Unprecedented Love
“God’s Immense Love”
Ephesians 3:18-19
Watch on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXSlxPFx2RA
This year, we’ve been looking at the word “unprecedented” as it applies to 1 Corinthians 13:13, examining what are considered the top 3 qualities of a believer’s life, namely “Faith,” “Hope,” and “Love,” where he calls love the greatest of them all.
Today, I’d like to expand our understanding of this all-important quality of love from Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus and share with you what I see as the immensity of God’s love.
Paul begins by telling them not to lose heart as he prays that Jesus would dwell in their hearts through faith, so they can be rooted and grounded in His love.
But the question is, why? Paul explains in our verse.
Paul said, “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:18-19 NKJV)
Now, most commentators focus on the dimensions Paul gives to explain this all-encompassing love of Christ.
But Paul begins with some pretty strong words about why this is so important, and we can’t just gloss over them.
He begins by saying that they “may be able to comprehend.” This is significant. The phrase “May be able” comes from two Greek words, “ek,” meaning “from out of,” and “ischuo” (is-khoo-o), meaning “to be strong.”
This compound word is one of the strongest Greek words for strength, signifying that we are fully able to understand, do, and experience what is being discussed.
The word “comprehend” means to eagerly take or seize something in order to make it our own. It means to gain control of something and suggests grasping it intellectually.
Maybe this is why the Amplified Bible translates this as “That you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp.”
Therefore, to grasp the full significance of what Paul is saying, we must recognize that he was genuinely concerned that we not miss the love that a Jesus has for us, and that we lay hold of its vastness and live supernaturally within these four dimensions.
We see a similar principle in Joshua when the Lord tells Joshua, “Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses” (Joshua 1:3 NKJV). In other words, God had already promised it, but it would take Joshua and the people’s obedience to step out by faith and claim it.
And the reason it is so important for us to grasp this truth about the immensity of God’s love is that we have a whole generation, a whole world, that is perishing because they don’t know, they haven’t comprehended, and they haven’t yet grasped the totality of God’s love toward them, or, as Paul states, they don’t know the love of Christ that surpasses anything humanity can think of when it comes to love. (In other words, they haven’t a clue.)
Why is this important? It’s because of what the Lord, through the prophet Hosea, makes abundantly clear. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge.” (Hosea 4:6a NKJV)
It seems that the Ephesian church hadn’t considered or grasped the immensity of Christ’s love for them, a love that is rich in mercy and grace. The Apostle Paul brings this out earlier in his letter.
“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (Ephesians 2:4-5 NKJV)
Paul then goes on to say in verses 6 & 7 that because of God’s great love, God has now “Raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6-7 NKJV).
It’s also a love that describes the very nature and character of Jesus. We see this as He went through the humiliation of the cross, as He suffered and died.
“And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” (Philippians 2:8 NKJV)
We see the same thing about the coming Messiah when the prophet Isaiah describes Him as “Despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him.” (Isaiah 53:3 NKJV)
Apostle Paul tells the Corinthians how they knew “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9 NKJV).
Therefore, we are to know Christ’s love for us in how He delivered us from guilt and the curse of the law, which is eternal death, and gives us instead His love, peace, holiness, and eternal life.
Hopefully, it now makes sense why it is so important for us to grasp Christ’s unbelievable and incomprehensible love.
But this isn’t a solitary, individualistic pursuit; rather, we are to do it with all the saints, as Paul said earlier in Ephesians 2:6: the Lord “raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places.”
This leads to the writer of Hebrews’ admonition not to forsake assembling with other believers, which seems to be what many were doing then and still do today. The writer of Hebrews tells us why this matters: when we gather, we are to exhort and encourage one another because the time is short (Hebrews 10:25).
And so, Paul, in our verse today, is praying that we might better grasp and experience Christ’s immense love within the church’s fellowship.
So, what are the four dimensions Paul uses to describe the incomprehensible love of Christ?
Breadth
Breadth might also be described as width, or from East to West, which, when we think about it, is endless.
Jesus describes it as a love wide enough to embrace the entire world.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16 NKJV)
Jesus loves everyone, not just those that some like to teach is “for the elect.” This comprehensive love is evident in what Jesus said: “For God so loved the world … (and) that whosoever believes.” That is, Jesus died for everyone, including you and me.
If His death was only for a few and not for all, then there is no breadth to His love, making this a lie.
