1. "In this cursed world, loving sometimes gives pleasure to the lover or to the loved or both but not always. You can know pleasure apart from love. That's where pleasure is such a dangerous deceiver to us."

2. "Our world is reveling right now in a deep lie that the core of our identity is found in what pleases us. That would be true if our loves, our desires, were perfect."

3. "True love is costly and valuable, and we are often by nature emotionally cheap and more committed to our own immediate pleasure. And therefore we can be easily confused when we come upon significant choices."

4. "In order to show love, we first need to know love. In our passage for today, at the end of the amazing recounting of God's love for us and what He has done for us in Christ, Paul shares this prayer."

5. "If I have smaller thoughts of God, I'll probably pray more for things I think maybe I could help to accomplish. But when I start seeing the God who got the Jews out of Egypt, the God who raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, then I start praying for crazy lost people to be saved."

6. "I'm so glad you had strength for yesterday. That is not enough for today. And there are many days God in His love will make sure you know that."

7. "Faith opens the door of the soul to receive Christ. Faith admits Him and submits to Him."

8. "The more you come to understand what God is like, the more you want to pray, and the more you pray, the more you come to see what God is like. And it just feeds itself."

9. "We are called to know the love of Christ, imperfectly, of course, but really, from each other. That's why it's with all the saints here in verse 18."

10. "Christ's love is the prism through which God can be understood. Through Christ's love we come to know more of God's truthfulness and His grace. It's through His love that we come to know more of His wisdom and His role as judge."

Observation Questions

1. In Ephesians 3:14-15, before whom does Paul bow his knees, and what relationship does this person have to "every family in heaven and on earth"?

2. According to Ephesians 3:16, what does Paul pray that God would grant the believers, and through what means would this be accomplished?

3. What is the result of being "strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being" as stated in Ephesians 3:17?

4. In Ephesians 3:18, with whom does Paul say believers are to comprehend the dimensions of Christ's love, and what four dimensions does he mention?

5. How does Paul describe the love of Christ in Ephesians 3:19a, and what apparent paradox does he present about knowing this love?

6. What is the ultimate goal or outcome of this prayer as stated in the final phrase of Ephesians 3:19?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does Paul emphasize that believers need to be "strengthened with power" simply to comprehend and know Christ's love? What does this suggest about the nature of this love and our natural ability to grasp it?

2. Paul says Christ's love "surpasses knowledge" yet prays that believers would "know" it. How can we understand this seeming contradiction, and what does it teach us about the kind of knowledge Paul has in mind?

3. Why is it significant that Paul prays for believers to comprehend Christ's love "with all the saints" rather than individually? What does this reveal about how God intends for us to grow in understanding His love?

4. How does the structure of Ephesians (chapters 1-3 focusing on what God has done, chapters 4-6 on how believers should live) relate to Paul's statement that "to show love, you must know love"?

5. What does it mean to be "filled with all the fullness of God" in the context of this passage, and how does this connect to knowing the love of Christ?

Application Questions

1. Paul prayed urgently for believers he may not have known personally. Who are three or four people in your church that you could commit to praying for this week using the specific requests in Ephesians 3:14-19, and when will you do this?

2. The sermon emphasized that we learn about Christ's love not only from Scripture but from how fellow believers treat us. In what specific relationship or interaction this week could you intentionally demonstrate Christ's love to help another believer comprehend it more deeply?

3. Reflecting on the sermon's point that pleasure and love often part ways in our fallen world, where in your life right now is something pleasurable tempting you away from what is truly loving, or where is genuine love requiring you to do something unpleasant?

4. The sermon challenged listeners to pray larger prayers because of God's great power. What is one situation or person you have stopped praying for because it seemed impossible, and how might this passage encourage you to begin praying again?

5. Paul describes being "rooted and grounded in love" as the foundation for comprehending Christ's love. What is one practical step you could take this week to deepen your roots in Christ's love—whether through Scripture meditation, prayer, or intentional fellowship with other believers?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Ephesians 1:15-23 — Paul's earlier prayer in Ephesians shows his pattern of praying for believers to know God's power and the hope of their calling, providing important context for the prayer in chapter 3.

2. Ephesians 2:1-10 — This passage describes the riches of God's grace and mercy toward spiritually dead sinners, illustrating the love that Paul prays believers would comprehend.

3. John 17:20-26 — Jesus prays that His followers would know the Father's love and that He Himself would be in them, directly paralleling Paul's prayer for Christ to dwell in believers' hearts.

4. Romans 8:31-39 — Paul declares that nothing can separate believers from the love of God in Christ, reinforcing the breadth, length, height, and depth of Christ's love emphasized in the sermon.

5. 1 John 4:7-21 — John explains that knowing God's love enables us to love others, supporting the sermon's central theme that to show love we must first know love.

