Ephesians 3:17b-19a

October 30, 2022

The Key to True Change: Grasping the Love of Christ for His People

Part 1

Every follower of Christ has the same call upon their life: the call to progress in their understanding of the realities of their new life in Christ.

So from verse 14: 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 the length and the height and the depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now, to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be the glory in the church, and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, Amen. So as we come to this third section, or this third request that Paul's lifting up, we remind ourself that these requests that Paul was praying for, we talked about the grammatical construction and how this clearly shown to us, that these are requests that are built one upon another. In other words, Paul is lifting up request (a), that will be the foundation for request (b), that will be the foundation for request (c), and (d), and then finally, (e). And so each one rests on the previous one, in such a way that we can't even really take them out of order―one leads to the next which leads to the next. And so the first request that Paul lifted up was this request for strengthening in their inner man through power, by way of the Spirit. And so as we looked at that request, we talked about how it is that the Holy Spirit strengthens his people. And the Holy Spirit strengthens his people in a number of different ways. He strengthens his people through His Word, He strengthens his people through his people. He strengthens his people through obedience―as we obey in faith, we are strengthened―but the greatest and the clearest. And the most powerful way that the God that God strengthens his people is not by strengthening us, by making us stronger, but He strengthens us by making us weaker. He causes in our life, those things that we rely upon other than him those things that we look to other than Him, He takes those away, carefully and gently, forcing us to look to Him and Him alone. And as we do that, Paul says, as he says to the Corinthians, we are strengthened in our weakness, because we are weak, he is strong in us. And so that's how the Holy Spirit primarily strengthens us through this, mainly through adversity through trials and difficulties. He will take from us those false crutches that we have, that cause us to rely on ourselves rather than him. And by so doing, were strengthened in that way. That led to the second request. The second request was that being strengthened in this way, Christ would indwell in our hearts through faith. And we talked about that last week, how it is that Paul is praying for these believers that he's already confirmed that they are indwelt, by the Spirit of God. Nevertheless, he prays that Christ would indwell them. And so we look carefully at that word, translated dwell. And we saw there that what Paul is really saying, as we look closely at that word, he's speaking of a deeper, more powerful, more forceful, more effective type of so in other words, that Christ would really find a home in your heart, that Christ would really come and have this relationship of great fellowship and great favor. So he's not asking for a salvific kind of indwelling of Christ. Instead, he's asking for a deeper fellowship, a deeper communion. And we saw how that was, led the, what led the way to that was the strengthening of the inner man by removing from us our crutches that we depend upon, as we depend upon ourselves and then the faith through which Christ would give this, this more effective type of dwelling, then is strengthened. So we saw how the first led to the second so today, we look at the third and the third request is this beginning from verse 17: so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that and there's the third one right there, in order that or so that you being rooted and grounded in love. So first, let's take that phrase right there: being rooted and grounded in love. We recognize that as a participial phrase. So in other words, Paul is describing their condition or their state or their situation. In other words, Paul is not asking that God would root them and ground them in love. Instead, he's basing the request upon the fact that as Paul says, You are being as you are now your status, your spiritual condition is that you are rooted and grounded in love. In other words, that's a restatement of the second request. The second request was that Christ would really dwell in your hearts through faith, that by the strengthening of the inner man, your fellowship, your communion with Christ would be made more vibrant, more clear, deeper, more profound communion, which he then says: being rooted and grounded in love. So we know that God is love. And so we know that this deeper fellowship, that was the second request, is what Paul just stated. So now being rooted and grounded in love, Paul is gonna say, based on that, here comes the third request. So just a moment here about this, you really have to appreciate I think, Paul's mixing up of metaphors here, rooted and grounded. So he's taking, first of all, a horticulture kind of metaphor―rooted. And he's putting it together with a construction kind of metaphor―grounded or founded upon. So rooted and grounded upon or built upon or founded upon both of these founded upon love, or rooted in love. So love is both the soil into which the roots of their spiritual life have grown deep. And love is also the foundation the rock upon which the spiritual life of theirs has been built upon. And so Paul says, both of these are love: rooted, and grounded upon love. As Romans five and verse five tells us that God has poured into our hearts, the love of Christ, by way of His Spirit. So we know that even life in Christ is rooted and grounded in love. But Paul's now saying that this, this being rooted and grounded in love here, that's going to serve sort of as a foundation for what He's about to ask that God would do. So this idea of love. We know this to be all encompassing of the Christian life. We know that, that Paul has said that this love that he's