. As Christ’s love abides in us, so we are compelled to love one another

“A new commandment I give to you,” Jesus said, “that you love one another, even as I have loved you” (John 13:34).

Peter wrote, “Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart” (1 Pet. 1:22).

It is God’s supreme desire that His children sincerely and fully love each other, just as He loves us. Love is the first fruit of the Spirit, of which joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are essentially subcategories (Gal. 5:22–23).

Love is an attitude of selflessness.

Biblical agapē love is a matter of the will and not a matter of feeling or emotion, though deep feelings and emotions almost always accompany love.

God’s loving the world was not a matter simply of feeling; it resulted in His sending His only Son to redeem the world (John 3:16).

Love is selfless giving, always selfless and always giving. It is the very nature and substance of love to deny self and to give to others. Jesus did not say, “Greater love has no one than to have warm feelings for his friends,” but rather,

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John 15:13 ESV

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

Transition: As we are strengthened by the Holy Spirit in our inner being, meditating on God’s revelation, Christ continually dwells in our mind, feelings and will, we are both nourished and undergirded by the love of Christ which gives you strength, or spiritual capacity, to ..

C. (v. 18-19) “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.”

1. How do your know the “love of Christ which surpasses knowledge”? It is a phrase which communicates two types of knowing.

a) There is a cognitive knowledge, and

b) An experiential knowledge.

(1) This experiential knowledge is based on truth and relationship.

2. Charles Spurgeon, preached a famous sermon entitled, The Dearest Place on Earth, in which he spoke of the wonder of God’s creating the Church and when a church is operating in a healthy manner, it surely is the dearest place on earth.

3. Is this the dearest place on earth to you? I don’t mean, “Do you like it here?” I don’t mean, “Do you enjoy hanging out with your friends who go to your church?”

I mean: Is there any place you would rather be than doing life together with people you would not otherwise have much in common with, being knit together according to the riches of God’s glory so that TOGETHER (and before the saints who have gone before…the whole Church) you are able to grasp the fullest dimensions of the revealed character and nature of God, the love of Jesus which surpasses knowledge (v. 19) and the wonder of the incomparable power the indwelling Holy Spirit so that you are filled with all the fullness of God?

D. This is a picture of church life that God paints throughout the New Testament: a people for God, pursuing personal holiness out of love for God because they have been enraptured by His love; so that, with Paul (2 Tim 4) you and I are poured out collectively as a drink offering as we give praise to God (v. 20-21),

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Ephesians 3:20–21 ESV

20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Conclusion and Transition to Communion

Conclusion

Do you want to be a fit vessel, filled with all the fullness of God, knowing the unknowable love of Christ? There’s no secret.

1. Get into God’s Word

2. Meditate on the revealed character and nature of God

3. Ask God to grant you to believe the inexpressible love of God, and

4. Live among “all the saints” in such a way that you are able to comprehend the “breadth and length and height and depth” and “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” through your relationship with God and His Bride, the Church.

Transition to Communion

As we come to worship the Lord by participating in the Lord’s Supper, remember that prayer involves all of us. The worship team will lead us in our response to hearing God’s Word to us, remembering all God has given by giving His Son’s life for those decried him. For Christians, this creates in us a desire to do more than go through the motions of religious worship. We are here to intimately engage with God our Father and our siblings in Christ.

You may desire to bow your knee like Paul - or even prostrate yourself - in prayer.

You may stand in praise and sing with all you have.

You may walk around this room and identify someone to pray with specifically (I’d encourage you to do so since communion is a personal, yet very corporate act of worship).

You may even stand in a location where you can see others to remind you of who we are as you pray for one another.

However you engage with the Lord now, please engage meaningfully and intentionally with our Father in Heaven who unites us all in Christ and has given us the promised Holy Spirit who ministers through us, as a guarantee of our inheritance (1:14).

If you’re unsure of what it means to have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, come tap me on the shoulder and I’d love to talk with you. It will be a welcome interruption and a divine appointment that may not be on my calendar, but I assure you it’s on the Lord’s.

Closing Prayer and Communion

[1]Boice, J. M. (1988). Ephesians: an expositional commentary (p. 111). Grand Rapids, MI: Ministry Resources Library.