Five Points Community Church
November 9, 2014
Morning Sermon
Brent Nelson
“Four Magnitudes of God’s Love”
Ephesians 3:14-19
“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 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.”
Introduction: The Apex of the Christian Life
The love of God is the apex of the Christian life. Nothing in God could be higher than to
experience to the fullest measure, for the longest time, the broadest embrace of the
deepest love of God. It is where life begins. It is where life in Christ finds its perfect and
eternal climax.
If you are trusting in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of your sins and for the
fulfillment of all God’s promises to you, even eternal life, you owe your life to the love
of God. God’s love made you alive and saved you. It also confirms the genuineness of
your salvation because all believers, all saints, are given a glimpse of the fullness of the
love of God and this they seek to desire above all things.
This is the great petition of Paul’s highest prayer, “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, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
God roots and grounds us in his electing love and then we spend the rest of our lives, the
rest of eternity, growing in the full dimensions of His perfecting love. If you don’t have
the love of God in you now you won’t have it in the future. If you have God’s love now
you will have even more then. Unto him that has, more shall be given. The more you’ve
got in the Christian life the more you’ll get. The love of God is given to you first then still
more love is granted. The more we acknowledge God’s love the more love we’ll
experience.
No one will experience anything higher, greater, more glorious in God than the full
measure of His love.
I.
Able to Comprehend
“…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,
that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
(Ephesians 3:18-19).
Paul first prays that the Holy Spirit strengthen us to comprehend this love. The love of
God is not facts. The knowledge of God’s love is not the knowledge of facts. If it were
then only the most modern, logical, intellectual among us would see God’s love. No
amount of facts of nature or of theology can suffice to achieve this knowledge of the love
of God. It takes comprehension that is given only by the power of God.
Paul wrote, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they
are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually
discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14). This is why Paul prays for this comprehension. The
love of God is not less than theological truth but it is so much more.
This word “comprehend” is the one John uses in an astounding way in John 1, listen, “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He
was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was
not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The
light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it.” (John 1:1-5).
The difference between those who desire Christ and those who despise Christ is that the
former comprehend His light; the latter are blind to his light.
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Paul prays that we fully comprehend the light of God’s love in Christ. To comprehend
takes power from the Spirit at work in your inner being and only comes by prayer. Love
comes in first by the sovereign in-breaking of God when he sets his love upon you. Then
when you are born again Christ begins to dwell in your heart by faith. And this dwelling
grows to the maximum measure such as God dwells within Christ bodily, so Christ
dwells with in you and me to the same fullness bodily.
This is the goal of Paul’s prayer and the entirety of the letter. This is the goal of the
ground and goal of the gospel. Love is the cause and the climax of the cross. Paul does
not pray that we love God more. He does not call us to measure and analyze our own love
for God but to stop and take wonder at the vast love of God. Our greatest trouble is not
too little love for God but our failing to comprehend God’s immeasurable love for us.
This is the apex of maturity in the Christian life. This is the spring and source of any
virtuous activity of the Christian church.
The very nature of God is love. So where God is, on earth and in heaven, will be filled
with His love. Those who are His will savor and enjoy and delight in God’s love in
fullness now and in ever-increasing fullness forever.
Edward’s World of Love
One of my favorite sermons from America’s greatest mind, Jonathan Edwards is called
“Heaven is a World of Love.” Edward pictures the infinite nature of God being all love
and filling to the full all of heaven. Therefore heaven is a world of love. The three
persons of the trinity have existed in love for eternity and shall forever be so. And he
pictures all the church joining in this great ocean of love which exists for our eternal
enjoyment of God.
“There in heaven this fountain of love, this eternal three in one, is set open without any
obstacle to hinder access to it. There this glorious God is manifested and shines forth in
full glory, in beams of love. There the fountain overflows in streams and rivers of love
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and delight, enough for all to drink at, and to swim in, yea, so as to overflow the world as
it were with a deluge of love.
It is God’s aim in your life right now that you comprehend something more of the
fullness of God’s love. That is why you are here. That is why you exist.
II.
With All the Saints
But we must not overlook who will comprehend this love. It is all the saints. Look again
to verse 18,“…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…” What does this mean? Two things: all the saints are loved; and none but
the saints are loved.