speaking of is the source of our salvation, the very source of our life in Christ. He said in chapter two, verses four and five: but God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses has made us alive together with Christ. So the very source of our life is this love of God. Likewise, this is also the means by which the dividing wall of hostility was broken down. You remember in chapter two there, verse 13, and 14, he talks about this dividing wall of hostility between the believing Jew and the believing Gentile, how that's broken down. And the dividing wall of hostility between all of us and God is broken down, all of that poll said was done, by way of love. Likewise, this love, the power of speaking up is going to also be the motivating power that Paul is going to speak about in chapter four, five and six―the power of motivation, that's behind all of the directives that Paul is going to give, in the last three chapters, the last three chapters, which are this application to the lives of these believers―all of this is going to be based upon the motivation of the love of God that is in hearts and in their lives. For example, chapter four, verses one through three, here's what he's gonna say there. I therefore prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity and the Spirit in the bond of peace. One chapter later, chapter five, he's going to begin that chapter saying this: therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. So this love is the is the foundation of our salvation, the fountain, from which our salvation comes to us. It is the basis of the breaking down of hostility between us and God. It is also the motivating source, the motivating factor for all of the directives that Paul will give us in our life. We also know that it's also the fundamental mark of the Christian, aside from of course, faith itself. We learned that back in chapter one, when Paul says: I have heard about your faith and Lord Jesus and the love for all the saints. So remember, back then this was this was a few months ago, but you remember, we took the time to go through the entire New Testament, and we saw how every book of the New Testament teaches us that the two fundamental marks of a true believer are: of course, faith and love for the brethren, love for one another. And so that is this fundamental mark of the believer, this love that is now in our hearts as Paul is (I’m sorry), as Jesus is gonna say, in John 13 verses 34 and 35: A new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I've loved you. But Paul here is not talking about human love, as Jesus was talking about. Paul is not talking about love between one another. Paul's talking not even about their love for God. Paul is talking about God's love for them. The love of God, that is, as he says to the Romans, poured into their heart. So this rooting and grounding in this love, it's not love for each other. And it's not love for God, it's love for a for them by God, the God's love for them. This is the basis: you being rooted and grounded in, we could even say God's love for you. Verse 18, here's the request: may have strength to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breath, 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. That is a very poetic, very eloquent, eloquent way of Paul wording, this request. The request is basically this―if I may take out some of the wordiness of it and sort of get to the nuts and bolts of it―the request is: being rooted and grounded in the love of God, I ask, I plead with the Lord, that you may be strengthened that you may have strength to comprehend the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. That's the that's the core of it right there. So that's what we'll be dealing with this morning, is the love of Christ for His people. So what better topic for us to spend our time on than the love of Christ for His people, it is indeed, the most profound topic that we could turn to: God's love for His people, specifically the love of Christ shown to his people. So Paul prays, first of all, that you may have strength to comprehend, with all the saints, the love of Christ. So that is a very unusual way to word the request that you may have strength to comprehend. I tried this week to think of another example in the human experience in which we talk like that, in which we talk about being strong enough to comprehend or having the strength to understand. And I was unable to come up with any example, in the entirety of the human experience, in which we use language like that, in which we talk about being strong enough or being strengthened in order to understand or to comprehend. So this is quite an unusual request. And he puts it in quite a startling sort of way: that you may have strength to comprehend. So this word translated strength here, it's, it's not the same one as he used earlier, which is the word that we'd get our word dynamite from. But instead, this word really has a close alignment with: an ability, being able to or being sufficient. So this is kind of what it's getting at: it’s sort of an ability, a sufficiency. You are able, or you have the strength to comprehend. So here's this topic of comprehension. Put here together, understanding comprehension put together with one of the other pillars of the passage, which is the love of Christ, the comprehension, the strength, to comprehend the love of Christ, all three of those things are put together right here in this request. So this comprehension that he speaks of this strength or this ability, this sufficiency to comprehend the word here that's translated comprehend. It's―kinda like we talked about last week―it's another one of those compound words in which Paul takes two words and puts them together to make a third word. And the word is ‘katalambano.’ It's, the root word is not the word for ‘comprehend’ or ‘understand’, as we might think. Instead is the word for ‘take’ or’ grasp.’ So ‘lambano,’ which means ‘to take,’ Paul adds this prefix to it. And you'll recognize this from last week. And this is one of the reasons why we sort of went through that whole thing last week, you might be asking, why did we sort of go into that much detail last week? One of the reasons is because it also applies equally to today. So the prefix that's added is this this prefix ‘kata.’ You'll remember that from last week, means essentially the same thing which is this as a prepositional prefix, which means down or, or to put it another way, coming from a source above, coming downward from above coming into us from above. And then by adding this prefix, it does the same thing that we talked about last week, which is gives it force, gives it intensity. So what Paul is saying here would really, if we wanted to translate it, super-literally, he's saying that you may have the strength to seize. I looked through all the translations, I didn't see any that translated that literally, but that's literally what Paul says that you would have the strength to seize―the only place that shows up in the entire New Testament, that you would have the strength or you would have the ability, or you'd have the sufficiency, to seize upon the love of Christ for His people. That's it. That's what Paul's saying that you being rooted and grounded in the love of God for His people would have the strength to seize upon the comprehension, or the love of God's people, for his people. So, let's sort of flesh this out just a little bit. Because this is this is a grammatical construction that specifically means you are doing the acting, and you are also the one that's being acted upon. Here's what Paul's saying the same thing that he said to us before. We've talked about this recently, in the sense that when we talked about not too long back about how the Spirit of Truth works, so that we may comprehend the things of God―remember talking about that? And you remember how we said that the Spirit of truth doesn't understand the scriptures for you. It doesn't teach you what the Scriptures say, so much as what it what it does is, is it verifies what's true. And it teaches you what is true, and it teaches you to value the truth. So God has made us with the capacity to understand his word, but the Spirit of Truth is needed in order to testify to us of its truthfulness, and teach us of the value of its truthfulness. In the same way here, what Paul is saying is God is not going to just, he's not praying that God just hands the comprehension of the love of God over to you on a platter, “here you go, here's the comprehension of the love of God for you.” Instead, Paul is saying, I pray that you would have the strength, to seize upon it, to reach out, if you will, and seize upon the love of Christ for His people. So this is Paul's prayer, that you will be strengthened in such a way that you can seize upon it. So now, even now, I believe that we can kind of see how these requests have been building upon one another. So the first request was to be strengthened with power through the Spirit in your inner man. And we saw how the primary way that God strengthens us is not to make us stronger, but to make us weaker, so that we look to Him as our strength. And by so doing we are strengthened. So in this, causing us or granting to us that we turn from the false crutches or the idols of our life, to be strengthened by reliance upon the spirit, that then leads to this faith, through which this greater, this more intimate, this more effective dwelling of Christ comes to us. As Paul would then say, in other words, being rooted and grounded in love. Now, the third request is being so strengthened, being so indwelt by Christ having such a relationship of intimacy and favor with Christ, you may now have the strength, have the ability, have the sufficiency to grasp, to seize the understanding of Christ's love for His people. Then he says: with all the saints. So I want to talk about this phrase ‘with all the saints’, I want to talk about two times. I'll come back to a little bit later. But right now I want to look at it, for I think Paul means a number of things here. So let's look at the first: that you would have the ability, the strength, the power, being strengthened in your inner man, being in fellowship with greater intimacy with Christ, you may have the sufficiency, the power to seize upon the love of Christ for His people, with all the saints. So in other words, what Paul is talking about here―this is you may be familiar with, with to two types of understanding two types of knowledge. One would be sort of an intellectual knowledge. And another would be an experiential knowledge. Paul's talking here about an intellectual, about a cognitive understanding―not an experiential. Here he's talking about a cognitive and intellectual a mental understanding that you, in your mind would have the sufficiency, to have the power to seize upon this reality, this truth, of the love of Christ for His people and that you would do this with all the saints So one of the things that this teaches us is that Christianity has always been and always will be a thinking religion. So Paul, has no concept―neither does the New Testament―have any concept of two categories of Christians. One is more the a deep thinking category in which they ponder the deeper truths of our faith. And the other is the category of Christians that's more motivated by the emotional aspect of our faith. They're more in tune with the emotional side of being a child of Christ, right? The New Testament knows nothing of that. The New Testament knows nothing of any believer, who is not a thinking believer, who applies the power of the mind that God has given to all of us to understand more of greatly, more truly, more rightly, the matters of our faith, the realities of our faith. The Christian, the Christian religion, or the New Testament only knows of one kind of a believer, and that is the believer that is called to progress in their understanding of the true matters, of the true reality of our faith. So as, for example, Romans 12, verse two, one of the prime directives that teaches us how it is that we grow, says to us: Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your emotions? No of your mind. Or we can look to many other places in the New Testament and see that the New Testament has no concept of one