And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:17b-19 (NIV)
A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to reconnect with the man who was preaching the night Christ became Lord of my life in 1981. Bob was an evangelist and writer at that time, continuing his graduate studies. By the time I was half-way through my undergraduate studies Dr. Bob became one of my professors. He went on to teach at larger and larger universities. As we talked about our respective journeys, Dr. Bob told me that he had been called by God to bring a voice of reason, faith, and belief regarding the Bible, Christian history, and Christian theology into an academic world that is largely antagonistic to Christianity in every way.
God, bless him.
Along my life journey I have encountered many very knowledgeable people. In my formal education of the Bible and of theology, and in my experiences with church leadership in various denominations, I’ve known amazing, intelligent people with all sorts of knowledge about the Bible and Christian theology. I’ve observed, however, that intelligence and knowledge does not always directly translate into an actual relationship with Jesus.
In today’s chapter, Paul expresses his prayer for the believers in Ephesus. Paul has just got done explaining to the non-Jewish, or Gentile, Ephesians that they are now part of something that they previously knew nothing about. God had been working through the Jewish people for centuries to begin the Story and process of redemption. Despite having all of the knowledge of the Law and the Prophets, most of the Jews did not know or recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Paul goes on to explain that he had been called by Jesus to make Him and His love known among the Gentile world. A bit like my friend Dr. Bob, Paul was in many ways a lone voice in the antagonistic, educated cultures of both Jewish Orthodoxy and Greek philosophy.
This in mind, I found it interesting that when Paul expresses his prayer for the believers in Ephesus he prays that they might grasp the immensity of Jesus’ love. He then prays that they might know Christ’s love. The word Paul uses for “know” is the Greek word ginōskō which is also used to describe the intimate knowing that happens in sex. He then goes on to describe the love of Christ as something that is incomparably surpassing of “knowledge” in which he uses the Greek world gnōsis which is simply human knowledge or understanding.
In other words, it’s one thing to know Jesus as in having a basic understanding of who Jesus is, His teachings, and what is believed about Him. It is another thing to know the love of Jesus intimately like the intimacy that happens when you have sex with your spouse.
My friend Dr. Bob was called by God to take the latter knowledge with him into an academic world that largely only experiences the former. In every church I’ve ever attended, I’ve observed many people who also appear to have only knowledge about Jesus without having experienced intimately knowing the love of Jesus that surpasses understanding.
In the quiet this morning, I pray that the intimate, experiential love of Christ that is beyond understanding will, as Paul put it in his prayer for the Ephesian believers, fill me “to the measure of all the fullness of God.” I pray that for you to, my friend.
After all, God is love itself.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
