I Want to Know What Love Is

Nathan George, Speaker

Ephesians 3:14-21 | January 19, 2025 - Sunday Evening,

Sunday Evening,
January 19, 2025
I Want to Know What Love Is | Ephesians 3:14-21
Nathan George, Speaker

This evening we are looking at Ephesians chapter 3, 14 through 21, continuing in several prayers that we are studying. As I was preparing this week, several songs were running around in my head. My kids said I can’t walk to the pulpit and sing “I wanna know what love is” or “ya can’t hurry love, no you’ve just gotta” and so all these love songs were knocking around in my head. You know the country song “Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places”, I won’t sing it for you. Or “Stop In The Name Of Love.” I’ll let you let those tunes rattle around in your head for just a short time here, but like most love songs, the use of the word love in those contexts, well they’re usually a bit one-sided, shallow shall we say, almost always about romantic love, and if you strip away all the beautiful music and the powerful microphones, and compressors that they use and you get rid of the reverb, all of a sudden you realize they’re pretty cheesy, there’s not much there.

You can fall in and out of love. Abiding love is not really a concept for pop songs. You’ve probably noticed that most popular love songs, or just songs in general are either about love or paradise. At a gut level, all humans want love and heaven. You’re either looking to be fulfilled by finding a lover or looking for the easy life and rest. We all get it when we hear Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sing, “Ohh lalala, on an island I will dwell. Starlit nights in paradise on the Isle of Sanibel.” We’re like “yes, that’s what I want too.”

But what of the biblical idea of love, it’s a loaded word. Love in the Bible can have lots of context, lots of meaning, lots of nuance, paying attention. Love can mean paying attention or caring for others, obedience, sacrifice, mindfulness, remembering. Sometimes forgetfulness is called hating. I’m sure you’ve noticed that love is nuanced in many ways and it makes sense. Isn’t that what we would expect when it comes to the love of the Lord. It’s bound to be multifaceted and endless in its breath and length and height and depth.

In fact, to search out this kind of love would be a never-ending quest and once you learn a new height or a new depth of this love, you can peer up and see more, or look down and see “oh there is more to explore, more to put into practice, more to meditate upon, more at which to marvel.”

Let’s read this passage, we’ll pray, and then we will jump in. Ephesians chapter 3, starting at 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 breath 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.

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 glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

What a glorious passage. Let’s go to the Lord and spend some time here. Father we look to you, we ask that you would open your word to us, you have delivered it to us, your have preserved it through the ages and now it is our privilege, our joy, our duty as well to look to it, to learn from it, and we ask that by your spirit you would teach us, teach us greater things, convict us where necessary, and encourage us in Christ I pray in His name. Amen.

Well I think as we look into this passage, one could legitimately take several different approaches. There are several weighty and profound and even well-known phrases here. We’re named by God, that could be a sermon unto itself. We’re strengthened by His power in our inner being, there’s another sermon.

The whole section on being rooted in love and knowing the depth of Christ’s love could be explored, I think, for weeks. Knowing love that surpasses knowledge could keep us busy for a while I believe, and how much could we explore thinking about being filled with the fullness of God, that’s even hard to wrap your head around. And what about that wonderful phrase, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, it would be immensely beneficial to plumb the depths of God’s power to fulfill His promises and more”, and of course we read here also that Christ has been glorified in His church and that he has preserved His church throughout history and will into eternity.

Or we could take a different approach, a theological approach and notice Paul’s trinitarian paradigm throughout this passage, that would be beneficial as well. What does one focus on, there’s just so much here. Well, maybe we can sneak a little bit of all that in, but here’s the plan, we’re going to try to follow a crescendo of thoughts. There’s a building, there’s a momentum here and so I’m going to give you the outline with a crescendo. In music a crescendo starts small, and it gets bigger and bigger. A decrescendo starts big and gets smaller and smaller, usually in volume, so that’s how I’m going to give you my outline to make the point.

Paul prays to a father who names us. He prays that we might be strengthened by the spirit. We are strengthened by His spirit so that Christ might dwell in us. Then next we are rooted and grounded in the love of Christ so that we might know his love and more. We comprehend more of his love so that we might surpass even that, and all this is so that we might be filled with the fullness of God, and so that I don’t explode, I’ll save the doxological portion til the end.