type of believer who is really spiritually motivated by the deeper realities of faith and another kind of believer that's motivated only by the emotional realities of our faith. Instead, the Scriptures teach us that our faith has a very distinct emotional component to it. But the emotions of our faith are the result, or the outcome, of the realities that we know to be true. And so growth in Christ is always presented to us in the context of growth in understanding. Remember, that's how we talked about the sanctifying work of the Spirit back in chapter one, that that's how the spirit sanctifies u. The spirit sanctifies us or grows us in Christ's likeness, by teaching us by revealing to us, opening the eyes of our heart that we may understand more precisely, and more correctly, the blessings that are ours in Christ, the privileges that are ours in Christ. And so, the New Testament teaches us that our faith is always a faith that is a thinking faith, because Paul says, This is not just for some for all the saints, it's Paul's desire that all the saints would come to this fuller understanding of Christ's love for us. Or a little bit later in the letter, we're going to see that Paul is writing this letter to a whole variety of people. He's addressing this letter in chapter five to children, he addresses this letter to two wives, to husbands to bondservants, to slaves. And in his mind, he's writing these―remember all those profound truths of chapter one?―he's writing all these things to every believer in Ephesus. He's writing to housewives in the first century, profound things such as: before the foundation of the world. We were chosen in Christ and adopted. To children. He's writing such things as and you when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and were sealed with the Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. So the New Testament knows nothing of a flavor, a type of following Jesus in which we just turn our brain off and just submerge ourselves in the emotional aspect of our faith. Instead, Paul says you, It's my prayer that you with all the saints, would have the power the sufficiency within you to reach out into grasp to comprehend this thing called the love of Christ for His people.

Part 2

All of God's people are needed to rightly comprehend the love of God for His people.

So now let's take a look at this love of Christ: you may be rooted, being rooted and grounded in love, verse 18, you 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. So there's this section right there where he gets very poetic, the length, the breadth, the height of the depth. And you may know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge. There's a parallel healer here, a very beautiful parallel, of course, to Paul's letter to the Philippians. So here, he prays that you may be strengthened in your inner man―and that strengthening we said, comes oftentimes primarily through trials and difficulties―but the result of that is that you may know what surpasses knowledge. To the Philippians he's gonna say something very similar, he's gonna say that you by fixating your thoughts upon the realities of God, that you may have the peace of God, which also passes understanding. So suffering in the context of Philippians brings about a peace that passes understanding, suffering in the context of Ephesians brings about a comprehension of God's love for us, that also passes understanding, or passes knowledge. So this love that Christ has for us, he says that you would comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length and height and depth. So those four words there are just sort of a metaphoric, sort of a poetic way of describing the immensity, the massive reality of Christ's love for His people. What that basically means is, he's probably just speaking with eloquent language here, to try to describe a massive reality, an incredible reality, that he's just really trying to place into words that we can grasp. So the height, the breadth, the width, the depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. So this love of Christ for His people, let's think for just a minute about Christ's love for his people and how he shows his love for people. We live, as we all know, in a culture, in a world in which the idea of love is one that―it takes no rocket science rocket scientist at all, or no biblical scholar at all―to know that the reality the truth of love has been perverted in our culture today, but we probably don't realize just to what degree it has been perverted. So throughout the passage, the word that Paul uses for love is the word agape, which we know to have spiritual significance to it. But this love that Paul, speaking of, to compare it to our thoughts of love today, our society has ingrained into all of us, to believe that love is an emotion. You would, I would suggest, you would have a hard time going tomorrow to whatever context that you spend your week in at work or school or wherever, whatever context it may be, and speaking to a co worker, or a fellow student or someone throughout your week, and saying something like this: that love is not an emotion. I think you'd have a pretty hard argument on your hands to convince someone that love is not an emotion because our society has taught us that love is an emotion. And if anything, it's an emotion that manifests at some time itself, sometimes in physical ways. But let's try, with the power of the Spirit this morning, let's try to evacuate our thinking from what our culture has taught us that love is and let's attempt to think of the truth, the reality of love, biblically, how does the Bible understand love? Primarily, how does the Bible understand Christ's love for us? So if we think about love, and we think about it in two dimensions, maybe the emotional dimension and the non-emotional dimension, and we would ask ourselves: which of those two dimensions are presented to us in Scripture as the measurement, the definition, of the love of God for His people. First we'd ask yourself, well, what about emotional love? Does Jesus show emotion? Any emotion at all? And of course he does. Right? Jesus is fully human. And