About Us Quarterly Magazine Meditation: Immeasurable Love
Meditation: Immeasurable Love Print E-mail
Saturday, 16 October 2010 12:15
By Pastor Hans Overduin
In Ephesians 3:18-19, the Apostle Paul prays for God’s people in Ephesus with this petition, “that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and [so] to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge…” This prayer shows both how very much Paul cared for the Ephesians, and even more it shows how caught up Paul was with the unending dimensions of God’s love in and through Christ Jesus, the Saviour of sinners.
Oh, if we only understood more, and lived more out of, the infinite love of God for us in Christ Jesus! Dr. M.Lloyd-Jones said about these verses, “We must never fall into the error of imagining that because we are Christians we therefore know all about the love of God. Most of us are but as children paddling at the edge of an ocean.” Which Christian won’t admit that is so true! Therefore it can be very wholesome to dwell on the immeasurable love of God in Christ Jesus, both in reference to the believer’s comfort and to the believer’s calling to reach out to others around us in Christian word and deed ministry.
While we must not read too much into the four dimensions of God’s love that Paul gives, yet we should not discount the different dimensions either. Thus, the breadth of God’s love surely may have us think on God’s love being so wide it reaches out to all sinners of all kinds from all over the whole world! We may not exclude anyone from the free offer of God’s grace and lovingkindness in Christ Jesus. Consider John 3:16!
The length of God’s love, without question, tells us something of its endlessness, from eternity to eternity. God’s love in Christ is an everlasting and never-failing love! (See I Corinthians 13:4-8a.) When Paul goes on and speaks next of the depths of God’s love, he is thinking about the earlier gospel-saturated chapters in Ephesians. That section deals with how God gave His only Son for the salvation of sinners like us, and to what depths of suffering Jesus Christ went to deliver His people from the depths of misery and to bring them to the heights of glory. Consider too Romans 11:33-36, as well as Paul’s reference to “the unsearchable riches of Christ” in Ephesians 3:8.
Paul then goes on to tell of the height of God’s love in Christ Jesus. No doubt, Paul wants us to contemplate here the ultimate and final purposes of God in all His gospel promises. The gracious reality of the gospel proclaims there is just no end to all the good things God promises for us in life and death for body and soul for now and forever in and through Christ Jesus! “But as it is written, ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him” (I Corinthians 2:9).
In summary, Paul is saying that we just cannot know all there is to know about the love of God in Christ Jesus. “It passes [or surpasses] knowledge.” How good and important for Christians always to remember this, and to reflect this too. The gospel tidings are, as someone put it, “the best of news even for the worst of sinners.” Without question, when you are gripped and guided by this amazing gospel of the astounding, immeasurable love of the Triune God in and through Christ Jesus, you want to reach out to others with the same in word and deed. You need to do so, by God’s grace, and you keep wanting to do so, because the love of Christ compels you so. How wonderful when this love is behind all our ongoing support for Word & Deed Ministries. To God alone be all the glory for whatever may be done also through this faithful ministry!
Rev. Hans Overduin is pastor of the Calgary Free Reformed Church.
 
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