How large is the love of Christ? ∙
May you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. – Ephesians 3:18
Ephesians 3:16-20
16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit.
17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong.
18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.
19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.
Webster defines “incomprehensible” as something “impossible to comprehend.” Can we truly understand what is deemed incomprehensible? Throughout history, meaningful efforts have been made to decode the incomprehensible through the arts. Artists have managed to convey messages without the use of words, utilizing a variety of art forms. Consider the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Art predominantly communicates through the language of visual imagery, converting profound and lofty concepts into accessible symbols that encapsulate these ideas.
Art gives the imagination free rein, allowing you to experience the surrounding world differently and then record how you feel about it without relying on words (study.com). Georgia O’Keeffe explained, ‘‘I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.’’
Poetry is an exception. Unlike the reliance on nonverbal imagery typical of other art forms, poetry crafts verbal imagery to evoke mental pictures. T.S. Eliot famously said, “Genuine poetry is able to communicate something to us even before it is understood.” Ponder that for a moment.
Elliott elaborated, “The task of the poet, in making people comprehend the incomprehensible, demands immense resources of language; and in developing the language, enriching the meaning of words and showing how much words can do, he is making possible a much greater range of emotion and perception for other men, because he gives them the speech in which more can be expressed . . ..”
Elliott proposes that comprehension via logical reasoning takes a back seat to conveying ideas through artistic expression.
Comparably, the Scriptures introduce a different approach to understanding, involving prayer and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
Ephesians 1:18 I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called . . ..
Ephesians 3:18-19
18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.
19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
Paul prays that the children of the King comprehend the breadth, depth, length, and height of the love of Christ. “It is as if Paul invited us to look at the universe – to the limitless sky above, to the limitless horizons on every side, to the depth of the earth and of the seas beneath us, and said: ‘The love of Christ is as vast as that’” (Barclay).
Paul was granted the ability to handle concepts that surpass human understanding: the infinite, eternal attributes of the Father, the living God. He sketches a verbal image to convey the immeasurable extent of the love of Christ. In doing so, he achieves the seemingly impossible. Paul “puts God in a box.” He prays for the ability to comprehend the incomprehensible width, length, height, and depth of Christ’s love.
REFLECT & PRAY
“The Four Magnitudes – width, length, height, and depth – are poetic expressions for the infinitude of God’s love” (Hughes).
Father, I recognize how little I understand. May I rely on You to empower me to grasp Your boundless, multi-faceted love. May Your Spirit truly enlighten me in all things.
INSIGHT
What is the magnitude of Christ’s love? This deliberately provocative question defies easy answers. Paul encourages us to seek the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to grasp the infinite, which is definitely beyond our limited, finite abilities.
“Just as Christ’s riches are unsearchable (Ephesians 3:8), so is his love too great for us to grasp completely. Like children who have seen the ocean for the first time, we should never cease to marvel at the magnitude of the love of Christ. Without the divine assistance that Paul requests for us, we would never be able to understand the love of Christ beyond a superficial level” (Boles).
The original Greek is somewhat terse. It simply reads, “In order that you may be strong to grasp/comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth” (Boles).
The Greek word translated as strong is exischuo. Exischuo is only used once in the entire New Testament. It connotes the idea of being able to grasp, lay hold of, possess, or seize. It literally means to have full strength (ATR) and has the sense of “being fully able to grasp” (UBS). Paul is interceding for thechildren of the King to be fully able to rise to the challenge and comprehend the incomprehensible. We are to grasp that which is just too big to grasp.
The Greek word for grasp, comprehend, and understand is katalambano. Katalambano means “to take hold firmly for oneself, especially to comprehend with the mind.” It means to be able to understand, perceive, or learn the meaning of something.
Through the work of the Holy Spirit, we can grasp what seems beyond understanding. Our own limited human insight and abilities fall short, but through the remarkable empowerment of the Holy Spirit, what was once impossible becomes possible.
John 14:26 When the Father sends the Helper as my representative – that is, the Holy Spirit – he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.
How immense is the love of God? A.W. Tozer explained, “God is self-existent, His love had no beginning because he is eternal, his love can have no end because he is infinite it has no limit because he is holy it is the quintessence of all spotless purity because he is immense, his love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea . . ..”
Paul’s prayer transforms an impossible task into a responsibility for every child of the King. Knowing that it is humanly impossible, “He calls us to this grand spiritual exercise for the health of our souls. It is to be our life’s occupation. Have we seriously devoted time to thinking about and trying to understand his love? Have we contemplated his love in, say, the Incarnation? – the cross? – great passages such as this one which extol his love? If not, we have failed in our duty” (Hughes).
Each child of the King is tasked to pray for the ability to comprehend the incomprehensible. We are to pray that God will empower us with inner strength through His.
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© Dr. H 2024
Dr H Reflections 