he displays emotions. He displays frustration, he displays anger, he displays sadness, he displays joy. So does Jesus show a love for His people, in the New Testament, that is what we could call an emotional kind of love? And quite frankly, I think he does, but it's pretty hard to find. There's a few examples. One of the examples I thought of was in Mark chapter 10. Remember the story of the rich young ruler, who wouldn't be a follower of Jesus, but he won't give up his love for riches? And so in the end, he doesn't follow Jesus, in that, in that passage, we’re specifically told that Jesus who is extending this invitation for this man to follow him―the invitation that he's rejecting―we're specifically told that Jesus looked at him and loved him. And that seems to me to be divorced from any sort of action of love, that seems to be just an emotion that Jesus held for the man―that he loved him in his heart. Or I think of Jesus's words there when he says, of Jerusalem, how often I would have gathered you like a chick gathers its hens, that seems to me to also speak of an emotional affection that Jesus has for the ethnic people of Israel. Or maybe perhaps another place we could possibly see this was a story of Lazarus, remember, Lazarus, who was Jesus's good friend, and Jesus is away, and then word comes that Lazarus is sick. And John there specifically tells us that Jesus loved Mary and Martha.--so he, in this case, didn't do something. He stayed and didn't go. Now, that one's a little confusing, because the reason he did stay was so that he could bring about the occasion for him to do something which would be to raise Lazarus from the grave. But possibly that too, is speaking of an emotional bond―we think of how Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. Certainly, that was a display of great emotional affection. So I think if we look through the New Testament, we find that the New Testament is not devoid of speaking to us about an emotional type of affection, or love that God has for His people. So the love of God for His people, is an emotional love. And because God is infinite, in all of His ways, His emotional effect affection, his emotional love for His people is likewise infinite. However, far and away, the most prevalent the most common, the most overwhelmingly common way that the New Testament describes to us the love of God for His people, is not with emotions, it's with action. The examples are so numerous as to, didn't even put, sort of a sampling here in our notes, just some of the places that we see that when the New Testament wants to tell us that God loves his people, or that Christ loves his people, it is virtually always done in the context of one thing―the cross. There are a couple of instances in the New Testament, in which it speaks to us, the New Testament speaks to us of God's love for His people without having the context of the cross, but they are rare and kind of hard to trace down. By and large, overwhelmingly, when the New Testament speaks of God's love for His people, it does so in the context of the cross of Jesus Christ. Let's take a look at few examples. Romans five and verse eight: but God shows His love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. I don't know what could be plainer than the demonstration of God's love as this is the demonstration―while you were in your sin, Christ died for you. A few chapters later, chapter eight: He who did not spare His own Son, but gave him up for us all―there's the cross, there's the sacrifice of Jesus―how will he will He not also with Him graciously give us all things Who shall separate us from―there it is the love of Christ. You see how the love of Christ is tightly knit within the context of the cross of Christ. Ephesians two, verses four and five

Part 3

True and lasting change in the life of the Christian comes only by deeper contemplation of the love of God for His people, and the depth of our sin which was paid for on the cross.

So as we think about the cross and what the cross means, because the cross of Christ because the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is the measurement of God's love for us, what is the cross doing? What about the cross is Jesus's love for us? So as we contemplate the cross, we are contemplating the love of Jesus for His people. What are we contemplating? I think it is helpful to think of the extreme suffering, the physical agony, the shame, of being nailed to a piece of wood naked, after being beaten to a pulp, and just left there until you're dead. The extreme shame, the indescribable pain. All of that is a reality. But that's not the measurement of the cross. What takes place on the cross, that is the true measurement of God's love for us, is what Jesus became on the cross. And on the cross he became our sin. Second Corinthians five, verse 21: for our sake, He who knew no sin, became sin, so that we would become the righteousness of God―this divine exchange takes place on the cross, Jesus on the cross becomes our sin, so that he may be punished by God for our sin, while we―by faith―are given his righteousness, this exchange of his righteousness for our sin. So as we contemplate, this is Paul's request here, that you would have the strength to reach out and grasp the love of Christ―what are we trying to reach out and grasp? We are trying to reach out and grasp the sin that Jesus became, aren't we? Isn't that what we're really trying to understand? If Jesus becoming our sin, is the love of God for His people, then to comprehend that love, don't we really need to comprehend the sin that he became? On the cross, you see Jesus, Jesus didn't become sin in theory. Jesus didn't become the concept of sin. Jesus didn't become some philosophical definition of sin. On the cross, Jesus became your sin. If Jesus did not become your sin on the cross, then your sin has not been atoned for. In order for there to be salvation through the cross, in order for the cross to be the love of God for His people, He had to become not just sin in general, He had to become the sin of his people, so that the sin of his people could be fully punished by God, and being