Understanding the Depths of God’s Love

Ephesians 3:18a

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Will you turn loved ones, to Ephesians chapter 3? And really it’s just the very last phrase of that
verse that we’re looking at this morning. Ephesians 3:18, you remember Paul praying that you, “May
have power 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 with all the
fullness of God.” That you “may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth
and length and height and depth,” and of course of God’s love; that’s it.

And it is maybe “strengthened.” “Exiscuo” is a Greek word meaning “to strengthen.” That you be
strengthened to comprehend, to lay hold of, with all the saints what is the breadth and length and
height and depth. So it’s obviously a grace that comes from God that enables us to understand the
breadth and length and height and depth of his love. And we have, obviously, a tendency to say, “Oh
yeah, the length and breadth and height and depth, okay, to understand all about his love,” and then
to toss it off quickly. But we do know ourselves from reading some of the saints lives, that they
obviously were able to perceive and to see that in a fuller way than we do, and that there is a
depth of love, that it is possible to perceive, that we have no idea of.

I caught a little of it, when I thought about, what I’ve shared often with you, that God at the very
beginning decided to make us inside his Son. And I know I’ve explained it often to you. And I know
in a way you grasp it. But really when you think about it, it is incredible, that any father would
do that, that any father would, as it were, open up his own son, and make inside his son not just
one or two difficult little creatures, not just even three or four awkward characters, not even five
or six people who weren’t quite in agreement with his son, but made millions of us, millions of us
inside his son. And specifically made them inside his son so that they would b e with him forever,
and gave them free wills, and therefore committed himself, not to living next door to them, or
living across the road from them, or living in another planet from them where they could do whatever
they wanted to do and he wouldn’t be bothered with them, but made them inside his own Son where he
himself dwelled: Adolph Hitler! And then it goes on; it just goes on and on after that:

Us ourselves! Think of us in our worst moments; think of us in our most selfish moments, in our
most rebellious moments, in those moments when we care only about ourselves. And he made us inside
his Son knowing that those moments were going to come! And he made us inside his Son so that he
would feel every little twinge of whatever we did and whatever we said. He would feel it; he would
not only feel it as a little pin prick, he would not feel it through a coat of mail [chainmail,
maille], he would feel it in his own heart, where his own beloved Son dwelled. And that’s something
that gives you some idea of the breadth of his love.

It just encompassed all of us and it was a commitment to love us whatever we did. It was like
putting yourself on a rack, and saying to billions of people, “Do your worst on me; I am going to
take it, and I am going to bear it, and I am going to keep you alive. I want you to be with me
forever.” And he therefore, committed himself to bearing all the things that ever happened in our
world, and that will still happen. And he feels them before the murdered feels what the murderer
did to him; he feels it first!

I don’t know if you’ve thought about it, but I have thought at times, especially when you read of
soldiers dying in dreadful conditions; I have wondered, or I often think to tell you the truth — I
shouldn’t say it because we’re all going to be flying soon — but I think how do you bear it? If
the plane blows apart, how do you bear it? And you think of how many things people bear, and they
all answer the same way, “At that moment somehow I seemed to be separated from it.”

There are people who have died of the most terrible wounds, and they don’t complain. It’s not the
pain that they think of. Somehow or other there is Someone who bears it before you bear it. There
is Someone who bears the unbearable and then allows only that of it that you can bear to come
through to you. So there the Father bears everything before we bear it. He is the one — I know it
sounds paradoxical, but he is the one who makes sin possible without it destroying the world
completely, because he bears the brunt of it. He is the one who enables us to stay alive when
something happens that would kill us, that would destroy us. So his love is beyond — it is beyond
conception; it’s beyond thinking of. When I think of someone at the beginning of my life saying,
“Everything that you do wrong, I am going to feel it, and I am going to receive it because I love
you. And I am going to bear it. So, alright, this is your life. Go ahead.” And that is what our
Father did to all of us.

So the breadth of his love is just beyond understanding, really. That’s what keeps coming home to
you in The Old Testament. That’s why I read the Psalm 136. If you look at it, I’ll just remind you
briefly of what that Psalm is referring to when it keeps repeating, “For his love endures forever.”
If you look at Psalm 136:11, “And brought Israel out from among them…” And of course what did
Israel do? They started to complain. They started to complain, “Why did you bring us out into this
wilderness?”

[Pastor starts to read again]

“For his steadfast love endures for ever;

With a strong hand and an outstretched arm,
For his steadfast love endures for ever;

To him who divided the Red Sea asunder…”

They get to the Red Sea and say, “Why did he bring us here to be destroyed by Pharaoh?”

So God — his love would show itself to them and then they would turn around and complain. He would
deliver them from that, and they would turn around and complain. It just went on like that.

[Reads]

“To him who divided the Red Sea in sunder,
For his steadfast love endures forever;

And made Israel pass through the midst of it,
For his steadfast love endures forever;”

Because they got into the desert and then they said, “Have you brought us out here to starve us?
There is no water.”