Sermon Main Topics

I. To Show Love, You Must Know Love: The Connection Between Knowing and Showing Love

II. Pray That God Will Give Us Faith (Ephesians 3:14-17a)

III. Pray That God Will Give Us Strength (Ephesians 3:17b-19a)

IV. Pray That We Will Be Filled (Ephesians 3:19b)

V. Growing in Christ's Love Transforms Us from Today Through Eternity

---

Detailed Sermon Outline

To show love, you must know love.

To show love, you must know love. Does that make sense?

Normally, to show love to another, You must first know love yourself.

Pleasure sometimes accompanies love. In a fallen world, what would seem a natural pairing of pleasure and love isn't always the case.

In this cursed world, loving sometimes gives pleasure to the lover or to the loved or both but not always.

You can know pleasure apart from love.

That's where pleasure is such a dangerous deceiver to us.

So our world is reveling right now in a deep lie that the core of our identity is found in what pleases us.

That would be true if our loves, our desires, were perfect.

We trust that that will be true when we are in our resurrected and glorified state with God eternally.

But here and now, each one of us can provide example after example, often painful when we look back, of when love and pleasure have parted ways.

I wonder if you can think of examples from your own life. Maybe just this past week. When one way seems to be what love calls you to, but it seems unpleasant.

Or put another way, where pleasure calls you to do something that's not really loving.

It seems for us, pleasure is as immediate as taste. Whereas love maybe, sometimes is, But love also takes wisdom to know, both in our recognizing when and how we have been loved. So kids, some things that your parents do now that you don't think are very loving, you will look back and think, wow, they were loving me a lot.

Or oppositely, sometimes we haven't been loving and we haven't realized it. We need wisdom to know how we can love one another. It's not always obvious to us. Sometimes it is, maybe often, but certainly not always. And not at some very important points.

Should I say this? Should I commit to him or her? Should I do this? This is why in our church covenant that we're going to read in a few minutes after the sermon, we pledge, We will seek by divine aid to live carefully in this world, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts. Love is not as straightforward a matter as we may assume it is.

Living as a Christian means being careful. And includes self-denial. True love is costly and valuable, and we are often by nature emotionally cheap and more committed to our own immediate pleasure. And therefore we can be easily confused when we come upon significant choices. Friends, all of this is important background for you to understand the letter of Paul to the Ephesians.

In most of Paul's letters in the New Testament, the imperative follows the indicative. That is, before Paul tells the Christians in Rome or in Colossae what he wants them to do, he first informs them of what God has done. Ephesians? It's just the same way. Ephesians in the chapters that we have ahead of us, chapters 4 to 6, is where Paul is exhorting these Christians to love in various situations.

But in order to show love, you must first know love. Paul has spent the first three chapters laying out for them how God has loved us in Christ. Does that make sense? If you just take the book of Ephesians and look at it and flip back through those first three chapters, you'll see in the headings, whatever translation you're looking at, you'll see in the headings they're full of how God has blessed us. And then you go beyond this prayer here into chapter 4 and you start seeing what He calls on us to do.

We are to be loving. But in order to help us with that, Paul tells us by God's Spirit first how God has loved us. In order to show love, we first need to know love. In our passage for today, at the end of the amazing recounting of God's love for us and what He has done for us in Christ, Paul shares this prayer. He had shared his prayer for them at the beginning.

You might remember back in chapter 1 and verse 17 and following. Now Paul shares what he had prayed for them again here in chapter 3, verses 14 to 19. I want us to meditate on this prayer and God's love in it. Just think how you would define love when he's talking about God's love. I think a good short definition would simply be acting toward anyone else in whatever way would be most glorifying to God.

Acting toward anyone else in whatever way would be most glorifying to God. That is a good biblical definition of love.

This we trust is how God has acted toward us in Christ. And as we consider this prayer, I think we will find ourselves strengthened to trust Christ. Growing in knowing His love. And so experience what Paul calls here in verse 19, the fullness of God.

Let's listen to this prayer. You'll find it on page 977 in the Bible's provided.

Ephesians chapter 3 beginning at verse 14.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. That you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

I pray that as we consider this prayer, we will find ourselves strengthened to trust Christ and growing in His knowing His love. And so experience what Paul calls here the fullness of God.

So would you pray like Paul?

Well, pray these three things: pray that God will give us faith, pray that God will give us strength, Pray that God will fill us. Let's look at those prayers in turn. And before we do, let me just say, some people come to Capitol Hill Baptist Church and feel, you guys are so together here, there is nothing for me to do. If you happen to be one of those people, let me just give you some very simple instruction here from Ephesians chapter 3. There's really plenty to do, I think, the more you get to know us, the more you'll see that.

But if you're in that state today, why don't you just start here? Every day this week, adapt these verses as a prayer for our congregation. Pray for us, like Paul prays for the Ephesians here. Come boldly into God's presence. I love how John Newton put it, Thou art coming to a King, Large petitions with thee bring, for His grace and power are such none can ever ask too much.