All the Saints
Here in one phrase Paul captures a major theme of this great epistle. All the saints refers
to the fact that both Jew and Gentile are under the fountain-like love of God. No Jew can
make Gentiles second-class Christians and no Gentile can boast of receiving more of
God’s love over the often-stumbling Jews. All the saints receive God’s love. Where do I
get this? Look at the nearest example where Paul uses the word “saints.” Ephesians 2:19,
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the
saints and members of the household of God…” The holy Temple of God’s people is
made up wholly of saints, Jewish saints and Gentile saints. All are equal recipients of
God’s love.
No matter what your background, no matter what religious experience, no matter where
you come from; God’s love reaches you. God’s love does not find you a candidate for a
saint then chooses you. God’s love finds you helpless, weak, rebellious and therefore
rejectable; and remakes you. God’s love is so powerful it creates what it desires.
Only the Saints
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Yet only the saints are so loved. God loves the whole world; but God loves his church,
his bride, his covenantal wife, with a holy, electing, saving love. No man loves every
woman in the world the way he loves his wife. For then he would be a philanderer and
love none at all. Rather, a godly man loves his wife with a special, faithful, unique, holy
love. This is an echo of God’s love for his Bride, the church. He loves her in covenant
love that chooses her above all the others of the world to be his one and only wife.
It is only to the church, the saints, the Bride of Christ, that God grants to comprehend his
love, the way eyes perceive light: instantly, powerfully, wonderfully, joyfully.
It is only the saints of God who gain the love of God for eternity. We will be ever
astounded by the love of God. His kindness to us in love will never grow boring; but
satisfy us forever and ever. Nothing supplies greater joy in God to the people of God than
the love of God.
III.
The Four Magnitudes
Now the four magnitudes of the love of God in Christ, they almost appear in the way of a
vast building in its dimensions. Glorious, extensive, grand, such as this great temple of
the people of God built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets in which God
dwells within his people. And as God dwells within the great temple of his own making,
the united Jew and Gentile, like cool oxygen fills every great hall of grand castle, so
God’s love fills the people of God.
Verse 18, “…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,
that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Job 11:8-9, Job’s friend explains to him the measure of the Almighty and asks,“It is
higher than heaven—what can you do? Deeper than Sheol—what can you know? Its
measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea.”
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Yet in Christ Jesus, in the gospel, we find the measure of God’s love: its breadth, its
length, its depth and height.
Breadth – The width and expanse of God’s love to the world of his making. In the
breadth of God’s love he stretches forth his wings to cover his people everywhere.
“Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
that flutters over its young,
spreading out its wings, catching them,
bearing them on its pinions,
the LORD alone guided him,
no foreign god was with him.” (Deuteronomy 32:11-12).
John Bunyan, the puritan Tinker, wrote, “This largeness of the heart and mercy of God
towards his people, is also signified by the spreading out of his hand to us in the
invitations of the gospel.” I said, "Behold me, behold me, - - - I have spread out my hands
all the day unto a rebellious people. - - - to a people that provoke me… continually" (Isa
65:1-3).
And after God’s broad invitation extends to all the nations, hear how the world climaxes:
“And they sang a new song, saying,
“Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth.”
Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the
elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of
thousands, saying with a loud voice,
“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
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and honor and glory and blessing!”
And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the
sea, and all that is in them, saying,
“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” (Revelation 5:913).
This was the great trouble to the Jews. They thought God’s love was provincial and
tribal. The same danger exists within us. This is the root or racism in every human heart.
We think God loves us best. The more we suffer the more we feel deserving of God’s
love. Yet God’s love flows past human bounds and walls. The breaking of language and
culture and ethnic barriers is exactly what the love of God does in every life it touches.
Why comprehend the breadth of God’s love? So we feel deeply and know keenly how
our heavenly Father feels about his global plan and our role in it. So we begrudge no one
he awakens from death to life and forgives and adopts and adds to His family. So we
never commit the grave error so many of God’s people have committed through history
thinking they are the only ones God truly loves. But rather so we press on in evangelistic,
disciple-making fervor to press the gospel into the public square, into families, into
relationships and into lives for the sake of this broad and expansive love of God.