fully punished by God, we then receive the forgiveness, the cleansing from that sin, but also the righteousness of the life that he lived in our place. So comprehending the love of God for His people is inseparable, from comprehending the sin that Jesus became as this definitive measurement of the love of God for His people. Which is the other reason that Paul says, that you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints. You see, it requires every redeemed saint, to comprehend the love of God for His people. The love of God for His people cannot be rightly comprehended by even one less redeemed saint than what God has redeemed. Because the love of God for His people is measured by the sin that he became. And so all of God's people are needed to comprehend the love of the cross in order for his love to be comprehended. You see, the love of Jesus is not just this great big massive pit of emotional favor. The love of Christ is your specific sin that he became on the cross for you. So imagine the sin of just one person, just one of God's saints, imagine what a thing that what was for Jesus to become even one person's sin. Now imagine the love of Christ with that taken away. Oh, what a thing to be taken away. If we were to say, let's comprehend the love of Christ, for all of his saints, less one. Even one taken away, takes away from the comprehension of the love of God, an unspeakable amount of love. Therefore, Paul says: to comprehend the love of God for His people, requires all of his people. Because you know what? I have no comprehension for your sin. I know that Jesus paid for your sin. But I don't really understand that, because I understand my sin. We all have a deep recognition and comprehension for our own sin. But Paul says like, like Paul says to Timothy in his second letter to Timothy, I'm the worst sinner that I know. Because it's my sin that I comprehend. So I can't comprehend the love of God for His people by contemplating your sin. I comprehend the love of God's people throughout contemplating my sin. And therefore all of God's people. This is what Paul's really this. This is his prayer. He prays, oh God, that all of your people, all of them, every one―would have the strength to comprehend your love for them, so that your people comprehend the great, indescribable, unlimited, immeasurable, surpassing love of God for His people. You see what he's driving at? Now, this love, he says, this love is really the power of change. Let's read again from Chapter Eight from verse 18: that you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth, the length, height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now, this fullness of God, really is Paul's way of saying, what God says, you'd be holy, for I am holy. The fullness of Christ on earth, the fullness of God on earth, or in other words, this is the Christian ethic, that is chapter four, five and six. So this Christian ethic, this, this way of living, Paul is going to talk about to let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth, but only such as builds up as suits the occasion, or be angry, but do not sin, or don't be drunk with wine to be filled with the Spirit―all of these things that Paul is going to speak into their life, all of these are, as we said earlier, fueled by, motivated by, driven by, the comprehension of the love of God for us. One of the stories in Scripture that beautifully illustrates this, we all know the story from Luke 10 (I'm sorry), Luke seven, the story of the woman of the streets, who goes in and Jesus is having dinner with Simon the Pharisee―and remember, the woman was off the streets comes?―and she's just groveling at Jesus's feet and in weeping. And Luke says that she's drying Jesus's feet with her hair, just this picture of just absolute brokenness. And she's not crying for anxiety, or despair. She's crying for joy. And then you know how the story goes ,this man, Simon, this Pharisee Simon, he's trying, he's sizing Jesus up. He's trying to determine if Jesus is for real. And in his mind, Luke tells us, in his mind, he thinks to himself, if Jesus knew who this woman was, then he wouldn't be letting her touch him. So clearly, he's not the prophet that some people think he is. Jesus knows his thoughts, of course, and Jesus answers him with a parable. And the parable is: telling me this Simon, two people owe a debt. One owes a huge debt when it was a small debt. They're both forgiven, which one will love more? Simon says―sort of taken off guard, not quite knowing where Jesus is going with this, well, I guess the one who was forgiven the bigger debt, Jesus says, ‘bingo.’ This woman hasn't stopped crying and weeping and washing my feet. You haven't even greeted me properly. Jesus's point: her heart perceives the depth of sin of which she has been forgiven, and that has now moved her to this visible change in her life. And that's Jesus's whole point. The comprehension of God's love for her, as demonstrated by the forgiveness that's given to her and this is, of course, before Jesus's time on the cross. But it's still nonetheless, a forgiveness is going to come through the cross. And her perception of what she's been forgiven of, her perception of the sin that God has forgiven, drives her to such change in her life and such―that's how Christians change. That is how we change. You know that we think about habits in your life or things about your life that you don't particularly like things about your life that you wish were different. And, we often talk about just how hard it is to change, in fact, maybe even impossible for people to really change, lasting, true, genuine change―who can really do it? The Christian. Not because we have more willpower, but because real genuine change in our life can only come through two things: one, contemplating the love of God for His people and, two: contemplating the sin, which he has forgiven us of. That's what Paul is going to mean when he gets to chapter four, and he's going to talk about putting off the old man and putting on the new man. How does that happen? That happens through contemplating the love of God for His people and the depth of