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Awesome Love Ephesians 3: 14 – 21 I pray that according to the riches of his glory he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith as you are being rooted and grounded in love. Ephesians 3: 16 – 17 I pray that you may have the power 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 so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3: 18 – 19. When we left South Africa we went to England as part of our big OE. While we had originally intended that our stay would be short term it turned out to be 5 1/2 years long as Geoffrey took up the opportunity to study there. From the outset however the writing was on the wall that we would not be able to live permanently in the UK. However, 5 ½ years is a long time to be temporary and in that time I must say that I felt rather like a little plant stuck in a vase of water, initially functioning well, but eventually starting to wilt. Then we moved to New Zealand having arrived here we decided to live here permanently. At that point, I felt like I was being transplanted into new soil and like all plants that are transplanted, I initially wilted and struggled to establish myself but soon started to grow and flourish. Those of you who are gardeners will know that the soil that a plant is grounded in, directly affects its growth, its fruitfulness and sometimes even the colour of its flowers. Hydrangeas are a good example of this. So it is with humans. Where we ground ourselves, the soil which feeds us systemically, is hugely influential on how we live our lives and what we become. What is the nature of the soil in which you are planted at this time? How is it affecting your resilience, your inner strength? How is it resourcing you to cope with life’s challenges? I pray that according to the riches of his glory he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith as you are being rooted and grounded in love. In this passage from Ephesians Paul encourages us to be rooted and grounded in love. Not just any love but the love of Christ. He prays that the readers of his letter will come to know the love of Christ so that we may be filled with the fullness of God, that we might be strengthened in our inner beings with his power. Two questions spring to mind as I engage with this passage: What is the nature of the love of Christ? What is its power? I’d like to explore each of these questions in turn. Christianity is a story. Yes it is a philosophy of life; a system of ethics; a religion and a theological approach to God. But first and foremost, Christianity is a story. It is the story of one particular man called Jesus; how he lived, what he taught, how he died and how he was raised from the dead. Those who follow Jesus, like Paul believe that this story is a window into the mystery of God. We believe that the story of Jesus is able to reveal the heart of God. We believe that God’s love is uniquely and completely on display in the life and death of Jesus. We believe that in the love that Christ displayed for humanity, is the revelation of the love of God for humanity. So it is that we turn to the Scriptures and to the writers of the New Testament to discover the nature of the love of Christ and in so doing the love of God is simultaneously revealed to us. Our search to discover the nature of Christ’s love takes us straight to the Cross. The cross of Jesus is generally regarded, as a dark and tragic example of humanity losing its way. It is viewed even by nonbelievers as an example of hatred, jealousy, and religious bigotry cruelly surfacing in a crowd mentality that leads to the victimization of an innocent human being. Certainly it was all of those things. However, there is another aspect to the Cross that we must not miss. It is at the cross that we witness the full expression of Christ’s love. In the death of Christ we perceive the extent of His love for us. Death is the greatest act of sacrifice by which love can be expressed. In 1 John 15:13 we read: "for greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends". Let’s pause a moment to consider this………….. Jesus took this ultimate demonstration of love to the absolute limit, because on the Cross he died for all people of all time and he became the sin bearer for all humanity. In order to express divine love, Christ went to the utmost limit of self-sacrifice and in this act of self sacrifice we recognise perfect compassion as well as perfect love. The remarkable thing about this love is that it has nothing to do with whether it is deserved or not. With human beings, love is relative. A motive is needed to produce love in our hearts. We see this even in our love for God. Scripture tells us that we love because God first loved us. In the case of God’s love however, no reason is given for the outpouring of the love of God. It is simply due to his divine nature that his love floods the universe unconditionally and in an unlimited way. God’s nature is such that his perfect love like an ever flowing spring bubbles up whether we call for water or not. This unbounded love is revealed in the extraordinary notion that Jesus died for people he did not even know, people he had never met, people like you and me who were not even born yet! Ephesians. 3: 16 gives expression to the boundless nature of the love of Christ, describing its vastness as an illimitable ocean that can never be fully explored but which we are invited to appreciate, to embrace and to enjoy. In that famous passage from Romans 8: 35 Paul asks us the question: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? The comforting answer comes back strong and true that nothing is able to separate us from this love so profoundly expressed on the Cross. The eternal love of Christ is our lasting portion. Nothing in the universe is so strong. And this love is deeply personal. It is extended in its full potency to each and every one of us and we are invited to ground ourselves in it and to root ourselves in its grace. This leads neatly on to the power vested in this love. Christianity as I have already said is a story. We come here week after week, to hear this story told and retold with different themes and variations. We come here to hear God’s love story so that we can find our story within it, So that we can become rooted and grounded in it. How many times have you heard the wonderful story today told in today’s Gospel reading from John 6: 1 – 15? This story which is told here as a precursor to Jesus’ ‘I am the bread of life’ statement is the story of the feeding of the multitude. It is so important that it is recorded 6 times in the 4 Gospels. Why? A few details change—where the bread comes from, who first notices the problem of the large crowd, how many people ate and how much was leftover. But the main points are the same—the crowd was hungry, for bread, for life, for hope; Jesus’ love wells up within him and his compassion overflows into action and he takes a loaf of bread and when he had given thanks he gave it to them in generous proportions and the hungry are fed and they are satisfied. And that’s just it. The importance of this story lies in its message that the love of Christ is generous and vast and powerfully potent. It can feed and satisfy. It issues in great and wonderful acts of kindness and it is a love that is so inspiring that it leaves us standing in awe. This is the love that Paul encourages us to ground and root our lives in. Let’s go back to the analogy of the plant again. Let’s imagine once again that you and I are plants that need to be grounded. Our lives are saplings that need to find good soil in which to grow and bear fruit. Why wouldn’t we want to plant ourselves, our lives, our hopes and our dreams firmly in the soil of Christ’s love? This love which Paul tells us has the ability to strengthen our innermost being with a power that is potent enough to feed 5,000 people with a loaf of bread. Why wouldn’t we want to plant ourselves in a love that is so profound that it inspired Christ to lay down his life for us? Why wouldn’t we want to plant ourselves in a love that would enable Christ’s spirit to dwell in us and to infuse and transform us systemically and enable us to bear the fruits of love in our lives? Of course we would, ‘but how?’, you may be asking. Paul gives us the answer: through a simple step of faith. All we have to do is take a step of faith and receive that love. This is not rocket science. If a man loves a woman or a woman loves a man, the only time that love can flourish in all its potency is when that love is received and reciprocated. Then that love can grow. So it is with the love of Christ. Only when we take a step of faith and receive the love that Christ so graphically illustrated for us on the cross can his love for us flourish in our lives. What an opportunity! Surely it is one that ought not to be missed. If you have not yet accepted Christ’s love in your lives look around you at those who have. See the difference it makes to their lives. See its power and energy at work within them. Open your hearts in faith and receive from him that in Paul’s inimitable words, with all the saints you too may be grounded and rooted in a love whose breadth and length and height and depth surpasses human knowledge and you too may be filled with all the fullness of God and the potency of his love. |