Length – The long-suffering love of God now and the eternal love of God in heaven.
God’s love is endless. It is everlasting. God says to us through the prophet Jeremiah:
“Thus says the LORD: “The people who survived the sword
found grace in the wilderness;
when Israel sought for rest,
the LORD appeared to him from far away.
I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”(Jeremiah 31:2-3).
Before time and creation, a great agreement between the Father and the Son secured for
all time and eternity. The love of God for sinners saved by the righteous life and perfect
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death, by the resurrection and the present reign of Jesus Christ. He now represents this
new humanity whom he agreed with his Father to purchase in love. And the Father in
love agreed to receive these ransomed ones whom the Son purchases.
The love of Christ for his own people started back before time. It always existed. And
therefore it always will exist. Your personal security in Christ is as sure as the Father and
the Son’s word to each other. He set his heart upon us. That is the great length of God’s
love toward us in eternity past.
The Length of God’s Love Now
And the length extends to today:
Psalm 139:7-10, “Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.” (Psalm 139:7-10)
God’s love never varies today. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.
Therefore his love is the same. No interruptions can break it. Christ’s love will never give
us up. It will never reject us. It will never end. Like the love of the Father for his prodigal
younger son and for his homebound elder son, so the love of God our Father lasts forever.
The Length of God’s Love Forever.
God’s faithfulness never ends. Lamentations 3:22-24,
“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
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“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
I Corinthians 13:8, 11, “Love never ends.” Prophecy, tongues, knowledge these come to
their ordained end. But the love of God never ends. “So now faith, hope, and love abide,
these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Love is greatest because it never ends. Its
length is as long as God lives, infinite.
God has said to us, because of his love, “No man shall be able to stand before you all the
days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or
forsake you” (Joshua 1:5). And this length of God’s love has every practical benefit for
us today. It is meant to free us from the love of money. The writer to the Hebrews
commands: “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have,
for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’” (Hebrews 13:5). The love of
God frees us to live a simple, other-centered lifestyle of generosity and truth.
What security, what confidence, what boldness, what freedom from worry and anxiety
and fear the length of God’s love supplies! But it is not only broad and long, but deep.
Depth - The depth of Christ’s love reveals the abyss of sin and death from which we are
saved. Listen to David, the great singer of Israel cry out to God in the Spirit on our behalf.
“Save me, O God!
For the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire,
where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters,
and the flood sweeps over me.” (Psalm 69:1-2)
“But as for me, my prayer is to you, O LORD.
At an acceptable time, O God,
in the abundance of your steadfast love answer me in your saving faithfulness.
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Deliver me from sinking in the mire;
let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.
Let not the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up,
or the pit close its mouth over me.” (Psalm 69:13-15)
This is the nature of sin and our sinful condition. We sin because we are sinners, mired in
the ever deepening quick-sand of our rebellion and unbelief. We need a high love that
goes down deep to save.
Philippians 2:6-8,
“Christ, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God
a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in
the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming
obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
This is the love of Christ that passes knowledge. He let go of all that he had a right to
hold on to. Think of the glory he shared with the Father for eternity past, and he willing
to let it go to die for you, and to die for me. What depths he has descended to for the sake
of love!
The Cross’ Deep Love
Think of his abandonment. Think of his arrest and mockery and brutality. Think of the
flogging and the nails, think of the thorns and the spear. Think of the horrible suffocation
and demonic oppression. Then think of the Father’s dereliction of the Son. The One with
whom the Son gazed with infinite joy for eternity past, turned his face away. And all the
sin and guilt and rebellion and unbelief of the universal church was placed upon the Son.
This pushed him down further than any of us will ever know, than any of us could ever
possibly know. This is the depth of Christ’s love.
The author of life lying dead in a grave, all for the depth of love for you. The sole reason
for the cross was his own eternal love that he set upon his people personally. There was
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nothing in us to commend us to him. All we like sheep have gone astray. We’ve all come
short of the glory of God. Paul declared to the Romans (3:10-18),
“None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
“Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
in their paths are ruin and misery,
and the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
This describes every one of us by nature. It was for love of such persons that Christ died.