Newton didn't mind stooping to simple rhymes to make a point. We're coming to a king. Ask much. First, pray that God will give us faith. That's what we see in most of this prayer, really, from verse 14 down through that first phrase in verse 17.

That's why Paul prays these verses. He prays for the Spirit's power there at the end of verse 16 to give them faith in Christ there in the first half of verse 17, and they are to have this faith so that Christ will dwell in their hearts, their inner being, as he says there in verses 16 and 17. Listen again to Paul's prayer here, this first part, beginning with verse 14. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. So the Holy Spirit exercises His power in our souls by giving us faith.

That's the power of the Spirit most fundamentally in the souls of you and me. Look up at chapter 2 verse 8. For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

Paul begins this prayer for this reason, he says, the same way he'd begun verse 1 of chapter 3. For this reason, he picks back up what he was saying in verse 1. This reason is God's amazing plan of redemption, he's written about in chapters 1 and 2, to make a new society, one new man in Christ out of the two, through which he shows that manifold wisdom we were thinking about last time in chapter 3, verse 10. So, given God's great plans for them, they're being built together into a dwelling place for God, now members of the same body, thereby showing the manifold wisdom of God. He knew they needed to be prayed for, and that urgently.

That phrase, he says, Bow my knees before the Father. That's a striking image for prayer. And it may be that some of you grew up in churches with kneelers where you actually did get down on your knees to pray, but that makes you very much unlike Paul. Very much unlike Jews in the first century. You know, from everything we know, you know how Jews in the first century prayed?

Standing, arms out, eyes up. That's how they prayed. They didn't kneel. So why does Paul say this? Because Paul is employing another image.

He's employing the image of what you do when you go before a great potentate, a great king. A sovereign power, and you prostrate yourself, you physically put yourself in a lower position as a sense of honor toward the one you're bowing toward, as a sense of obvious submission to, and you make a humble request. And Paul is using that language here not because we think this would be his normal posture for prayer physically, nor because he's teaching us that it should be, but simply because he is stressing how urgent This prayer is, I bow my knees before the Father. His posture reflects the pressing nature of his request. He refers to bowing before the Father.

This use of Father here is combining both affection and authority. You see there in verse 15 that description of God from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. Every family, rather, in heaven and on earth would include at least all the spiritual beings on earth.

Patria, family in the Greek, is very similar to the word Paul used just before it, patera, father. And the concept is similar. The father is one in relation to others, so in the Trinity, the Father is so in relation to the Son and to the Spirit. In your family, in mine, you had a father, even if you didn't know him. And many of us here today are ourselves fathers.

Normally, those who share the same father comprise a family. That's something of the idea that Paul is getting at here. Well, from this father has come not only the church, but also all the families of the world. Remember up in verse 9, look up in chapter 3, verse 9, Paul had just referred to the fact that God had created all things. Everything is because of Him and belongs to Him.

He has authority over it all. This is something of whom Paul is addressing. And such knowledge of God as the source of all authority, this knowledge of who God is and what He's about, encourages prayer.

You know, sometimes more Arminian or Wesleyan friends of mine are very zealous in prayer. And they're very zealous in prayer because they realize it matters what they do. Praise God, if you're visiting today and you're more Wesleyan or Armenian, you realize it matters what you do. The Bible entirely affirms that belief. But here's the part where I think the Bible has even better encouragement for us.

Because the Bible presents God as so powerful, so sovereign. I don't know about you, but I find myself encouraged the more I see God's power, to ask more freely of him.

If I have smaller thoughts of God, I'll probably pray more for things I think maybe I could help to accomplish, or someone I know could. But when I start seeing the God who got the Jews out of Egypt, the God who raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, then I start praying for crazy lost people to be saved. I start praying for absolute terrible dictators to be replaced.

I start praying for the spiritual dead to be resurrected on great scale. I pray much larger prayers when I have a more biblical view of the largeness of God and His power. That's what Paul is doing here. So Paul approaches this great being with a great ask, just like John Newton encourages us to do. Verse 16, that according to the riches of His glory, that's not just your glory or my glory, it's His glory, and he says according to the riches of His he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being.

What a request! According to his riches, not merely according to what he may do or what he could do one day of the week or what he could do with a little bit of his power or he could do with his pinky, but he prays according to the riches of his grace. Friends, you could meditate phrase after phrase like this. Lloyd-Jones took seventeen sermons to preach through this prayer. So I'm giving you the quick tour.

But there is so much good in here for your soul, so much marrow and fatness. Let me encourage you to return to this prayer and to use it and to try to suck more of the goodness out of it. Paul knew that they would need the power to live as God would call them to, and so he prayed that God would give them strength through his Spirit in them. And Paul will say more about that strength down in verse 18. It's strength to comprehend the love of God in Christ.