Yes, named, strengthened, rooted, comprehending, surpassing, and filled and then that beautiful doxological exclamation just pours off Paul’s lips. It’s as if he just can’t take in the wonder of it all. Too often our prayers are limited to daily bread, that our hamburgers might bless our bodies and that’s a decent prayer considering all the grease and gluten, but sometimes we’re stuck in what’s right in front of our noses. Now we are given the Lord’s prayer, praying for daily provision teaches us dependence upon the Lord. That’s a really good thing, those are good things to pray for, but do we ever pray lofty prayers like this from Paul, “That we might know, that we might comprehend more of the length, depth, height, breadth of Christ’s love. Are we shy to ask for so much.”

Of course, I’ve prayed for greater sanctification in my own life because I’ve needed it. That’s good as well, but sometimes I think prayers like this can almost feel like we’re being a little presumptuous. “Lord, would you fill me with your fullness?” That’s a big prayer. I get it, our shoulders, our knees, our bank accounts, they all hurt so praying for provision is a good thing, that’s not bad. And of course, sometimes we pray for bigger things, like direction in life or the healing of a relationship. We need those things too, we are dependent upon the Lord in all these things.

But tonight’s sermon is about a prayer that sort of reaches for the stars. It’s like me, a skinny 50-year-old praying to be a running back in the NFL. Now that would take some doing, I would need to be 30 years younger, 100 pounds heavier, and I would need to love the game of football. It is way more than you could ask or think. Well likewise the power of God and the glory of Christ and the strength of the spirit to pray for all these things that he would fill you with divine intervention and divine instruction, that’s a miracle as well. You’d have to be renamed, you’d have to be given supernatural strength to be remade from the ground up. To move this mountain, it would take mustard seed-like faith in an almighty God. This prayer is a big prayer. The stakes are high, all the chips are on the table, he’s praying for the moon and the stars. Because we’re named by the father that we should be strengthened, rooted, comprehending, surpassing, and filled.

One of my main goals is a simple goal is for you to simply love this prayer, for you to see how astounding this prayer is. With that, let’s back up to this first statement. We are named by the father and then Paul prays that we would be strengthened by the spirit in our inner being. Paul writes “For this reason I bow my knees before the father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.” In reality that’s a provocative statement, especially coming from Paul. It’s as if he’s pushing back on the Jewish community who say that Abraham is our father and that others you can’t claim that, but in chapter 3 Paul has claimed that a great mystery has been revealed and that is that the gentiles have been brought in, they’ve received the riches of God as well and for this reason then Paul bows the knee and he is so bold to pray that they too would be filled with the riches of his glory.

This phrase, “every family” could be translated fatherhoods, or lineage, or ancestry. It gets a fair amount of ink in commentaries and they hash out if it’s every family or whole family, but my sense is that Paul’s meaning is made clear by the phrase “in heaven and on earth, whether jew or gentile, whether currently living in the earth or living in heaven that is with all the saints that you may have the riches of his glory. Maybe this is even a subtle reference to the church universal.

In any case, God names his own, his children regardless of heritage. Paul is claiming that Abraham’s father is our father too if we, as Calvin would say, are united to Christ. A part of my own testimony is that I came to understand that I could not rest in my family’s heritage. You see, I was proud, I was thankful I think in some ways, but also proud that my father and his father and beyond him were all Christians. My mother’s father was a Christian, his father was a Christian, his father was a Christian, you could keep going back.

Now I realize that there was Johnny Armstrong, and he pillaged and destroyed neighboring English towns and he was hanged by the king, but other than that, we are a Christian family for generations, generations, and yet at some point in my 20s I realized I was a proud young man. I thought they’re in, I am too. How about you, are you a cultural Christian because that’s your heritage or have you been named and then subsequently strengthened and changed by the spirit of God.