Jesus said in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his
life for his friends.” But this is not the love with which Christ loved us. We were not his
friends. Christ died for love of his enemies.
“For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one
would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more
shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were
reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall
we be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:7-10).
This is the depth of God’s love in Christ. Enemy love sounds the deepest depths of
Christ’s love. Our emotional resonance grows faint – we can’t imagine loving our
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enemies with this kind of love. What sorrow for sin this engenders! What repentance unto
life this creates! How your desire to know this love should surge because of its depth.
Romans 8:38-39,“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor
things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in
all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Height – God’s love is broad, long, deep and high, gloriously high! Here is the glory and
secret mystery of God’s love now and forever. The final purpose for God’s people is to
come to the height of God’s love. This is how high the Spirit will raise us.
Christ died that we might not only be forgiven, but that he might make us good. He died
that I no longer be punished, but be made a spitting-image son, an heir, a beloved child.
God has his eye upon you to make you like his firstborn, only-begotten Son. He gives
you the same Holy Spirit that dwells in Christ. This is God’s love for you.
We are united with Christ. Joined to Christ. We make up his body. We’re made alive in
him. We are raised with Him. We are seated with Him. We reign with Him. We are
members of flesh and bone. His love has done this. Christ’s love is not satisfied until your
body is as glorified as his body is at this moment. “But our citizenship is in heaven, and
from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be
like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”
(Philippians 3:20-21).
John 17:24, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me
where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the
foundation of the world.” Christ’s love desires you to be present with him. He wants you
near. He loves you so fully that he doesn’t want you to be at a distance but near.
The final plan of Christ for his beloved church is that we stand in splendor before him in
flawless moral beauty. He dies in love, and sustains the ministry of his word in love “that
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he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that
he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such
thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” (Ephesians 5:26-27).
The Four Dimensions of God’s Love in Christ
It is as broad as all humanity, "for God so loved the world"
It is as long as the length of God. His love had no date of origin, and shall have none
of conclusion. God is Love, and his love continues forever, indissoluble,
unchangeable, a perpetual present tense.
Its height is as the waters of the Flood out-topped the highest mountains, so the love of
God covers our highest sins. It is as high as the heavens are above the earth.
It is as deep as Christ came down from heaven to our depths of sin. Christ our Lord
descended into the lowest before He rose to the highest. He has touched the bottomless
pit of our sin and misery, sorrow and need. However low your fall, or bottomed-out your
life, the everlasting arms of His love are always underneath you.
Conclusion:
Have you come in defeat and depression? Have you come in anger and enmity with
someone or with God? Have you come in guilt? Are you under the curse of a lie about
your identity? Are you bitter, weary or proud? Ponder the love of God in all its
magnitude. The vast love of God is meant to connect you to Him in heaven, and to free
you from the guilty grip of your flesh, this world and the devil. God’s love makes of you
a white-hot worshipper of Jesus Christ.
Have you realized Jesus is the lover of your soul? Is there any risk too great for the worth
of Christ’s love? Is not the real sickness of the church today that we forget the
dimensions of Christ love for us?
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There is no depth to which the love of God is not deeper still. There is no change in your
life or in the world that the love of God stands insufficient. There is no force greater than
the love of God – even death.
James Boice tells how God’s love sustains with power even the most hopeless soul. In the
19th century, when Napoleon’s armies opened a prison that had been used by the Spanish
Inquisition they found the remains of a prisoner who had been incarcerated for his faith.
The dungeon was underground. The body had long since decayed. Only a chain fastened
around an anklebone cried out his confinement. But this prisoner, long since dead, had
left a witness. On the wall of his small, dismal cell this faithful soldier of Christ had
scratched a rough cross with four words surrounding it in Spanish. Above the cross was
the Spanish word ‘altura’ for “height.” Below it was the word ‘profundidad’ for “depth.”
To the left the word ‘amplitud’ for “breadth.” To the right, the word ‘longitud’ for
“length.” Clearly this prisoner wanted to testify to the surpassing greatness of the love of
Christ, perceived even in his suffering unto death.
Let’s pray….
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