‘And I pray that you, being
rooted and established in love, 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, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge…’
(Ephesians 3:17-19)
Paul uses two different
illustrations to speak of God’s love:
i) ‘Rooted’ – which speaks of a
great tree with deep, strong roots.
ii) ‘Established’ – alludes to a
great, majestic, beautifully designed building like St. Paul’s.
These illustrations are similar
in that they are both unshakeable; they are also very different: the tree is organic and living while the building is constructed, planned and well designed.
Because of God’s love we are
unshakably ‘rooted’ into His life forever and our lives are well designed and planned
by our Father.
We grow in the ‘soil’ of God’s
love and we are built on the foundation of God’s love, our growth in joy and stability being radically
affected by our understanding of God’s love for us and others.
This is true of all Christians,
they are all ‘rooted and established in love’. But too often our comprehension
of this is weak, we feel ourselves to be lifeless, blown around, shaken and
insignificant etc. And so we need to take these words as objective – I am ‘rooted and
established in love!’, and as something to be pursued – “I want to be ‘rooted and
established’ in God’s love”.
Therefore Paul not only teaches
these things, he also prays for us (and it’s a prayer that we can use) that, by
the incomparable power of the Holy Spirit we,
“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, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge…”
Like a magnificent tree or
building, God’s love in immeasurably wide, long, high and deep! We need the
Spirit’s power to help us to grasp the ungraspable; that we may know and
experience God’s love that ‘surpasses knowledge’!
Love is the aim and outcome of
knowledge of God; we study and pray to learn more about God so that we can love
Him more, and that through us, His love will demonstrated in the world; A lack
of energy toward God in worship and toward people in evangelism, service,
hospitality and generosity, is directly linked to a lack of experience of the love of
God in the Spirit.
You may want to pray something
like this,
“ Father, I thank you that I have
been rooted and established in love. Please would you send the Holy Spirit on
me again that I 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, and
to know this love that surpasses knowledge; and let my life become an overflow of the love
of God toward me. Amen”
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