The Measureless Love of God
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—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19)
If you asked me what’s the best part of being a Christian, I’d have to say it’s gettin’ to have God as my father.
And the best part of having God as my father is experiencing His love.
The love of God.
Unspeakable privilege.
Unfathomable joy.
Underserved blessing.
Unending wonder.
Even the Apostle John sounds flabbergasted by the idea (which says a lot considering all the miracles he’s witnessed):
The deaf hear and the blind see.
The lame are leaping and dancing for joy.
And the dead are being raised to life.
And John was front and center for it all.
But the wow that wows him most is not the stunning miracles; it’s the wonder of God freely bestowing His love upon former enemies like you and me.
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is who we are!” 1 John 3:1
How did we go from condemned sinners to well-loved sons and daughters of the Most High God?
Answer: The measureless love of God, that’s how!
And Paul’s prayer here is that we’d be given grace to grasp the ungraspable!
That we may somehow know the height, depth, width and breadth of a love that surpasses comprehension.
What does Paul mean by the height, depth, width and breadth of God’s love?
Well, the height of God’s love… speaks of that unfathomable capacity of God’s love to overcome any and all barriers between Him and His beloved.
It’s that same wonderful truth you can find in Romans chapter 8: that nothing in all creation can separate you from His love because there is nothing in all creation greater than His love for you.
Impressive threats, but nevertheless… “Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, can get in between you and that love of His.”
Your love, O Lord
Reaches to the heavens,
Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
His love is higher than any sin.
His love is greater than any offense.
His love is stronger than our weakness.
Grasp the height of God’s love for you.
And don’t forget the depth of God’s love… that follows us down into the places of despair.
God’s love is no fair-weather friend.
When we’re reeling in (what will ultimately prove to be premature) disappointment, feeling nothing is going right, and no one really cares, His love is there.
“My own parents may forsake me,” lamented King David, “but the Lord welcomes me always.”
Here is a love that plunges the depths and rests upon us as we wallow in self-pity and deal with disaster and defeat.
His love embraces and upholds us when we are down and out, forced to reap the painful consequences of someone else’s sin (or even suffer the consequences of our own folly).
God’s love is steadfast and immovable when we are falling apart.
Even when death itself is breathing down our necks, “I will fear no evil, for You (and your love) are with me.”
The assurance of God’s love is all the comfort King David, or any other Believer, will ever need.
Remember: those in the depths of struggle, must always meet with the depths of God’s love. And it’s a love that can “never fail” (1 Corinthians 13:8).
The bleaker our darkness, the brighter His love.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free,
Rolling as a mighty ocean
In its fullness over me.
And the length of God’s love… goes the distance.
The love of God follows us into that “far country” where prodigals like us are prone to wander, prone to leave the God we love.
When we’re off chasing self-serving ambition and wasting time and effort meandering through silly, self-imposed detours, His love is steady and unchanged.
Unconditional love can do no other. Unconditional love means… love without any conditions, like zero. It’s, “I love you no matter what.” And that’s hard to comprehend cuz we’ve never experienced anything like that here on earth.
So keep in mind that no mortal being can wander beyond the length of infinite love.
And finally, the breadth of God’s love invites us to try to take it all in—the vastness, the scope, the wideness of it all!
Paul admits it’s a love beyond human comprehension. And isn’t that exactly the point Frederick Lehman is trying to make in that famous hymn of his.
Frederick’s family emigrated from Germany to the United States in the 1800’s. They settled in a little town Iowa, where he grew up and built a successful business. But after a series of downturns in the economy, the family business went belly up, and he was penniless.
He got hired as a farmhand packing oranges and lemons into crates. And it was during those dark days (go figure), that he was inspired to write a poem about the “measureless love of God.”
With his heart ablaze pondering the mystifying love of God, he scribbled out some lyrics on a sheet of butcher paper, draped over one of those crates.
He entitled the poem, The Love of God.
And once it was set to music, it became one of the most famous and well-loved hymns of all time.
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky!
Got that picture in your mind’s eye?
The Pacific filled with ink.
Every blade of grass on earth a fountain pen.
The entire sky a scroll of parchment paper.
Every human on the planet, a professional transcriber.
On your mark, get set, go!
Start writing, all 7 billion of you! Write the love of God above!
Well.
You’d drain the oceans dry.
You’d fill every inch of that scroll.
Long before you’d even get started!
You can’t contain the essence of something that’s uncontainable.
You can’t get to the bottom of something that’s bottomless.
Sometimes I catch a tiny glimpse of His love for me, and I get this ridiculously happy feeling inside. All my burdens seem to melt away, and I’m comforted in ways I can’t explain.
He quiets us with His love, and that’s what I’m hoping for you.
Let’s take our little thimbles down to the ocean and dip them beneath another endless wave of His great love. And then, survey the horizon of boundless sea and look again at our tiny thimbles.
And be quieted. And ridiculously happy.
“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us” (1 John 4:16).