It seems that this strengthening will come in knowing about God's love and knowing God's love in experience as we are indwelt by Christ through His Spirit.

Brothers and sisters, as weak and dependent creatures, we need God's strength. We need His power to walk by the Spirit. We are made a new creation only through the power of the Spirit of God. We are strengthened with His power in order to be able to live the Christian life in the church and every day. I'm so glad you had strength for yesterday.

That is not enough for today. And there are many days God in His love will make sure you know that. Right? Saturday, done as a Christian. Now how about Sunday?

Well, we're working on that. That's why we're here. That's why we've gathered with other Christians. That's why we've gathered with people who know this to be the inerrant Word of God. So we open it up and we feast for our souls because we need our souls strengthened for today.

With the particular result of the power of God's Spirit at work in our inner man, we need to see this happened. He says in verse 17, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. It's not exactly that Paul was praying that they should be strengthened merely with the result that Christ could then come and dwell in them. It would include that. But his prayers for their strengthening would be answered by Christ's dwelling in them and their constant growing familiarity with the love of Christ in both understanding and experience.

It's the Spirit's powerful work to give them new birth, to their dead souls, to give gifts of repentance and faith, and to sustain them and grow them in this sanctifying work. So we need the Spirit to save us, but when the Spirit saves us, He's not done. We also need the Spirit to continue to work in us, to remake us more and more into the image of Christ. To dwell in your hearts is the evocative way that Paul here describes God's relationship with us. Now, if you're here today and you're not used to thinking about Christianity, maybe you just are with relatives for July 4th and they happened to drag you to church because that's how they start their Sundays, thank you for coming.

We're glad to have you here. And I just know from a lot of friends who are not Christians, especially some Muslim friends, how strange this language can strike non-religious people. That we actually have a relationship with God. Well friends, this is one of the places in Scripture this idea comes from. This is why we Christians think this.

That we actually have a relationship with God. Christ dwells in our hearts by His Spirit. We believe that all of us, religious or not, have desires that rule us from our hearts. And you could say in that sense, other loves dominate us. And they involve our wills and our thoughts.

But with Christ, Christ comes, and we believe that Christ lives in our hearts. As Paul puts it here in verse 16, in our inner being. Christ makes His home in our hearts, both individually as Christians, each one of us, but also together as a church. You see the richness of the variety of ways that Paul can talk about the Christian's relationship with God, whether it's God's Spirit in our inner being there at the end of verse 16, or Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith in verse 17. It's the same thing.

He's describing it two different ways. Christ indwells us by His Spirit. It is clear that the Christian enjoys the most intimate relationship with God. Where we were at cross purposes, now we're working together. Where we were once at enmity, now we're in loving fellowship, even adopted.

Where we were separated now we're joined. He indwells us. So it's this experience of being indwelt by Christ that is at the core of what we Christians mean when we refer to having a relationship with God. Paul, you'll notice, is not merely praying for gifts, but for the indwelling of the Giver Himself. It's very important.

To see that God here is more than his gifts. Remember that one point when Moses was being mightily vexed by the disobedience of the people of Israel and he was being vexed because God was being upset by it. And God just says to Moses, Listen, listen, just take him and go, I'm going to just stay here, I'm done with you. I'll take care of you. And Moses replies, no, I don't want this people without you.

I don't want your blessings without you. If you don't come with us, there's no point in us being. No, please, we want to be with you. That's the reality that Paul is pointing to here in this prayer. And note, this all happens through faith.

Matthew Henry put it clearly, Faith opens the door of the soul to receive Christ. Faith admits Him and submits to Him. Friends, there is a God who is perfectly good and you have offended this God. You offend Him all the time in living thoughtlessly toward Him and doing what you want rather than He wants. That's what the Bible calls sin.

And that, we understand, is the basic problem both in the world and in your own life. And I don't even have to know you personally to tell you that because it's what the Bible says is true of everyone.

But God, in his amazing mercy and grace, sent his only Son to live a perfect life of love and trust in his heavenly Father, acting in such a way that it would bless those around him to the glory of his heavenly Father. And he died on the cross, accepting the punishment, as we sang about in O Christ, what burdens bow'd thy head. He died as a substitute. In the place of all of us that would turn from him, turn from our sins and trust him. And God raised him from the dead after he had died on the cross.

And he said he accepted this sacrifice for all of us who would turn and trust. Friend, is that you today? You don't have to live your life apart from God, at odds with God. Turn from your sins. Trust in him.

If you wanna know more about what that would mean in your life, talk to some of the people you're sitting around. If you don't wanna talk to your very religious relative you came to talk to, just after the service tell them you need to go to the bathroom and come talk to me at the door. I'll be at that door at the back afterwards. They won't be offended, at least not in heaven. So just come find me back there or find one of the other folks at the door.