We are not named so that we can sit back and dismissively say “yep, I’m in, I’m baptized, I’m named, it’s my heritage, I got this. We’ve thought about this naming before and in other contexts, especially as we approach baptism. I don’t think baptism is in view specifically here in verse 15, but just to make the point about naming, baptism is a naming ceremony in many ways. You’re heard Kevin say that multiple times, it’s a setting apart, a marking out as part of the family, a visible family of God. In obedience we bring our children to be named by God because they are his. In the Old Testament, God chooses a people, he names them and marks them out to be his own. He names Abraham, he names Israel, changes their names. He will be their God, they will be his people, and of course you know by reading any of the history of Israel, that it does not necessarily follow that they all live up to that name. Sometimes heroes turn out to be traitors, sometimes friends turn out to be enemies, but here Paul bows and prays to a father who names. You are named, and he prays that you will be changed, strengthened by a supernatural work of the spirit.

One of the great privileges, a great privilege of being named and included in the visible family of God is that you are in the way of grace, according to the riches of his glory and grace he grants with strength, with power, such that by his work your inner being is changed and you are made to dwell with Christ, to be united to Christ. That takes a miracle. That’s a prayer reaching for the stars. You’ve just been transformed into an NFL running back, an Olympic skater, or I just listened to Kevin’s podcast, the fastest woman over the hurdles.

In Christ you are transformed into something beyond asking or thinking. We find in verse 17 that you’ve been transformed into a mean, lean, loving machine. No longer will you be at enmity with God or cynical towards sanctification or other saints, but you will be rooted and grounded in love so that you might grow in His love.

So let me just summarize briefly where we have been so far. So far, we’ve seen that we are named by the father and then this prayer begins that we may be strengthened by the spirit, changed in our inner being, and when we’re strengthened by the spirit this is done so that Christ might dwell in us, so that we might be united with Christ. We are rooted and grounded in his love and now we find in the following verses that the waves of love just keep pounding upon the shores of our hearts. We’ve been named, strengthened, and grounded.

In verse 18 we have this, “may have strength that you, if we pick up the rest of that sentence, 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 to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge”. That’s a loaded passage. We are rooted in Christ’s love so that we might know all that, know the depths of Christ’s love. How does a finite creature even begin to fathom infinite love?

At this point we should be able to see that this prayer is really reaching for the stars, maybe the stars in the next galaxy as well. Paul praised that we might know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. Well, what in the world does that mean? Well, first of all it’s not of this world, but we are meant to know something of it. Know the love that surpasses knowledge. That’s a really fascinating phrase and I would suggest that it’s really a helpful phrase, it aids in understanding other phrases like it.

Listen to this from Jobe 11. “Can you find out the deep things of God, can you find out the limits of the Almighty. 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 or we looked at Philippians a little bit earlier in the service, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Paul says, “we are to know something that surpasses knowledge.” On the face of it, that could seem a little contradictory, does it not? Know something that surpasses knowledge. What does it mean? Well, sometimes the simplest explanation is the best. The word translated surpass means to excel, to transcend to exceed, it’s supra, above, not contra. It’s beyond, not contrary, so it’s beyond, it’s not contrary to knowledge. It’s not some sort of platonic non-knowledge where content disappears and now, you’re beyond knowledge. It’s not irrationalism, it’s simply beyond what we can humanly know.

First, notice in verse 18 that we are to comprehend. That word could give us some fits as well, but we are to comprehend and know the love of Christ, the breadth, length, height, depth. If that means anything, then we are supposed to know a fair amount about the love of Christ, but this word comprehend, a bare definition would say that we are supposed to know everything there is to know about it, but I think in context we can see that it’s not exhaustive because why, you just keep learning and keep learning and keep learning and keep comprehending and keep understanding.

Let me just try to use two examples to explain where I’m going with this. The first from music. You’re always up for a music example, I hope. As you begin to learn an instrument, you might start with a few notes, a few scales, you might learn the staff and what the little dots on the page mean, and what those lines mean. You begin to play your scales a little bit faster and the more you play, well, the more you know, the more you learn. Each time you sit down you might begin to have a new insight and you train your muscles a little bit more, but at some point all this converges and you play something that wasn’t on the page, or you play something and the phrasing comes out like music, and all of a sudden you realized I’ve entered that magical moment of making music, or I’ve improvised and it took all those things, all those nuts and bolts of practice and scales, and learning all these things, then do something and enable you to do something that you couldn’t do, that you didn’t know you could do.

