The Church was Made to Love more! (Ephesians 3:14-21)

Love is a feeling?

How long did it take you to fall in love? A new study suggests it’s about 88 days for men and about twice as long for women. Does that surprise you? Another study done recently suggests that 72% of men and 61% of women believe in love at first sight. What’s fascinating about all of these stats is the criterion for what constitutes love. The stages of falling in love all begin with emotional and physical attachment. It’s not until one gets down the list of all the stages of falling in love, where genuine care and concern for the other person over self take over.

Is it any wonder, then, we have a problem with interpreting love in the Bible. We come to the Bible and we interpret the word love through the lens of what the world has taught us about love. Feelings, emotions, physical attraction. Love is at the center of all Christian ethics. Ethics for us begin with “love the Lord your God will all your heart, mind, and soul.” And then, “love your neighbor as yourself.” That love for God and neighbor is all over the Bible, but when we look at our culture, even Christians in our culture, why is it that love seems to be lacking?

Made for More!

We’re not going to solve all the issues of love in our culture this morning. We’re not even going to try and come up with an exhaustive list of what the Bible means when it talks about love. What we are going to do is allow the great missionary Paul to help us understand “love” in light of what he has been saying about who the church is and what the church is to be doing in society and culture and the world.

We are making our way through Paul’s Letter to the church at Ephesus and along the way noting what Paul believes who the church is and what the church is to be for the world. Paul ends the first part of his letter with a prayer. And that prayer carries the rest of the letter. Paul prays that the church would be filled with the fullness of Christ as Christ is filling the world with himself. The church is the fullness of Jesus in the world. This means that every sphere of life is being filled with Jesus by the church. Wherever we live. Wherever we learn. Wherever we play. And wherever we work.

Paul spends the rest of the letter informing the church just what filling the world with His fullness looks like. And we come to chapter 3 and again Paul is praying. It’s almost like he’s picking up where he left off in chapter 1. Paul spends chapter 2 telling the gathering their story. They were dead in their sin. And they’ve been made alive in being raised with Christ. And all of it is God’s doing. It’s all of grace. And now that they have been told their story and who they are in Jesus, Paul again is praying.

The book of prayer

As an aside… great theologian NT Wright points this out.. whatever we could say about this letter to Ephesus, whether it’s the great doctrine of chapter 1 or the great salvation story of chapter 2 or all those instructions for husbands and wives in chapter 5, Ephesians is a book of prayer. Lost in the glory of all that Paul is saying in chapter 1 is that nearly the entire thing is couched in terms of prayer. Paul isn’t sitting down to write the Ephesians to give them some good doctrine and some practical lessons. Paul is concerned about this church. They seem to be having an identity crisis. There are some rumblings about ethnic groups trying to posture around the salvation story in salvation history, Jews and Gentiles… and while Paul has some pointed things to say to them, he is praying for them.

And so whatever we say today about how we are to see our story here in chapter 3, let’s never forget that this entire section is a prayer by a missionary who deeply loves this congregation. We see this in the book of Acts. Dr. Luke chronicles for us the missionary travels of Paul and at one point along the way, Paul has to say goodbye to the leaders of Ephesus. Paul spent a lot of time in this city with this congregation. But the time comes for him to leave the area and Paul knows he’s leaving for good and Paul weeps. The elders of that church weep. And Paul warns them the wolves are a threat to the sheep. And I can only imagine that Paul, in prison… which is where he’s writing this letter… he is deeply concerned about this congregation. And so he prays.

3 prayer requests

What is Paul praying for here in chapter 3?

There are 3 requests here that shape Paul’s prayer and help us see what Paul believes is the main motivation for a church on mission. Paul has already said that the church is in the business of filling all things WITH the fullness of Jesus AS the fullness of Jesus. But how does that happen? What compels the church to saturate all of life with MORE Jesus?

The first is that the church would be strengthened in the power of the Spirit.

Ephesians 3:16-17 “I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”

Before we say anything else… we always read these verses in context. These are some of the most abused verses in the Bible because people try to make these verses say things that Paul isn’t saying. This power that Paul is talking about is the power of our salvation. It’s not power to do whatever we want. It’s not power to beat off the devil. In the first chapter, Paul tells us that this power is God’s power that he gives us in our salvation, power to believe, power to live in faith. And here, this power is given that Christ would dwell in our hearts through faith. Power to believe. Power to trust. And if you don’t think this is some kind of tremendous power, then let me ask you: how much power do you need to have faith in Christ to give you His grace throughout the week? Given the amount of times that I fail each week, I’d say I probably shouldn’t shortchange what Paul is saying.

In order to fill society with more Jesus as we are filled with Jesus, we need the power of the Spirit, and we need Christ to dwell among us as a congregation and with us as individuals. In salvation, Christ comes to dwell among us, both as a church in our gatherings and then in our lives. Where Christ dwells, Christ fills us up. He does it in our baptism, he does it in our lives.

But then the second request gets to the heart of Paul’s concern for the church in Ephesus.

Ephesians 3:18 “I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love.”

Paul begins this request by reminding them that they are already established in God’s love and because of that, his prayer is that they might fully understand the fullness of God’s love. Again, we are not going to do a deep dive into everything about this prayer request, but what we do need to know is that, in using these dimensions, length, width, height and depth, Paul is again speaking about how expansive and pervasive God’s love is. God’s love is inexhaustible. These dimensions are temple dimensions. The temple is where God was dwelling in the Old Testament. Here in the New Testament Paul has already told this Ephesian church that they are God’s new temple, where Jesus dwells. And here again, the length, width, height, and depth… dimensions of God’s dwelling with his people… dimensions that cannot be exhausted. Wherever Christ dwells, there is God’s love… filling the entire church. The whole church, from top to bottom, from wall to wall, is where you can find the love of Christ because Christ dwells among his people. This is fullness language. Paul wants the church to comprehend to understand, to get to know just how full God’s love for us is in Christ.