We would love to talk to you more about what this good news is. Genuine prayer like this always begets hunger for more knowledge of God. And more knowledge of God should excite in the believer a higher estimate of God's ability to answer prayer and a deeper certainty of God's willingness to do it. It should drive us and it should draw us to prayer. It's this kind of reinforcing cycle.

The more you come to understand what God is like, the more you wanna pray, and the more you pray, the more you come to see what God is like. And it just feeds itself. That's why last Sunday night, What were they, 400 of you, 500 of you here to pray? Friends, praise the Lord. Come back again tonight.

Bring more with you. Let's avail ourselves of the throne of God in prayer. Join together with us at five o'clock tonight as we pray. The more we know what God is like, the more we want to pray to him. So here Paul, imprisoned, he was prayerful because he knew even though he had Rome's chains on him, He was not ultimately subject to Rome.

He knew he was subject to God, that God is sovereign. God alone is the Creator and the Ruler and the Judge of this world. And he had revealed himself in Jesus Christ. Friends, if Paul can pray like this in prison, can't we pray in our homes and apartments and our rooms and offices?

Go to our good and all-powerful Father in prayer and do like Paul did here. Pray according to God's purposes.

He says there in verse 14 at the beginning, For this reason, so the knowledge he had of God's purposes in Christ only encouraged him to pray in line with those purposes. He knew in praying about these matters he'd be praying in line with the will of God. So approaching God with freedom and confidence may seem the lightest thing in the world to some people. But apart from Christ, no such true freedom and realistic confidence is possible. In our praying.

We may hope, we may speculate, we may implore, we may weep, we may take for granted, but apart from what God has revealed of Himself to us in Christ, apart from our being born again by His Spirit, having our sins forgiven, our relationship with God transformed, we cannot have any true freedom to come into God's presence, nor any realistic confidence that He'll hear us. And answer us. Christian friend, when you pray, rest your hope on Christ.

Don't think you had to pray as eloquently as Sam did earlier. Thanks for the prayer. You don't have to pray that eloquently to pray. Sam probably doesn't always pray that eloquently when he's at home. Friends, don't think you have to use certain language or a certain posture, like falling on your knees or some kind of accent.

It's not the orderliness and beauty of your words. It's not even their urgency and intensity. Don't put your confidence in prayer in anything, but in Christ. You come in Christ's name, in His stead, and for His sake, the heavenly Father will answer your prayers. Because every time He answers a prayer sincerely brought in Christ's name, who gets glory?

Christ, He is glorified as the effective intercessor and shepherd of His people. I pray that God will stir us up as a church at prayer. Many Christians around the world today cannot meet to pray, either because of public health concerns in this place or that, or many more through the government simply opposing Christianity openly. Do you know how many have to fear using Christ's name in public or publicizing any meeting? But here we may assemble publicly for prayer.

So join us for prayer on Sunday nights. Come and take advantage of this season in which we live, this place with these people. Who knows how long it will last? Rearrange your priorities. Join together and pray for God's glory in the lives of each other in our church, in our city and around the world.

Christ has purchased this liberty for us to so approach God with confidence. Let's use this gift even publicly as he gives us ability to. I wonder what you've been urgent about in prayer recently. If we could all listen to your prayers over the last few days. What's moved to the top of the charts?

In the old greatest prayer hits in Patrick's life, in Don's life, in Martha's life, I wonder. Paul prayed like this because of what God is like and because he knew this God. I can tell you members of this church, we pastors love you. These are the kinds of things we pray for you regularly. I spent time this morning praying these things for you.

And I'm sure many of your other pastors here have done the same. If you're coming from another Bible-believing church, I would venture to guess your pastors are doing the same for you even though you don't know of it. Each day they do it. We rejoice over God's work in you, regenerating your heart, bringing you into our number. I think I can understand a little bit of what Paul felt about the Ephesians.

When he was praying for them. That's why I prayed this for you and I continue to. So we can follow Paul's example and pray that God would continue to give us faith, not just for the initial trusting in Christ, but for our continuing growth in knowing and trusting Him as we experience this indwelling of Christ. Surely this is part of the normal fruit of our growth in Him. So pray that God will give us faith.

Trusting Christ is not only what we do when we begin our relationship with God, but it's something that we need to continue to do every day and something that we can grow in. It's certainly worth praying about for ourselves and for others. Now, this sermon in some ways is very similar to Mark's sermon last week from Isaiah.

A dissimilarity, there are no moose in this sermon. A similarity, my first point is by far my longest point. A dissimilarity, I'm telling you that.

A second matter you can pray about for us, number two. So first, pray that God will give us faith. Second, pray that God will give us strength. Pray that God will give us strength. You see that here?

From that last phrase in 17, let's call it 17B, through that first phrase in 19, let's call it 19A.