Paul clearly expects his readers to grow in knowledge from one level to the next. We are to plumb the breadth, the length, the height, you’ve heard that now. We are to plumb all this, we’re to work at it. Practice the scales of love and then one day you might just find yourself loving someone that was unlovable, and even there have you fully plumbed the depths? I would say no. As you come to the bottom of the barrel to the end of your love, you look at you realize there is more. More to love, more to grow into.

A different example just briefly. How many of you have, well you don’t have to raise your hands, but how many of you have driven through South Dakota going west or North Dakota? I love the Dakotas, it’s beautiful up there. I love the rolling hills in the east. You have the fields of grain and as you go a little further west it turns into the natural grasses. It’s just a gorgeous scene. You roll over one more hill and you realize there’s 20 more. You go over another one and then you start to see the Badlands off into the distance. You keep going west and all of a sudden Devil’s Tower crops up and the rock formations and the hills get a little steeper and then off in the distance you see the Blue Mountains, the Rockies starting to stretch. As you get closer you realize they are much higher than you thought they were. You begin to climb, and you come up a pass and the peaks are sort of coming over top of view and one vista just opens up after another and then you are at a high mountain plateau and you see around this whole plateau there’s six, seven peaks all around, it’s just amazing. And then you get on the other side of the mountain, you begin the long descent into the pines of the northwest, the apple trees of the northwest. You see volcanic mountains rising off to the west and you come to where there’s just a vast ocean. You put on your snorkel, you go down and it just keeps going one vista after another and this, you would feel like you could never see all there is to see, right? And that’s of a finite place.

How is it with Christ’s love. We could traverse this world over and never feel like we see it all. We look to Christ and we realize there is more and there is more and there is more. Cultural wisdom might say the more you know the less you know, or what is the phrase? The more you know the less you know, yes, that’s the phrase. Well, I get what the phrase is trying to get at, but in this case, we are supposed to comprehend more and more and more. Paul says the more you truly know, the more is revealed. The next vista, the next height, the love of Christ gives way to the love of Christ.

We do not need a mysticism that rids us of knowledge, but we do happily admit that the Christian life is one that is full of mystery after mystery after mystery being revealed, the gospel is revealed, new things are revealed and how to love one another throughout the Christian life. The Christian faith is no dry deadened acquisition of information, it’s a never-ending quest like driving west. Paul praised for all this and he goes further, that we might be filled with the fullness of God. No wonder Paul just breaks into doxological explanation by the end of this passage. He says, “now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think.”

Let me ask, just by way of application. Think for a moment, who in your life is hard to love? What in your life is hard to love? Don’t think you can love unlovable people? Well, while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. 1 John 3:16 says this, “By this we know love that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” Loving that person, your cousin, your parents, your child, your pastor might just feel like practicing scales. It might not feel like mountain vistas opening before you, it might feel at first like infinite failure more than new heights of musical brilliance. Love sometimes begins simply in discovering new breadths and new lengths in obedience. As John explains in 1 John chapter 5:3, “For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments. It takes strength to love like that, to pray for that type of strength would be an excellent prayer that reaches for the stars.”

In the previous chapters of 1 John, he acknowledges that internal battle, but he goes on to say his commandments are not burdensome. Small obedience gives way to larger victories over sin. So, God the father names you and then Paul begins his prayer. God the father names you not so that you can sit back and say “I’m in”, no, the prayer is that the father would grant you strength in his spirit that you might be transformed by his power, be joined to Christ so that you might know the depth of His love, so that you might surpass in life all that you know, so that you might be filled. It’s a series of so that’s here, so listen to this crescendo once again as I read the passage for us.

Allow these words from the word of God to sink into your hearts. “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.”

What a wonderful passage. I’ll save the doxology for the benediction. Would you pray with me. Oh Lord you have been gracious to call us, to name us, and so we pray that according to your riches you would strengthen us, dwell with us, teach us new depths of your love in Christ Jesus and fill us, that your love might bring about long obedience and overflow to the world. We pray that you would preserve your church, fill her, and sustain her in Christ Jesus we pray. Amen.