sin, which we were forgiven of. And it illustrated for you beautifully in the story here. So just to press on: that you may have the strength to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth, length, height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. So there's sort of a little play on words there: that you may know that which surpasses knowing. So we're familiar, I'm sure with the reality that the Greek language has two understandings of knowledge. One is a word which describes an intellectual knowledge, a cognitive knowledge. That's what Paul talked about earlier, the seizing of the love of Christ, seize upon it, grasp upon it with your mind. But then the other is a knowledge that comes about through knowing, through experiencing something. And we can relate to this. For example, I can know, I can know that I can apply heat to a pot of water, and that heat will begin to excite the molecules and the molecules will begin to move much more faster and start to bounce off one another, and bonds will be broken down, and that liquid will be turned to steam. I can know that. But then there's another way I can know it. And that's by sticking my hand in the pot. Two knowledges that are completely different. One is to know something, and one is to experience it. So both of these words here―that you may know, what is surpassing knowledge, both of them are the experiential knowledge―to know by experiencing. So here's Paul's prayer, that you, being rooted and grounded in the love of God for His people, would have the strength, the ability to reach out and grasp the love of God for His people so that you would experience what surpasses experiencing. So that you would experience the love of God that you would know by experiencing the love of God for His people that surpasses experiences. So what does this mean, Paul? ―sort of a riddle that you're giving. What does this mean? Knowing something that surpasses and knowing? Well, the word there: ‘surpasses,’ it's the word that we get our word ‘hyperbole’ from. Hyperbole is just an English word for ‘exaggeration’―going way beyond. That's what that's what happens when you exaggerate something, right? Like, like, maybe I stand in line at Walmart for four minutes, and then come out to the car and tell my wife that I had to stand in line for 15 minutes, right? It goes way beyond, it takes the truth and goes beyond that much further. So that's where we get this word ‘surpassing.’ Paul's used to twice before chapter one, verse 19, to describe the immeasurable there's the word, the immeasurable greatness of His power, working toward us who believe. And he's used it again in chapter two, verse seven, the immeasurable riches of His kindness and in Christ. So this word immeasurable, or surpassing, going far beyond the love of God for His people, which Paul says, goes far beyond the ability to know it by experience. So what's Paul mean by that? The ability to know something by experience is limited by the nature of the creature that's experiencing it, right? All creatures have a limit to what they can know by experience. All creatures that God has created can experience things and they can know what they're experiencing, but their knowledge of that is limited by the nature of what they are. A goldfish that you buy at the pet store, can experience a ride home in your car. And they've experienced everything about that ride. They've experienced the 50 miles an hour down the road, and they've experienced the scenery going by the window, and the clouds and everything and the music that you're playing on the radio, they've experienced all of that. But their comprehension of that is limited by what they are, which is a goldfish. A dog can experience―imagine going to an English Literature class and taking your dog―and the dog experiences the English literature class. And the dog experiences everything that you experienced, they experience the lecture, they hear the words that the professor is speaking, they see the words written on the board, they experience all of that. But their experience is limited, or their comprehension of that experience is limited by what they are. They know that it's the voice of a human talking. And they can tell if that voice is kind or unkind. They can tell the comfort of the room, the temperature, the hardness of the floor they have to sleep on whatever. But their experience is limited by what they are. In the same way our experience of the love of God for us is also limited by what we are. So Paul's saying that the love of Christ for His people even goes far beyond what you are capable of perceiving by experience, of what you are capable of understanding even by experiencing the love of Christ. It goes far beyond even that, in such a way that we will spend eternity, experiencing the love of Christ for His people, and we will never experience the bottom of that love, we will never experience the wall upon which that love ends, because it surpasses the experience of people. The ability for us to perceive it as far surpassed, and this is what brings about the fullness of God, which is the change in the lives of the Ephesians that Paul is driving it. So one final, one final piece of scripture for us to look at. And this will, I believe, bring this all together for us. This is a beautiful passage of scripture that you would do well to spend some time with. It's First John chapter four, beginning about verse 11, or so. So let me just kind of go through this passage rather quickly. But as I do this, let me just encourage you to think about these words through the lens of what Paul has just said to us. Through the lens of praying that the strengthening in the inner man would come primarily byod's loving means of taking from us our dependency upon ourself, and instead, replacing that with dependency upon him, so that the intimacy of fellowship with Christ is strengthened, so that in that string, we can reach out and grasp hold of the love of Christ for His people. And by so doing, we are changed. So through that lens, think about what John says, First John, chapter four, beginning from verse 11: Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another. There's a change that John is seeking. He is seeking for them to love one another. He's exhorting them to love one another more fully and more completely. That's what his goal is here. He wants the ones who read his letter to be moved to love one another more fully. