Joy in the Journey (18) - Power to grasp the love of Christ

You couldn't accuse the apostle Paul of being conservative in his praying, of being limited in what he asked and hoped for. Ephesians 3:14-21 is beyond our ability to adequately describe and delineate; it stands as one of the most exalted prayers in scripture and one for us to embrace with the deepest reverence. Taken line by line and phrase by phrase, it drenches the soul in wonder.

Twice Paul speaks of power, albeit using different terms. The power of God's Spirit at work within his people and his church. The second of those has to do with our experience of the love of Christ.

But that might sound like an error on Paul's part. Being rooted and established in love, isn't it something else we need to experience the furthest reaches of this love? Intelligence, perhaps, to understand dense doctrine? Some exotic and esoteric experience for the lucky few? Or maybe artistic ability, to be able to somehow portray and depict the sublime? Or perhaps we just need a bit more common sense, since God's love isn't just for sophisticates?

Yet his prayer is not for any of those. Having prayed that we might know power by the Spirit, "that Christ might dwell in your hearts by faith" (v.17), he prays here for adequate strength to be able to grasp the untold dimensions of the love of Christ. Power, in and through the Spirit of God, to grasp the full reality of love.

So, why power?

Sometimes the facts of our lives seem to deny the reality of that love, seem to contradict it. Life can be harsh and brutalising. Paul allies power with faith in these verses and there are many times our faith needs to be encouraged to believe that the love of Christ is real and remains so for us, in all that has or will happen to us. And not just to believe but to experience it in all its sweetness.

The power of cleansing love is needed to overcome the self-loathing and shame that still haunt our hearts. We need divine enabling to take hold of a reality that is simply beyond our wildest dreams: we are loved by God; I am loved by God. Not repulsive to him but loved by him. Is that something you struggle to accept? The Spirit's work in your heart is the solvent for such struggles.

And, as those who are created and finite, it cannot but be true that we need power from above to know the dimensions of a love that is uncreated and infinite - to grasp something of how wide and long and high and deep this love is, to know what simply cannot be known, and so to be filled with all the fulness of God.

We're here at the edge of our ability to comprehend and to articulate. And maybe that's part of Paul's point: it's not a matter of words; the need is for God to work in our hearts in power, that we might be grasped by the love that saves and transforms. And to be so captivated by this love that our hearts will be filled with God himself.

Would you make this prayer yours?

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O love of God, how strong and true;
Eternal, and yet ever new,
Uncomprehended and unbought,
Beyond all knowledge and all thought!

O love of God, how deep and great,
Far deeper than man's deepest hate;
Self-fed, self-kindled, like the light,
Changeless, eternal, infinite!

O heavenly love, how precious still,
In days of weariness and ill,
In nights of pain and helplessness,
To heal, to comfort, and to bless!

O wide-embracing, wondrous love,
We read thee in the sky above;
We read thee in the earth below,
In seas that swell and streams that flow.

We read thee best in him who came
To bear for us the cross of shame,
Sent by the Father from on high,
Our life to live, our death to die.

We read thy power to bless and save,
E'en in the darkness of the grave;
Still more in resurrection light
We read the fullness of thy might.

O love of God, our shield and stay
Through all the perils of our way;
Eternal love, in thee we rest,
For ever safe, for ever blest.

Horatius Bonar, 1808-89