[Reads]

“But overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea,
For his steadfast love endures for ever;

To him who led his people through the wilderness…”

And they complained the whole way,

[Reads]

“For his steadfast love endures for ever;

To him who smote great kings…”

Because then they said, “Here are kings that are going to destroy us.” And they kept complaining,
complaining. And it just goes on like that through the whole Old Testament. And God endures,
endures, endures.

So it is something for ourselves to think about in our own ups and downs, because I’m sure you have
the same story as I have. And you feel embarrassed don’t you? You just feel embarrassed; you feel
embarrassed by the numbers of times that you’ve resolved to do something and you haven’t done it.
In fact, I’m sure you’ve got to the point that I have got to at times, and just disgusted with
myself. I cannot believe how anybody could put up with me. And our dear Father does for us what he
did for the Israelites down through the centuries. So that’s the breadth of his love.

The length of his love: well it’s just as amazing: in Ephesians 1:4. I mean it’s like a crazy
arrangement, “Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy
and blameless before him.” Because all of us will say, “Yeah, yeah, he may have been merciful to
the Israelites; he may have been merciful to this person; he may have been merciful up to a certain
point with me, but still finally, he is dependent on me responding in some way.” And here it is:
before the foundation of the world, he decided you would be his dear child in his Son Jesus, from
before the foundation of the world. When you weren’t in existence to do anything, to say, “Yes or
no,” he resolved that he would bear all that was necessary to bring you into his own heart.

So it’s something that — that’s why it says, “His steadfast love endures for ever.” That’s why I
think Barth [Karl Barth, 1886 – 1968, Swiss theologian] is finally is driven into a tight corner,
because I’m thinking all the time, “Well now Karl, you’re driving yourself close to universalism,
and if you keep going this way nobody is going to be lost.” And the dear fellow deals with that,
towards the end of a certain volume and his words are, “Who can tell whether the lost will, at the
very edge of the abyss repent?” He is just so overwhelmed by the grace of God, and the mercy of
God.

And I sometimes think, when we think of our own fathers and mothers, or our brothers and sisters, or
so many others that aren’t exactly signing the dotted line where we would sign it in regard to
Jesus, I often think, “They are in the hands of a gracious Father.”

But that’s the length, the durability. It says, “It endures for ever.”

And the height: I thought Psalm 136 in regard to the height, that is the sublimity, the sublime
nature of his love, and the high and mighty things that his love has brought about. And beginning
there at verse 4,

“To him who alone does great wonders,
For his steadfast love endures for ever;

To him who by understanding made the heavens,
For his steadfast love endures for ever;

To him who spread out the earth upon the waters,
For his steadfast love endures for ever;

To him who made the great lights,
For his steadfast love endures forever;

The sun to rule over the day,
For his steadfast love endures forever;

The moon and stars to rule over the night…”

That his love has no limits to its height, no limits to the things that he has created. His love
makes things that we would say, “We don’t need those, Lord. We don’t need those.”

Sometimes you’d get a present, you remember when you were a child, and you thought, “Oh this is
beyond anything I could have expected.” And indeed it happens at times when we’re adults. We get
some present and we think, “Oh I’m not worthy to have this.” I’m sure that somebody thought that
when Joe made his present for I think Eileen, was it? Yeah, you thought, “Oh you’re not worthy of
all the care that has been put into this.”

And of course that’s what we face here. We look at the stars, and we look at the sky, and we think,
“This dear God made that so that we would enjoy ourselves.” I don’t know if you’ve ever thought
that but that hit me one day. Suddenly, I realized, “This dear Father has made all these toys so
that I would be happy.” And you suddenly realize how great and how high his love is, and how
wonderful it is. It just does things for you that you wouldn’t dream of, and yet you see in the
Bible, there are places where it says clearly, “All these things were made for us, for men and
women.” And that’s why God made them all.

We’re the ones that can perceive it; we’re the ones that can see it. And then he made all those
amazing things that it takes us years to see: parts of the ocean that we’ve never seen, and parts
that we actually never will see. And you go down there and there are the most beautiful colors, and
you think, “Oh now come on! Why put these down here? It’s taken us so long to see them.” But
that’s part of it. Amazing love!

And why I mention this to you, too often we’ve thought, “Oh yes these are wonderful things.” But
suddenly it changes it all when you realize, “Wait a minute! These were made for me by a loving
Father who wants me to be happy, and wants me to enjoy life.

So it’s part of the length, and the breadth, and the height, and the depth. And then I thought the
depth: I thought Mary Magdalene, the woman caught in adultery. And his love touches everybody.

And then I thought of the horror of it: Soham. Isn’t that the village where the two little girls
that with their David Beckham football shirts were murdered? And I thought that there’s no depth
that he will not go down to in his love, because whatever way they died, he was in their little
hearts when they died. And he felt everything that they felt. And then he was in the man who was
doing whatever was done.

And you realize, “That’s beyond what we know as love, that’s unbelievable that you could be with the
little ones as they suffered and with the dreadful man who did the thing.

And that’s some of the depth of God’s love, that there’s nothing that is too low for him or is too
hideous or too evil for him to touch, and for him to care about.

So that’s very poorly done, but it’s remarkable when you start thinking of the length, and breadth,
and height, and depth of the love of which we are the recipients.

Let us pray.