17b to 19a, Christ indwells us and as He does we learn more of His love. In verse 19 we see that Paul says that the love of Christ surpasses knowledge, so coming to know such love requires strength and Paul prays that the Spirit's power would cause Christ to dwell in our hearts by faith. So this means that we are rooted and grounded, as another translation says, fixed and founded in love. This is how Christ has related to us, in love. So in verses 18 and 19, Paul prays the Ephesians would be strengthened to comprehend verse 18, and to know verse 19, the love of Christ.

So don't think about strength alone. This is a specific strength. It is specifically a strength to know the love of Christ. That is the strength that Paul is praying for us here. Paul is praying for the Ephesian Christians.

This is what we should pray for each other. Strength to know the love of Christ. Look again at the prayer beginning in the second half of verse 17. So 17b, that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. So love there at the end of verse 17 and the beginning of verse 19.

And then you see the dimensions of Christ's love are being considered in verse 18. Love is so important in the Bible's view of God's relationship to us and us to him. Back in Deuteronomy 6, God calls us to love him. Jesus repeated that call and sharpened it when he taught that anyone who would love him must love him more than father or mother or son or daughter. Do you remember that in Matthew 10:37?

But of course, our love is simply the response to His. 1 John 4:19, We love because He first loved us. Christ's love for us has been the center of so much of our rejoicing and praising and praying about already in our time together this morning. And this is what Paul prays for the Ephesian Christians here, that they would be able to better understand it, or verse 18, that they may have strength to comprehend with all the saints.

To show love, you must know love. This letter has been full of Paul talking about God's strength in loving us. I mean, we could reread the first three chapters in their entirety, but just for a couple of verses, look back in chapter 1, verse 19. What is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church.

All of this he has done for us. Paul wants us to be comprehending of the activity he says here of God for us in Christ. He calls us to do this in verse 18 with all the saints. Did you notice that little phrase? All the saints.

So this comprehending of the love of God is not a hermit virtue. Lived out in splendid solitude of isolated contemplation.

No, this is a knowledge held together with others, saints, that's Christians, indeed shared with them not only in knowledge but in experience together as we all know this love of Christ as we drink in the Word together and experience it even from the way we treat each other. We are tutoring each other in the love of Christ. Have you thought of that? So what Karen is to learn about the love of Christ today is not just from Mark's sermon. It's from what Rob says to her.

It's the way Carrie greets her. It's how Kevin treats her. That's how Karen, in God's plan, is supposed to learn. It's not just an isolated, quiet time she has. Friends, that's true of all of us.

We are called to know the love of Christ, imperfectly, of course, but really, from each other. That's why it's with all the saints here in verse 18. I don't know about you, but I think that I learned something this last year when our meetings were interrupted. It became clearer to me how important these gatherings are for my spiritual health and my spiritual strength. I'm sure the Lord Jesus designed it this way.

We're called together in order to encourage and strengthen each other in our comprehension and knowledge of the love of Christ, both in understanding the truth about it, like we are right now studying a passage of the Bible, but also in celebrating together what it is that we've learned in our own experiencing and relishing and delighting in it. You see the way that Paul describes this love, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. Why would Paul describe the dimensions of Christ's love like this so expansively?

Well, because of the breadth and length and height and depth of our sin, and therefore of our need. If God would save sinners like us, He must be rich in His love. So God has been lavish in his mercy toward us because our sins have exceeded what a smaller, more limited kind of love could even begin to help us with. Back in chapter 2, verse 7, you remember Paul mentioned the immeasurable riches of God's grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. That's similar to his idea here.

Some of the most important statements that we can make about God are statements like this where we say, Listen, our knowledge goes this far and no further. We can just say these things that God is not this. So we can know that he is unchanging. We can know that he is not sinning. So here we're talking about knowing that which surpasses our knowledge.

The dimensions of Christ's love are immeasurable. We are praying for greater things than we ourselves even fully understand. So you realize when it comes to true knowledge of God, we never have like knowledge of God here and we surround it completely. We are now masters of divinity. I've always thought a very strange name for a degree.

You know, we've now surrounded this thing. We know all of this. There is no question that you can ask me that I cannot answer. Well, that's ridiculous. That's just foolish.

But it is true that our knowledge is always expanding or can be. That there is so much of God to know and He is so willing to be known by us that we can have our knowledge expanding always every day of our lives until finally we're with Him forever and then guess you know what? There's still no end to it. It can still keep expanding because of the difference between God and us. You look here and Paul has these dimensions.

I think because he means to draw the minds of these Christians further out. So we must send our minds too to Christ to learn to love more than we naturally do. Look at what Paul's going to be telling them a little further on in Ephesians. You'll see why Paul needs them, why he's praying for them to know this. Look over in chapter 5.

Look at verse 2.

Walk in love, as Christ loved us, and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Or look down in chapter 5 and verse 25. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. We could go on and on. Friends, we need to know the love of Christ.

