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.
– Ephesians 3:17-19
Many people consider God’s love easy to understand. After all, they think, he’s just an extremely kind and benevolent being who overlooks our faults. These thoughts are, however, very wrong.
To know and comprehend the love of God requires the Spirit’s help. Why is that? Part of it has to do with our inability to know ourselves. We tend to think of ourselves as mostly good with a little bit of bad. But the truth is much worse and much harder to believe. We are “crooked deep down,” as Derek Webb sang.
John Calvin says this, “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” Here it is especially true – in order to comprehend the love of God we must have a true sense of our own unlovability. God’s love isn’t some sort of mushy, over-looking-offense love. God’s love is found in the death of Christ.
When we look at the cross, we see God’s love and how unbelievable it truly is. Our sin was so terrible and such an affront to God that the Only Begotten Son had to die to redeem us. We were not mostly good and some bad. We were rotten all the way down. We needed a redemptive love that could go beneath that rottenness to make us completely new.
Incomprehensible Love
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.
– Ephesians 3:17-19
Many people consider God’s love easy to understand. After all, they think, he’s just an extremely kind and benevolent being who overlooks our faults. These thoughts are, however, very wrong.
To know and comprehend the love of God requires the Spirit’s help. Why is that? Part of it has to do with our inability to know ourselves. We tend to think of ourselves as mostly good with a little bit of bad. But the truth is much worse and much harder to believe. We are “crooked deep down,” as Derek Webb sang.
John Calvin says this, “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” Here it is especially true – in order to comprehend the love of God we must have a true sense of our own unlovability. God’s love isn’t some sort of mushy, over-looking-offense love. God’s love is found in the death of Christ.
When we look at the cross, we see God’s love and how unbelievable it truly is. Our sin was so terrible and such an affront to God that the Only Begotten Son had to die to redeem us. We were not mostly good and some bad. We were rotten all the way down. We needed a redemptive love that could go beneath that rottenness to make us completely new.