Rooted and grounded in love ... the love of Christ

Ephesians 3 from the daily reading in the One Year Bible

For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles— ² if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me for you; ³ that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. ⁴ By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, ⁵ which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; ⁶ to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, ⁷ of which I was made a minister, according to the gift of God’s grace which was given to me according to the working of His power. ⁸ To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, ⁹ and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things; ¹⁰ so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. ¹¹ This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, ¹² in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him. ¹³ Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory.

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, ¹⁶ that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

²⁰ Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, ²¹ to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

In Matthew 22:37-40 Jesus says:   “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”      In 1 Corinthian 13:1-3 Paul says:  If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.     Both agree then that love is foremost. Love is foundational to all that we do. Everything depends on love and without love nothing else really matters.  In today’s text Paul says:  For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.      As followers of Christ it is important that we are rooted and grounded in love, everything else depends on it and without it nothing we do matters. But Paul prays, that we would know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. How can we know something that surpasses, is beyond our knowledge?  Paul’s prayer sheds light on the answer, he prays that:  according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.   The love that we are to be rooted and grounded in, the love that is foundational to all that we do is not love that we can fully comprehend in our flesh, that would be eros, emotional, passionate love. It is not a love that we can fully comprehend with our logical finite minds; that might be phileo, brotherly love. The love we need, the love that is foundational to us and for us is agape love. It is a love which goes beyond normal human understanding, logic or emotion. It is unconditional and selfless. Jesus says:   “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”  1 John 4:19 says:  We love, because He first loved us.   We can only love God; we can only love others because He first loved us. God’s love, the love of Christ was that He laid down His life for us. The love that is foundational, the love upon which everything else depends is selfless and sacrificial. It cannot be understood in natural terms. It is requires that we be strengthened with power through the Spirit and that Christ dwells in our hearts through faith.

The world tries to tell us what God’s love should look like. But without the Spirit and without Christ dwelling in the heart, God’s agape love is beyond human understanding. Romans 5:8 says:    God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.     The love of God is demonstrated in the cross and in Christ’s sacrifice for our sins.          1 Corinthians 1:18 says:  The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.     As believers, why would we let those to whom the very demonstration of the love of God is foolishness, define the love that we should have, the love that is foundational to all that we do?  Shouldn’t we instead be the ones who both define and are the demonstration of love to the world? 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 describes the foundational love of God. It says:   Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.   The world will gladly embrace some of these qualities of love, but they will reject others. The world will not accept that love should dictate what is acceptable and what is unbecoming. The world will not accept that love should have any say in righteousness. The world would try to substitute acceptance, tolerance and inclusion for love when it concerns individual choices of behavior. Unconditional love does not mean that we love and accept all conditions. It means that we love people regardless of conditions. If we love someone and we have the ability to help change their conditions for their good, should we simply accept and tolerate their condition? If someone we loved was drowning, should we tolerate that circumstance or should we risk our own life to change their circumstance?  That’s what Jesus did for love. He died, while we were sinners, not so that our sin would be tolerable, but rather so that we would be saved from the circumstances of our sin.

If we would be like Jesus, if we too would have the foundational love of God for others, then that love will be:   patient, kind and not jealous; it will not brag nor be arrogant, it will not act unbecomingly; it will not seek its own, will not be provoked, nor take into account a wrong suffered, will not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoice with the truth; it will bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things; as Jesus did on the cross.

In John 15:17-20 Jesus says:  “This I command you, that you love one another. “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also.”     The world might not love us if we love as Jesus loved, if we love unconditionally but in truth. Jesus also tells us how we should respond to those who hate and persecute us. He says:  “I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44)      So with Paul:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.