To Encourage You

Ephesians 3:19 “. . . to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. . . “

How can you know something that surpasses knowledge? What in the world does this mean? The context of the phrase above is a prayer of Paul for the Ephesian church. He wants them to be “filled with all the fulness of God,” and one aspect of this fulness is to know the love of Christ.

So often when I think about this passage or others regarding the love of Christ, I think about the love of Christ towards me. In my selfishness, I become self-centered in my thinking about the most unselfish word in the dictionary – agape, the highest form of love. It’s God’s own self-sacrificial love that was demonstrated when He gave His only begotten Son (John 3:16) to die for us – while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8). God’s love was not in response to anything good in us. To love is just His nature. It’s what He’s like. God is love (1 John 4:7). To truly know this love, we can’t just think about it, meditate on it, or revel in it. The Bible tells us that “knowledge” in and of itself “puffs up,” i.e., makes one proud. It’s a self-directed thing. But then it tells us that true love “builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1). In other words, it reaches out and impacts the lives of others in helpful ways. To truly know God’s love, to ever hope to understand it, then, we must demonstrate love to Him and others, for Isn’t this His greatest commandment? Didn’t He command us to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and love our neighbor as our self (Luke 10:27)?

In a sense then, God’s love surpasses knowledge because it involves more than knowledge. It involves action. Without this, there is no love. There may be a warm sentiment towards someone, or pleasant thoughts, but without self-sacrificial service, we don’t know God’s love, for that’s always how God’s love works. It’s like the love of the good Samaritan who did all he could to the point of self-sacrifice to help a man who had been attacked by thieves, as opposed to the “love” of the priest and the Levite who happened upon the same man and passed by on the other side of the road. Surely these religiously-trained men had mental knowledge of the love of God, for they were students of the Scriptures which talk of this from one end to the other. Yet, that’s where there understanding of love stopped, for they didn’t know what it was to express such love to others.

Surely none of us is very good at this, for God’s love surpasses anything human beings can know in and of themselves. It takes a work of God in our heart. The Apostle John, who called himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 19:26) understood this and expressed it with these words: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

Truly knowing God’s love, then, is to be filled with such gratitude because of it that we express that love towards others. It’s a love that surpasses knowledge because it isn’t just a feeling we enjoy with our emotions or a wonderful thought that rolls around in our mind. Rather, it’s a demonstration of that love with actions.

So do you want to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge? Then ask God for the opportunity, sensitivity, and ability to show the love of Christ to others, for short of this, it could be that we know nothing of God’s love at all.