Close to the Edge

Ephesians 3:14-21

How Far Will Love Go? – Kid Edition

This week I experienced an act of great love.

We ordered a pizza. It came down to the last piece. And just as I grabbed it, I saw Logan start to reach for it. So with great sacrifice and with great suffering, I gave up the slice of pizza. For the love of my son.

*sniff, it was so beautiful!

This week I got to witness a great act of love through pictures on Facebook.

We can’t post these publicly, but Rachel said I could show some to you. This is Rachel and Adam who have flown to Uganda to adopt these three beautiful kiddos: Christine, Fidha and Wilson.

Beautiful.

Here is the question: how far will love go?

Love goes to the last piece of pizza. Love travels across the world to Uganda. How far will love go?

And what are the circumstances that would find out how far love will go? When in life do we discover the dimensions of love?

The Dimensions of Love

Paul prays for the churches in and around Ephesus, continuing his interrupted thought from the first half of the chapter. He moves from the topic of his ministry to the Gentiles to this prayer. And it is a powerful vision for the church. It is kind of dangerous prayer. It touches on this question: how far will love go?

Ephesians 3:14-19

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

There is so much in this prayer that I got lost the first few times. I kept getting stuck on phrases, and that’s okay. That’s actually a great thing in Scripture, it’s why we can return to it again and again and God deals with us on a new thing each time. There is a lot going on here, so let’s start by focusing on the overall structure.

For this reason, Paul is praying, and we’ll get to that starting context. But he prays to God… and then we have a series of “so that,” “so that”, “so that” “so that”. It is obscured a little in the NIV here, as if it breaks in verse 17, but it doesn’t. It is a chain of consequence. It isn’t necessarily a causal sequence, one thing leading to another, but it does all build to the final so that in verses 18 and 19.

Paul prays, for all these things, building to this: so that you may be able to grasp and know the love of Christ.

It’s kind of like an ingredient list, so let’s look at what that requires.

Ingredients

It requires power through the Spirit in your inner being (inner person).

It requires that Christ dwell in your hearts through faith.

These gifts come from God the Father, giving out of his glorious riches. This is an act of inner transformation by the whole Godhead, the whole Trinity.

It takes all of God transforming all of me…

This is something that God simply does in you, out of His riches, preparing you for what is to come, and responding to prayer. It isn’t something you do really, it is something God does in you.

There are more ingredients.

Having been rooted and established (or foundation-ed) in love. Two powerful images. A tree sending its roots down deeply into love. A building established upon a firm foundation of love.

This is a necessary first step. A prerequisite. Whatever is to follow cannot be until roots have been established, until there is a firm foundation, which I interpret to say, until one is rooted in and established in the gospel of love and community of love. Meaning that what is to follow is a challenge of Christian maturity, for those already rooted and established in Christ’s love.

We get an explicit sense of the community aspect of this in the following verse, verse 18, where his prayer includes:

Together with all the Lord’s holy people (all the saints)...

This is a communal activity more than a personal activity.

It takes all of God working in all of me

It takes maturity in the faith and in the church

What are all these ingredients leading to?

The Result – to Grasp and to Know… and so be filled

To grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. The dimensions of the love of Christ.

To know beyond knowing this love. A beautiful oxymoron. If it is unknowable how can you know it? I pray you do. The love is unknowable, but I pray you would be knowing it anyway, discovering it, learning and experiencing more and more of it.

And as you know it. As you grasp its dimensions…

And so be filled to the fullness of all the fullness of God. This is a scary passage because that is the phrase used of Jesus himself. Some early manuscripts here and there changed the words to be safer, but this is a radical claim. Filled with all the fullness of God.

That is what it looks like to grasp and know this love of Christ as Paul is praying for them to grasp and know the love of Christ.

Beautiful Ambiguity

The love of Christ. What is this love of Christ?

Is it the love that Christ has for us? Is it the love that I have for Christ? Is it the love owned by Christ that makes itself real and known in my life through the way I love others?

Yes!

The Context of Suffering

There is a reason that Paul has been driven to his knees before the Father, a context to this discovery of love.

He got distracted in the first part of the chapter. He is so passionate about his call to preach to the Gentiles, to the outsiders, those outside the tradition and culture of Israel and the church, and bringing them inside. He interrupts himself, but we can put together the full intro that leads to this powerful prayer.

Ephesians 1, 13, 14

1 For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles—

13 I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father,

It is Paul’s suffering on the church’s behalf. Especially on behalf of those outsiders, those Gentiles, to which he had been specially called to minister.

The context is suffering for the sake of those he loves and is called to minister to. Suffering for their glory.

Does that sound like the love of Christ? Beyond knowledge. Paul is in chains, no longer exploring through Europe and Asia, now he is exploring the love of Christ. How wide and long and high and deep is it.