We need to know how we've been loved so we will know how we can love. So we will understand what these words, what these commands mean when they come to us.

If we would show love, we must first know love. So here Paul prayed that God would strengthen them to know the love of Christ. Friends, this is a request that can be meditated on for ages without exhausting it: praying for power to know the love that surpasses knowledge, praying for power together with all the saints, praying for power to grasp how wide and high and deep is the love of Christ. Who said theology is cold? Not the real stuff.

Not to a heart that's born again, that loves the Lord.

John Bunyan wrote a wonderful meditation on this prayer called the Saint's Knowledge of Christ's Everlasting Love. If you're ever looking for a Puritan to read and know, just skip everybody else, even the dear Dr. Sibbes, and go right to John Bunyan. Why is John Bunyan such a powerful communicator? Because he was so uneducated. He had no formal education.

He was a tinker. What does that mean? He fixed pots. But being from rural Kentucky, I can tell you, here's a rule of thumb I always use: Every group you ever speak to assume they're very uneducated and very intelligent. Bunyan was like that.

He plumbs the depths of God in simple language. He does it beautifully in this piece. Banner of Truth is reprinted as one of their puritan paperbacks called All Loves Excelling. We often have it on the bookstall. All Loves Excelling.

I never give Austin a heads up when I'm going to do this. Sorry, buddy. But All Loves Excelling, John Bunyan, it's meditating on this very prayer. Here's one quotation that I've often shared with you from it that's so appropriate here. At one point when reflecting on the dimensions of the love of Christ, specifically the lengths of Christ's love, Bunyan writes, Sometimes a man is, as he apprehends so far off from God that they think themselves beyond the reach of God's mercy.

But writes Bunyan, When we think His mercy is clean gone, and that ourselves are free among the dead, and of the number that He remembers no more, then He can reach us. This should encourage them that for the present cannot stand, but that do fly before their guilt, them that feel no help nor stay. I will say before thee, and I pray thee hear me, O the length of the saving arm of God. As yet thou art within the reach thereof. Do not thou go about to measure arms with God.

I mean, do not thou conclude that because thou canst not reach God by thy short stump, therefore he cannot reach thee with his long arm. Look again, Job 40:9. Hast thou an arm like God? It becomes thee when thou canst not perceive that God is within the reach of thy arm, then to believe that thou art within the reach of his. For it is long and none knows how long.

Praise the Lord. So why don't you start praying this afternoon for that person you've given up praying for? Just start again. And look in the mirror.

How kind of the Lord to save people like us. He'll do it again. Friends, here's another idea. Sometime in this new month, notice, What has helped you to better comprehend, to better know Christ's love, and share that with others? Help them as God has helped you.

Ask someone at lunch today how they've come to know the love of Christ better. And maybe you can do a little strategizing to go along with your praying. That'd be a wonderful way to strengthen our congregation. So pray that God will give us strength to comprehend and to know the love of Christ more and more. One more thing.

Number three, pray that we will be filled. Look at the end of verse 19. Verse 19, that last phrase, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Paul elsewhere in Ephesians mentions the fullness of Christ.

This fullness here could be a description of God's being in His ontological entirety. That is all that there is to God. But I don't think anybody would ever think that all of God is in us. So I think that's a kind of non-starter. That's not what Paul means.

So now you're left with, okay, things that God is like. We call those his attributes, his characteristics. Well, again, theologians have divided those into those you can share and those you can't share. So we can't share God's immensity. That is, he's every place.

Even all the moose in the world can't be every place. But we can share his mercy. We can share his love. There are things that God is like that we also can be like in his image. So then some theologians have said, Ah, well then that's what this means.

We're to share in all of the attributes of God that we can share in.

I think a better way to read this is one particular attribute, the love of God. Because that's what he's been talking about, the love of Christ. He's praying for them to be able to comprehend that love of Christ which surpasses comprehension. To know that, that surpasses knowledge. So friends, that's what we are called to do here.

And I think that's the fullness that Paul is praying for here. The sharable attribute of God, this passage is about his Christ's love. That's what he wants these Christians to be filled with. We'll see that as we continue on in Ephesians. We see the instructions that Paul gives these Christians in the chapters coming up, like those couple of verses from chapter 5 I read a moment ago.

In all this we see Christianity is not just a matter of ideas, it's not all in your head. In fact, when you read the Bible or you talk to a Christian, you find that our language is straining to express what we experience. Paul prayed for their experience that they be filled with the fullness of God.

And one said, you cannot find a more extraordinary prayer in the whole Bible, filled with the fullness of God. In all these petitions, I hope it's clear that Paul cared for these Christians. He knew their needs, perhaps not because he knew each of them individually so well, but he knew what God was about among them. Knowing what the human heart is like, he knew what to pray for. And really he prays here not just for a cold recognition of fact, oh God, help them to know the gospel.

