Tag: depth

How Do You Describe His Love?

Carl Pollard

Ephesians 3:17–19 says, “that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able 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 up to all the fullness of God.”

Looking at the context of these verses, Paul tells us that through the power of the Spirit, and because of the indwelling of Christ, we are to become established in love and being established in love, we have power to comprehend the love of Christ. 

But how do you describe such a love? Paul says, “comprehend what is the breadth, and length and height and depth.” But he purposefully left off what it is that he was describing. So what does he mean? It takes in the eternity of God. God is Love; and in that, an infinity of breadth, length, depth, and height, is included; or rather all breadth, length, depth, and height, are lost in this immensity. It comprehends all that is above, all that is below, all that is past, and all that is to come. All of this is said in reference to human beings. The love of God, in its breadth, is a net that encompasses the globe; its length reaches from the eternal purpose of the mission of Christ, to the eternity which is to be spent in his glory; its depth reaches to the lowest sinner, and to the deepest depravity of the human heart; and its height to the infinite glory of the throne of Christ.

How do you describe the love of Christ? We can’t. No one has ever shown this amount of love for this many sinful people. And yet we still act like we have power, like we are above God. Man on his own has no power. 

But God has given us the opportunity to have the power to comprehend His Son’s love. 

Comprehension is defined as “to process information, understand, grasp.” A child growing up hears from their parents that they love him. He hears it every day, but he never fully comprehends that love until he has kids of his own. A person will go through something traumatic, and the first couple of hours he is in shock. He knows what happened, but he hasn’t comprehended it yet. Sadly, we can hear about the love of Christ, and we can hear God’s Word. But this isn’t the same as comprehension. 

Growing up, I hated literature. I can remember reading the Iliad, eyes glazed over, and just seeing words on a page. I couldn’t tell you a thing about what I was reading. I wasn’t comprehending. Paul says, “And to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19). And to GNOSKO the love of Christ. A working knowledge as opposed to factual knowledge. This is comprehension, a useful knowledge of Christ’s love. As a faithful Christian, you can comprehend the love of Christ. And knowing His love is power. We sing, “Amazing love! How can it be? That you, my God would die for me.” To be powerful is to comprehend the love of Christ. And in comprehending we live out his love. That is our purpose as Christians.

Meat

Gary Pollard

The apostle John was a genius and a philosopher. He wrote in simple, easy-to-understand language, which is a mark of intelligence. Einstein is (erroneously) credited with saying something like, “You don’t understand a subject until you can explain it to a child.” 

John liked to write about irreducible principles. They are deceptively simple, and we might be tempted to look at his writings and think, “There’s not really a whole lot to say about this, these principles speak for themselves.” At some level, this is true! The Bible was written — according to those (like Origen in Against Celsus) whose native language and culture these letters were addressed to — in a “dualistic” way: on one side, it’s very easy to understand its most important principles. We could think of these as the “milk” of the word. This would be teachings about what Jesus did, how we become his children, and the most important things he wants us to do. 

But on the other side — which is perhaps most evident in John and Paul and Peter’s writings — there is nearly unlimited, profoundly deep material in their sometimes deceptively simple wording. This is the “meat” of the word, something Paul expected the Corinthians to be able to understand after just a couple years of being Christians (I Cor 3.2ff). This would be things like teachings about the gray areas in Christian doctrine, the nature of God, the destination of a Christian, and the nature of the new creation promised by Jesus (identified in I Peter 1 as the object of our hope, and its hope in Romans 8 as the reason we were saved). Paul explicitly said, just five years or so after these people converted from paganism to Christianity, “You should be able to understand the deep principles of Christianity well enough to be teachers by now.” 

We do our spiritual health a disservice to get bogged down in the familiar stories of the Old Testament, in the plan of salvation, and in the thou-shalt-nots of scripture. This is milk. I Timothy 1.9 makes it clear that most of those things are already self-evident to most Christians! After conversion, God expects us to dive as deep into the word as each person’s intellect allows. Of course, Ephesians 4 does suggest that God doesn’t expect every Christian to be an expert in textual analysis, biblical languages, or philosophical exposition. However, each of us has a responsibility to be as familiar with the meat as we are able to be.

The Eye of God

Carl Pollard

We used to sing a song in church growing up called, “There’s An Eye Watching You.” The chorus goes like this, “watching you, watching you, every day mind the course you pursue; watching you, watching you, there’s an all-seeing eye watching you.” As a kid and even into adulthood, I would sing this song and envision a giant eyeball in the sky. While this isn’t case, maybe it would do us good to think of God’s eye watching us each day. 

Psalm 33:13-14 says, “The Lord looks down from heaven; he sees all the children of man; from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth.”

If God sees “all the inhabitants of the earth,” He is automatically breaking the laws of time and space. Tanzania, Africa is 8 hours ahead of where I am in Kentucky. Cambodia is 12 hours ahead. Half the world is asleep because half the world is in darkness at any given point in time. God is naturally present in every aspect of the natural order of things, in every manner, time and place. He sees EVERYONE! 

God saw Hagar when she was on the run from Sarah (Gen. 16), and Hagar gives God a new name…”the God who sees” because God saw she was in need and helped her.

God saw righteous Noah in a world of wickedness. God saw Cain when he slaughtered his brother. God saw Israel in Egyptian captivity. God saw Joseph thrown into a pit and sold off by his brothers. God saw David as he hid from Saul and his men while they were trying to kill him. God saw Abraham obey His words and try to sacrifice his son Isaac. God saw His own Son, abused, rejected, spit on, and killed. God saw the early church as they were persecuted for following Christ. God sees you as you’re reading this article right now. God sees every deed and it is written down for the judgement day. 

God sees everyone. Proverbs 15:3, “the eyes of the Lord are in every place, watching the evil and the good.” We live in a physical world with its four known space-time dimensions of length, width, height (or depth) and time. However, God dwells in a different realm—the spirit realm—beyond the perception of our physical senses. It’s not that God isn’t real; it’s a matter of His not being limited by the physical laws and dimensions that govern our world. 

“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite’” (Isaiah 57:15, ESV). God is spirit in the realm of timelessness rather than flesh in the sphere of time.

As Christians, we have a deep sense of comfort knowing that God, though timeless and eternal, is in time with us right now; He is not unreachably transcendent, but right here in this moment with us. And because He’s in this moment, He can respond to our needs and prayers.

We serve an incredible God. There’s no denying His amazing power and holiness. 

A God who created everything with His Words. A God who sees all the inhabitants of the earth. A God who has the power and might to be everywhere on this earth at one time. A God who looked at me, who looked at you, and saw that we needed a savior. 

So why then do we understand God’s power and yet still neglect our prayer life to Him? Or forget to study His Holy word? He sees what we do with our time, so make the most of it! 

True understanding of Who God is will always result in righteous living.