God loves us! God loves you. And God loves me. In these strange and uncertain and fearful times God wants us to know just how very much He loves us all.
Ephesians 3:17 …. I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 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, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
God wants us to do more than just know ABOUT his love. God wants us to KNOW his love, to know it in our own experience, to know his love in our everyday lives every day. God wants us know his love as we know God Himself. And God wants us to be filled with his love to the measure of the fullness of God.
“May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it.” Ephesians 3:19a NLT
So just how wide and how long and how high and how deep is the love of Christ?
How WIDE is God’s love?
God loves everyone. The width of God’s love may be the most obvious thing that distinguishes His love from human love. We love certain people but not others. We love certain types of people, but not others. God loves everyone equally.
Read: John 3:16-17 NIV
16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
God does not reserve His love for a specific class of people. Race and gender and social status and location and background are all irrelevant when it comes to a person’s standing before God. God loves all kinds of men and all kinds of women equally. God’s love is wide enough to embrace everybody.
We may feel that we are unworthy of God’s love. Absolutely right! We are totally undeserving of the love God has for us. But he still loves us. That is what grace is all about. Some people find it hard to believe that God loves them. They think they have gone too far away from God. His love could never stretch far enough to reach them. They are mistaken. God’s love is wide enough to reach everybody!
How LONG is God’s Love?
What is the length of His love? From eternity to eternity. Neither the present nor the future can separate me from God’s love. I do not have to worry about it running out. The Bible tells us that God IS love. Jesus is the same today, yesterday and forever. God doesn’t change. His love for us doesn’t change. Maybe today God loves me, but what about tomorrow? Some people say, ‘I believe God used to love me, but what about now?’ We don’t have to worry about God’s love running out.
Through Jeremiah the prophet God tells us ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness. (Jeremiah 31:3)
God’s love is everlasting. God’s love endures forever. God wants you to experience that love with Him forever. That is length of God’s love. God’s love is forever and for always. It isn’t just available on Sundays. There are no “regular business hours” for God’s love. God’s love is never “out to lunch”. The love of God doesn’t take holidays.
And God’s love doesn’t give up. Ours does! Our love runs out but God isn’t like that. God’s love just keeps on going and going and going! God doesn’t give up on us
“I will never, ever, ever leave you or forsake you.” In times of trial, we may think we are “clinging on to God. The truth is it really is the other way around. It is God who clings on to us with a love which never lets us go.
Jesus said this.“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 1 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no-one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no-one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10 :27-30)
We have a new relationship with God.
Jesus said in John 6 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all he has given me,
We have been born again to eternal life and have the Holy Spirit as the seal of our salvation and deposit which guarantees our inheritance, our first instalment of heaven.
The Almighty God is greater than everything in the universe. God CAN keep us safe and God WILL keep us safe with a love which never lets us go.
How HIGH is God’s love?
“Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies…” Psalm 36:5 NIV
Earlier in Ephesians we saw how high God’s love stretches. God has “blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (1:3). And God has raised us up and seated us “with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus” (2:6).
God’s love is limitless. We are lifted up to heavenly places. We are no longer people who live on earth. Now we are citizens of heaven. This is only made possible by the great love of God. God’s love is the highest love, the purest love, the finest love we can imagine. And not only that, but it is completely free. Anybody who wants God’s love can have all they want.
God’s love is like mountains getting higher and higher. All through our lives we can climb higher and nearer to God. There are always more heights to press on to! We should all keep on going to know more of God’s love. “Onward and upward.”
How DEEP is God’s love?
Perhaps depth refers to God’s love being with us through even the most difficult of situations. That definitely is true. He said He would never leave us nor forsake us.
Romans 8:35-39 NIV Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? … 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
“NOTHING …will be able to separate us from the love of God…” God loves us so much that he gave His Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for us. God’s love shows us that just how important we are to God.
The depth of God’s love is also that it reaches down to the deepest parts of our being. God’s love is deeper than our deepest secrets. God’s love can go down into the darkness of our worst fears.
Many people have deep hurts. Things which have happened to us in the past which still hurt us today. God cares about these things and God wants to bring his healing and freedom and wholeness and peace down into the deepest parts of our body, mind and spirit. However deeply we may be hurting, God’s love is deep enough to reach down and heal us! There is no pit too deep for God’s love to reach us. God’s love will rescue us!
So how wide and how long and how high and how deep is God’s love?
Wide enough to reach every person.
Long enough to last forever and never let us go.
High enough to lift us up to heaven.
Deep enough to reach down to our deepest needs.
MESSAGE take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
God wants each of us to know just how wide and long and high and deep his love is! Thanks be to God for loving us so much!