Friends, in a notional way, Satan knows the gospel is true. James tells us that demons believe in that sense. They really believe, they tremble. But they don't sorrow for their sins. They don't repent.

They don't love God. Paul uses this language here of experience of being strengthened in your inner being of Christ dwelling in our hearts, of being rooted and grounded in love, experiencing love greater than your knowledge, being filled with the fullness of God. Now, just honestly, you don't have to answer this out loud, but does this sound like your experience, Christian?

It should.

It can. Pray that God would work these things in your heart. Use these verses here as a guide to meditation. Use these verses as a guide to praying for yourself and for each other as you pray through the membership directory. So one of the things I did this morning, I do every morning, is I'll pray through a couple of pages of our membership directory.

And I prayed these things for you guys. And because that was the page I was on, for your kids. You know, it was just, that's what I did. What I do going through this thing. You don't have to know persons well to pray for them well.

Discipline yourself to do that. I think Paul's doing that here. Christ's love is the prism through which God can be understood. Through Christ's love we come to know more of God's truthfulness and His grace. It's through His love that we come to know more of His wisdom and His role as judge.

We come to see more of His majesty and of His wrath and To see how Christ's love led him to make atonement for us. His unchangingness, his goodness, his severity, we can go on and on about how Christ's love is at the center. It refracts all of God's other attributes. How his love is the way we come to understand and know and experience Christ as we do. As we are strengthened in comprehending Christ's love, we are being filled with the fullness of God.

That's what it means to be filled with the fullness of God.

Jesus prayed to His heavenly Father, this is eternal life, that they know youw, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom youm have sent. We can know God really and truly even if we don't know Him comprehensively. I often say to college students that are skeptical, Just because I don't know everything doesn't mean I don't know anything.

It's true for us about God. We'll never know everything. What does that mean we don't know anything? No, it doesn't mean that at all. All of our lives we live not knowing everything and yet really knowing things.

The same way in our relationship with God and knowing the truth about His love. So, friend, how does this strike you? You know our hearts are filled with something today. If you're a Christian, I pray it's more and more being filled with the love of Christ. Our knowledge of His love expands with our experience.

Ideas in the Bible come to life in our own days and our relationships and actions. And if we are to continue to live with each other in church and in friendships and marriage and families and at work, we need to pray that God will fill us with all His fullness. So to summarize: Being so indwelt, as we see in verse 17, indwelt, dwell in your hearts, would be the only way that these Ephesians then, or any of us now, could come to know the love of Christ, as we see it there in verses 17 and 18 and 19. And coming to know the love of Christ by being indwelt by the Spirit of Christ would in turn be the only way, these Ephesians back then or us now, could be filled with all the fullness of God.

Being indwelt would be the only way these Ephesians could come to know the love of Christ. It's true for us. And coming to know the love of Christ by being indwelt by His Spirit is in turn the only way that we can be filled with all the fullness of God. Every Christian has commenced this journey. No Christian has completed this journey in the sense of exhausting the fullness of God.

The love that has overcome our sin will not be lost to us through our circumstances on this journey. Where we live or whether we live is not crucial to determine whether we know the love of Christ.

That's why we read here that the love of Christ is broad, broad enough to encompass all Jews and Gentiles, long, long enough to last for eternity, deep, deep enough to reach the most lost person, high, high enough to take us to heaven itself. Brothers and sisters, to know this love, not only to know about it, but to actually know this love that surpasses knowledge is an answer to Jesus' own prayer, which He prayed in John 17 verse 26. I have made youe known to them and will continue to make youe known in order that the love youe have for Me may be in them and that I Myself may be in them. John 17:26. Knowing Christ's love can turn our hatred into love, our sadness into joy, our turmoil into peace, our anxiety into patience.

Friends, bring your cruelness into the light of Christ's love and watch it be replaced by kindness. Bring your badness in whatever form and watch it be replaced by goodness. Bring your unfaithfulness and watch it be covered up by Christ's faithfulness. Even as you are more and more transformed into a more faithful person. Watch your harshness be replaced by gentleness and your slavery to wrong passions and concerns be replaced by liberating self-control.

Doubt into faith and weakness into strength and emptiness into fullness and lovelessness into love. Increasing in your understanding of Christ's love. Is part of increasing in your experience of Christ's love. And growing in experiencing the love of Christ is the wonderful way of the Christian. From today through the uncertainties of tomorrow, all the way home, as we are filled with the fullness of God.

This is what I want for you, and this is what I want for myself. And this is what God wants for us. To show love, we must know love. In Christ and His giving Himself for us, we've come to know love. Let's pray together.

O Lord, from the depths of youf Word, you, Spirit speaks to our hearts.

We pray that you would do your quickening work among us even now. Give us faith in Christ that continues and grows. Give us strength to comprehend your love in Christ and fill us with all your fullness. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.