Last week in Sunday School we wrapped up our series on the Church by talking about the passion of the Church. Organizations usually have something fundamental that ties everyone together. Maybe it’s having the financial stability to pay the bills. Maybe it’s maximizing profit. Maybe it’s advocating for a more just society. We can ask the question, “What is the fundamental passion that ties everyone in the Church together?” Scripture gives a straightforward answer: it’s Christ!
Scripture makes this amazing statement that the love of Christ is so long, so deep, so wide, and so tall that it will captivate the Church forever! Consider how Christ gives every believer access to the fullness of God’s love.
In Ephesians 3:14-16 scripture says that believers experience the fullness of God the Father. Every family in heaven and on earth has been named by him. Given Ephesians emphasis on invisible heavenly beings (angels) it’s likely that it refers to groups or families of Angels in heaven. It’s their fullness that is only a reflection of the fullness of the Father. The same Father that is able to do abundantly more than we could ever ask or think Scripture says.
Next Scripture mentions the fullness of the Holy Spirit. God says that it is by the Spirit that believers are strengthened in their inner being according to the riches of his glory. “Know thyself” was the ancient creed of the philosophers. Yet thousands of years later humanity is still desperately trying to understand itself. However, the glory of the Spirit is that it is able to penetrate to the believer’s “inner being” through faith. Paraphrasing Augustine in Book 3 of his Confessions the Lord is closer to me than I am to myself. Moreover, the Spirit must be as glorious as the riches of the Father because the Spirit is the conduit through which we receive the fullness of God the Father.
Next God turns our attention to the Son of God. In some of the most beautiful words ever written Paul prays that Christ would dwell in the Ephesians’ hearts through faith so that they could comprehend what is the breadth and the length, and the height and the depth, and know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge in order that they might be filled with all the fullness of God. In Christ God’s love is poured out into our hearts. Christ has redeemed the believer with his blood on the cross. He has given himself up for his bride the Church, absorbing her outrageous debt of sin, and gifting her an eternal inheritance.
But how do we get access to this? How can the Church possess the fullness of the love of God? Scripture tells us it is through faith. The believer possesses the fullness of God’s love-Father, Son, and Spirit through simple faith in Christ. The Apostle Paul shows us faith in 3:14 when he bows the knee before the Father. Remember where Paul is located as he writes this letter: in a Roman prison. What can that teach us about how accessible the love of God is? If it’s accessible in jail, then it’s accessible anywhere: during the Church’s worship together, in her community groups, in the hospital room, when we’ve failed someone again and especially at death. With all the saints and the Angels today let’s give thanks for the height and depth, and length and width of the never-ending love of God in Christ Jesus.