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No one has ever seen God if we love one another God abides in us and his love is perfected in us, or completed or matured in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world, there's the cross. He has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world―again, the context is God's love for His people always, nearly always comes across into that. Verse 15. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he and God and here it is verse 16: so we have come to know and believe―does that sound like what Paul's talking about? Know and believe Paul's talking about reaching out and seizing upon the comprehension of God's love for His people, we've come to know and believe, the love that God has for us. We've come to know, experientially, we've come to experience, we know this, and believe it to be true, that God has this love for His people, that John's talking about here. God is love. And Whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him. By this is love perfected with us, or completed, or matured. By this―by the knowing and believing of God's love for us―is our love perfected within us so that we may have confidence for the Day of Judgment. Verse 18, there is no fear in love. but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. So what John just said, right there is: we know and believe of God's love for His people. But in order for the love of God to be matured and perfected and completed in our hearts, we must be convinced that there is no punishment for God's people. So in other words, in order for the love of God to be fulfilled, to be completed to be perfected in us, we must have confidence that Jesus has paid our complete and full sin debt. If Jesus paid 99.5% of your sin debt, and there's still point five left for you to pay―that is not believing that there is no punishment. Right? John says; In this is love perfected that we know there is no fear of punishment. Why? Because Jesus has taken it all for us. If there were any punishment left for God's people, that means that Jesus didn't quite complete his job on the cross. He didn't quite pay for everything. But John’s saying we know that's not true. So the love in our hearts is perfected. It's completed by our knowing and believing that this is the love of God for us―the love that is shown to us by His payment for our sin on the cross, so that there remains for us no punishment, that remains for us no judgment. Romans chapter eight, verse one: there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Okay? So those two concepts of understanding the depth of your sin, of understanding what Christ became on the cross, that’s the measurement of God's love for us, and that reaching out and seizing upon that is what changes us in our hearts. One final story: DA Carson tells the story, in his book, The Case for spiritual Reformation, he tells a story of a co-professor of his a Trinity Evangelical, who was, his family would often take in forest, forest children, foster children, would often take in foster children. And they took in these two on this one occasion, they took in two twin boys for foster children. And they had these twin boys came to them at 18 months old, which he says was a little, a little bit older than they normally would foster children, they normally get them at infancy or birth, but they got these two boys at 18 months. And they were twins. And they brought them home. And we're trying to just help these two boys that had been taken from a very abusive home environment. And they put them down for the first night in their beds. And they noticed something very strange after they put them down to go to sleep. And what they noticed that was very strange was that they weren't crying. And we all know―18 month old, you put them down more times than not they're gonna cry. But they didn't. They didn't cry. In fact, the first night, they didn't cry the second night or the third night or the fourth night. And they thought this was very odd. So they began talking with the caseworker that was familiar with the situation home situation for these two boys. And they came to find out that these two infants weren't crying because, even just the short 18 months of their life, they had learned that when adults put them down to go to sleep, when they cried, they were beaten. And so even then they'd learned―we don't cry, because crying, brings blows. So they had this deep fear of punishment. And the only way past that, the only way through that, is would love, to just show these infant boys over a painful period of time: there's no punishment. And by so doing so also in a very infantile sort of way, do we see how the love of God is perfected in us. Let me suggest to you that you cannot fully completely without reserve, love God, when somewhere down in your heart, you still believe that there's a chance that he just might change his mind. That you just might push it too far, that you just might mess up badly enough, that he might just experience just enough frustration with you that he were to say, “I just can't deal with that. I just need to, I just need to bring this child of mine back in line with a little bit of punishment in their life.” Let me suggest to you that as long as that is how you perceive your Father, you will never love Him fully. And your love for him will never be completed. And furthermore, real true and genuine, actual change in your life will be handicapped, and in fact, hamstrung, because as John says to us, this is how the love of the Father is perfected in us by our hearts knowing there is no more punishment. Jesus has taken it all. And he took it all as the definitive measurement of his love for me. And his love for me, is what Paul says to the Ephesians―by reaching out and grasping on to that―that is how true change will come into your life.