And if the congregation had missed it, Paul’s third request is exactly this:

Ephesians 3:19 “and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

This is the great, grand promise of salvation in Christ. We have been filled with all the fullness of God. And we are being filled with the fullness of God. And being filled with the fullness of God is bound up with knowing and comprehending Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge. Again, Paul is not saying that Christ’s love is a mystery that surpasses knowledge so only a few people get to know it. No, he is saying that the more we try to understand Christ’s love the more that we realize we simply don’t know it all that well. And so Christ gives us grace and love, over and over again. And it’s for the purpose of being filled with all the fullness of God, of Christ dwelling among us as we will every corner of our lives with Christ’s love.

And this last bit is the point of church and mission. Christ’s love. What is Christ’s love? The love of Christ that motivates us to fill all things with His love by His love is simply this: Christ died for sinners. Christ forgives sinners.

What is it that moves us toward our neighbor? Christ’s forgiveness. It’s not our love that motivates us to move toward people who are not like us. We don’t have that kind of love, we can’t come up with that kind of love. We are incapable of fixing our lovelessness. We don’t love. That’s our problem. We really are about number one. Way too much. I want to win the conversation. I want to put people in their place. I want recognition. I want my fair share of the pats on the backs that are going around. I want to feel self-fulfilled. It’s all about me. That’s not love. What I need is for my heart and my life to be filled with a love that forgives. A love that is unconditional. A love that has no strings. A love that isn’t looking for any kind of reciprocity. Only Jesus loves this way and that is the love I need.

And that is the love that my neighbor needs. A love that is saturated with forgiveness and grace. Paul’s prayer here is that the church would saturate the world with Christ’s love through our love.

Forgiveness leads.

Forgiveness bleeds.

That is the kind of love that is completely missing from where we live, where we learn, where we play, and where we work. Our world knows nothing of forgiveness. It’s dog eat dog. It’s karma. And even Christians will play the truth and justice card with almost nothing to say about forgiveness. Christ’s love is unconditional. Christ’s love is saturated in forgiveness. For me and you. God never gives us what we deserve. And while there’s a place for the judicial system in our society to punish wrongdoers, there is room for the church to lead with the message of unconditional forgiveness and grace.

Paul knows that as we comprehend what is the length and width, height and depth of Christ’s love, that will spill over to our neighbors. It all starts here. We come here and we are reminded about how much Christ loves us. And then we take that love we are given and we share it with others. We love like Christ loves… expecting nothing in return.. and we love the unlovely. We love those who are not like us, who didn’t vote like us, don’t think like us, and don’t look like us. That’s the unconditional love of the Bible.

Christ’s love is the only sufficient motivation of bringing the fullness of Christ into every area of our lives. We cannot manufacture this love inside of us. It is not natural for us to love like this. Nothing else will do. In fact, the commands for us to love God and love neighbor are not enough. That’s law. That’s commands. Commands cannot produce in it the very thing that the commands demand. The law cannot help me do what the law demands. If the command is demanding love, it can demand all day long, but it cannot motivate me to love. It cannot produce love in me. The only way is for the Spirit, in the power of our salvation, to produce love in us. We need the other-worldly love of Christ energizing us, giving us power to express the fulness of Jesus in every area of life.

The shift from more guilt to more love!

Just be a friend in every area of life. You don’t have to have a theology degree to bring the love of Jesus to someone. Just love them. Without conditions. Christ loves you in order for you to love others. What he has done for you, you do for others. You can’t die for someone’s sin, but you can forgive. You can pursue redemption in the moment. You can give grace, Christ’s grace.

The church was made to love more. Guilt is not a good motivator. It is a fake motivator. Guilt can only get you so far. You know this as a person. I can guilt my kids into getting me ice cream. But pretty soon they get older and I have to find more ways to guilt. And the more guilt, the less they feel loved. In fact, if I’m giving them guilt, i’m not loving them. Guilt is a terrible motivator that leads to all sorts of bad things, not the least of which is broken relationship. The law is all about guilt. The gospel is all about love.

Remember how Paul is using temple language? Love is how Jesus is present in our lives and in the lives of the people we meet. Where Jesus has his presence, there will be love.

What would happen in our community if the primary thing that that church was known for was being a group of people who are so radically loved by Jesus that they can’t help but radically love those around them? Jesus could have chosen any means he wanted to to carry on his work but he chose everyday ordinary people like you and me to carry out his work through the church in the places that he has already perfectly positioned us to make an eternal difference where we live, work, learn and play. He does this through love. Jesus loves us. He radically loves us. His love for us is not dependent on me loving him back. He gives and gives and gives and gives. That love flows through us to others. Where we live, learn, play, and work. The church was made to love more because wherever there is more Jesus, there is more love.

Let’s pray.

You want to taste love? You want to smell love? You want to feel love? You want to know the depth, the height, the width, and the length of Christ’s love? It’s right here at the Table. This is Christ’s unconditional love for you. Jesus is here in this moment, promising to give you His forgiveness, His salvation, His grace, His life. Right here in the broken body and shed blood. FOR you!