The “breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ.”
The same passage that says Christ’s love “surpasses knowledge” also has Paul praying that the church “may have strength to comprehend” it.
Strength? To comprehend? The love of Christ?
Why on earth would it take “strength?” Scripture could have used plenty of other words here. Why not increased intellect?
But we’re so glad God’s word says strength.
Because there are weaknesses so exposed by loving God and loving others that it will take a strength to trust how much God loves us.
How great the Father’s love for us that we could be called children of God! See 1 John 3:1.
To know Christ’s love for us is to live Christ’s love. To know the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love is to TRY to love Him and others—and realize our shallowness and short rope. Our systemic selfishness becomes undeniable! To TRY to follow God and to become acutely aware of our deficiencies will make us want to scream: How could God possibly love sinful creatures like us?
Then of course it takes strength! To know more and more what’s at our core and to accept that God loves me more, God loves me still.
Some translations use the word power instead of strength. Both are helpful because both point to the Holy Spirit in us. With the strength to love God and others is awareness that we fall embarrassingly short. So our love for God and others first looks like strength. But it’s a strength that exposes more weakness. And our weakness in loving God and others ultimately exposes the strength of God’s love. There’s a pattern here. Get your shovel out. We will never get to the bottom of God’s love!
This is good news for us, personally, because we are learning God really does love us beyond comprehension. It’s also good news for others in our sphere because God’s love can pour out of us when our love otherwise runs dry.
And the more this cycle of loving God and others shows how short we stack up, yet how unchanging God’s love is, the more we concede: there is much more of God’s love to know. He must increase; we must decrease. Give us more, Christ!
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A little catch-up.
Hi! In the middle of my messy writing process today, my neighbor showed up at my front door with a pumpkin spice latte in hand. With house-made syrup and fresh nutmeg, it was me against the world.
Since my agent is handling the book proposal process, I’ve been able to sit down and actually write just to write. It feels risky wonderful to squander time with an article idea that might never happen, or to then edit a finished article while wondering where exactly to send the article, or to even submit the article and get a paper bag out, short of breath, feverishly checking my email for rejection.
What strikes me is that all of this–in its tornado of potential or not potential–has little value in the world of efficiency, predictability, and gain. But there is no better option if God has put it on our hearts to do. Words burn a hole in my head and have to go somewhere. What I’m getting at is–I think you are doing this in your sphere of influence as well. You have some sort of work in your home, in your office, in your yard, in your church, in your family, in your shop, in your neighborhood that is risky wonderful to you and if you are scared at its nothingness in the world’s eyes, perhaps it is everything about Christ forming you. If Christ is nudging you, you can’t not do it. In a world of cost-benefit analysis and risk elimination, let’s be wasteful in our worship of the Lord. He is a God of surplus!
Big hug to you,
Paige
