Ephesians 3:14-21 | Grasping God’s Love

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

• We are part of God’s family and so bear his name, just as we are made in his image and so bear his likeness.
• ‘Every family in heaven and on earth’ – as Paul has just described, God is revealing his wisdom to the heavens in his redemption of the earth, to one day reunite them.

16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

• This is not talking about needing power to receive Christ initially, but that Christ might be able to dwell, take up residence and settle-in within our hearts, as we are empowered to allow him to take control.
• Paul’s prayer is that Christ may have all of us and nothing may grieve him in our hearts, and the second half of his prayer is that might have all of Christ.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,

• Being rooted and established/grounded in love is the starting point to understanding the love of God
• We cannot understand and comprehend God from a position of pridefulness or sinfulness – we must approach him and view him from a perspective of love so that we know him better
• Paul is praying for a reciprocal love here between us and God. That as we are rooted and established in love for God, we might have the power to grasp God’s love for us.

18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,

• God wants us to grasp his love for us. He wants us to know it well and be convicted of it, so that we might have all of Christ, just as he has all of us
• These are the dimensions of Christ’s love which we can grow in the knowledge of, like a land which we must explore
• Wide (platos) – that we have been brought from far to near (Ch2b)
• Long (makros) – that we are God’s long term plan to display his glory and wisdom (Ch1b, 3a)
• High (upsos) – that we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ch1a)
• Deep (bathos) – that we have been made alive when dead in our deepest sins (Ch2a)

19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

• Know this love that surpasses knowledge
  • We cannot fully know and comprehend the love of God, until the ‘perfect is revealed’, but we can grow in the knowledge of it till then and experience and live in it
  • 1 Cor 13 ‘We know in part’
• Being filled to the measure of all the fullness of God is about knowing the love of Christ!
  • That Christ might have all of us, and that we might have all of Christ. That every nook and cranny in our lives is filled with Christ’s love.

20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

• We need power to grasp God’s love for us because we cannot ask for or imagine it. We would never think to do what God does
• “in the church” – God is going to be glorified through the church. We are his long term plan to bring glory to himself
• Ultimately, God’s agenda and motive behind his great love for us and empowering us to love him is that he might receive glory.

Summary

The church needs to grasp the full extent of God’s love, in how we have been saved from the depth of our sin and the width of our farness, the length to which he has invested in us and the height to which he has raised us.