Everyone needs the love of Christ because we are all guilty before a holy and righteous God. We are miserable, condemned, and perishing, yet Jesus took on sin and death for everyone.
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6 NKJV)
Length
Length means there is no starting point and no ending point. It just keeps on going. It speaks to the durability of Christ’s love. That is, the love of Christ precedes the world’s existence and lasts beyond the end of time. In other words, the love of Christ existed before time began and will continue when time ends. Therefore, the love of Christ is a love that is long enough to last forever, or we can say that it’s an eternal love.
18th-century pastor Charles Spurgeon said, “It (the love of Christ) is so long that your old age cannot wear it out, so long that your continual tribulation cannot exhaust it, your successive temptations shall not drain it dry; like eternity itself, it knows no bounds.”
In his first letter to the Corinthian Church, Paul, tells us that, “Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.” (1 Corinthians 13:8 NKJV)
And so, the extent of God’s love for us is beyond everything else.
Depth
Depth means something far deeper than what we can see on the surface. It is love so deep that it took Jesus to the very depths to reach the lowest sinner.
In describing Jesus’s grace, Paul said, “He ascended – what does it mean, but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth?” (Ephesians 4:9 NKJV)
When the Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign, Jesus said, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:40NKJV)
It was to this that Corrie Ten Boom said, “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.” (Corrie Ten Boom)
Jesus, in His love for us, stooped down and came to this earth for the worst of the worst, for those who hated and rebelled against God, those the Bible called children of wrath, that is, for each and every one of us.
In Ephesians 2:1-3, Paul said, “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.”
And so, in His love, Jesus descended to the lowest depths to lift us to heaven’s heights.
Height
Height means elevation. It is a love high enough to take sinners to heaven through belief in Jesus Christ.
Christ’s love conveys the blessings of heaven. It raises fallen humanity and, by faith, transforms us into the likeness of Christ and makes us children of God. And as His children, we are heirs of His eternal kingdom.
And to the church of Laodicea, Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.” (Revelation 3:20-21 NKJV)
And so, the height of Christ’s love for us is that He redeems and saves us to be with Him in heaven forever.
Conclusion
Therefore, from what we have seen, and what Paul discusses throughout Ephesians, is to help us understand the full extent of Jesus’s love. It is wide enough to reach the entire world and beyond. It is long enough to stretch into eternity. It is deep enough to rescue people from sin, Satan, and an eternity in hell. And it is high enough to raise all who believe in Him into heaven itself and into the presence of God.
These measurements emphasize the immensity of Christ’s love. You can go left or right, forward or backward, or up or down as far as you can, and you still haven’t explored all there is to know about Jesus’s great love. No matter how much we know of the love of Christ, and how fully we enter into that love, there is always more to know and experience.
“Because God is self-existent, His love had no beginning; because he is eternal, his love can have no end; because he is infinite, it has no limit; because he is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity; because he is immense, his love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea.” (A.W. Tozier)
And so, in our passage, Paul describes something greater than anything we can or could ever know. He speaks of that which is greater than the breadth, length, depth, and height of God’s plans and promises for Israel. And that is Christ’s love for us.
Paul is speaking about how God has taken us, even when we were undeserving and spiritually dead, and has forgiven our sins, adopted us as His children, raised us to new life, and given us an eternal home in heaven.
What this tells me is that God’s love extends beyond each of these dimensions. So we could say that Christ’s love for us is the fifth dimension.
This brings us to what Paul goes on to say in our verse. “To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge.” (Ephesians 3:19a NKJV)
The word “love” is the Greek word “agape,” which means an unconditional and sacrificial love. And the word for “passes” might be better interpreted as “surpasses.” In Greek, it expresses something beyond comparison.
We see this in other aspects of Jesus that Paul highlights elsewhere, such as the surpassing greatness of His glory and power, and the surpassing riches of His grace (1 Corinthians 3:10; Ephesians 1:19; Ephesians 2:7).
And in our passage, it is the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. So, we can never fully exhaust our knowledge of Jesus’s love for us.
And then he ends by saying, “That you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:19b NKJV)
The word for “may be filled” means to be filled to the brim, to the point of overflowing, which means our filling is ever expanding.
I see this fullness in what the Apostle John said about Jesus.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14 NKJV)
He then goes on in verse 16, and says, “And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.” (John 1:16 NKJV)
And if I could, I’d like to end with this: we can never be filled to fullness, because our spirits are not contained by any physical dimensions. They are ever expanding through the breadth, length, depth, and height of the love Jesus has for us.