The love Christ has for him. The love he has for Christ. The love of Christ which expresses through him to the people He is called by Christ to love.

You and the Love of Christ

To discover the boundaries of love, you have to travel to the edge.

Be an adventurer, an explorer of the love of Christ.

As we heard last week, Christ calls us to follow, and we come right up against what we are willing to give up. What holds us back. And we discover right there the extent of our love for Christ by how much we are willing to give up. And we grow in that.

You are on the mountain top, a spiritual high, feeling His presence and worship just pouring out of you. Have you found the extent of Christ’s love pouring into you? No, you are just glimpsing the height of it. How high is the love of Christ?

You are walking through life and fine yourself in the darkness, in the shadow, in the valley. And you ask, have I found the extent of God’s love for me? Nope, you are only starting to understand the depth of God’s love. How deep is the love of Christ?

Maybe you were raised in the Christian bubble and inherited some Pharisaic categories of people. Here are the good people, those are the bad people. You listen to K-love, they listen to something else! They dress inappropriately, they vote wrong, they curse. Their list of sins crosses into the “bad ones” while you stay with the forgivable kind. And yet you start to discover that, actually, there is just one category of sin… and forgiveness has been accomplished in Christ. That God already loves “those people,” has forgiven them, died for them, and has COMMANDED you to love them with His love. How wide is the love of Christ?

You find yourself filled with love for specific individuals in your community, in your school, or across the globe. God has given you a heart for those people, and you are passionate and your heart breaks and you sacrifice, and you give, and you serve. Maybe, even, you are called suffer… and it is for their glory. How long is the love of Christ?

Paul’s prayer for the church is not one of rainbows and sunshine. It is that God work in the church miraculously that they might be explorers of the love of Christ. See how far it goes, how deep, how wide, grasp it.

In order to discover the boundaries of love, you have to go to the edge.

Discover how much God loves you, everywhere you go, everything you do. I like that part, I like to be loved.

Discover the love of Christ expressing through you for others. That you might love the unlovable, the outsiders, the strangers. That you might go to the ends of the world for them. That you might sacrifice and suffer for them.

That you might go to the edge for the love of Christ.

This means God is going to stretch you.

The edge of your comfort level is not the edge of Christ’s love.

God is going to bring you farther. He is compassionate. He is wise. He is working in you to strengthen you by His Spirit, Jesus is dwelling within you by faith to make all this possible. But God is going to bring you farther.

Walking my edge

I am walking the edge of my understanding of the love of Christ. Am I loved by God even now? I am exploring the depths, the valley of the shadow of death, and weekly, I am comforted by His church.

I feel God’s love in this place. I love being pastor to a church where I am still a member and part of the church. You are all ministers, you are full-time staff. And we have Pastor Rod…

And though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil… thy Rod and staff, they comfort me.

I don’t care who you are, that’s funny. But it’s also real, and raw, and all the way true. I am being stretched, walking the very edge of my comfort zone, discovering in new ways the love of Christ.

All the Ways with All the Saints?

Now is the moral that you should face more suffering? Seek out sacrifice for sacrifice sake? No, if you are full of joy and thankfulness, be full of joy and thankfulness. And share that, God is still teaching you the heights of his love.

But whatever your circumstances, know that He is working in you, all of God is working in all of you, to teach you to grasp and to know the love of God.

If you feel right on the edge of your comfort zone, right up to the edge of love, God is showing you that His love goes further.

God is teaching you the love of Christ through all your circumstances. Including your questions. Including your suffering. Including your joy.

If you feel at the edge of your strength, know that he has given you, out of His riches, his Holy Spirit to strengthen your inner person to know His love.

This is where together with all the saints comes in. We are exploring the boundaries together, calling out to one another what we are discovering.

It is God who is working in you to prepare you. All of God working in all of you. That you might grasp all the love. And you do that in all of the ways, in every experience of life. And you do that in community with all the saints.

It isn’t a question of if we will be challenged in this life. It isn’t a question of if we will be uncomfortable. If we will be called to love somewhat unlovable people. If we will be circumstances where we even question Christ’s love for us or our love for Him or our ability to love with His love.

In fact, it is guaranteed that we will be. But we walk forward in confidence, knowing that God has been and is working in us to strengthen us to grasp and know His love in every moment, that he has founded and established us to grasp and know His love in this moment, and placed us in His community of saints, His church, that we might together know and grasp the width and height and depth and length of the love of Christ.

The Impossible Promise

This is the impossible task. But it comes followed up by an impossible promise. A doxology, a hymn of praise, from Paul who was seeing this very thing take place in his own life.

He was discover how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. He was learning love that surpasses knowledge. He was being filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. And so He declares…

Ephesians 3:20-21

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