The Church is the Place where the Love of Christ is Known

Ephesians 3:14-21

Today I’d like to speak once again on the New Testament reading from the Book of Ephesians 3:14-21 and to concentrate on what we learn from it about the Church. I’m calling this sermon ‘The Church is the Place where the Love of Christ is Known’.

Let’s begin with some observations about the prayer of the Apostle Paul which begins at verse 14. Paul is praying for the Ephesian Christians, and we get to listen in. If we listen closely, we may be surprised and challenged by what he prays for these people.

He prays that God ‘may grant you to be strengthened with power in your inner being’ (v.16). ‘Power’ here is taken from the Greek word ‘dunamis’ which is clearly where the English derivative dynamite comes from. But think about that phrase for a moment – ‘strengthened with power in your inner being’. He is not talking about a merely theoretical apprehension of facts, but about an interior experience.

What else? ‘That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith’ (v.17). Again, the verb for ‘dwell’ there is taken from the Greek ‘katoikeysia’. Those of you who know your Greek will spot the word ‘oikos’ within that verb. ‘Oikos’ means ‘home’. In other words, Paul is praying that Christ may make his home in the hearts of believers, and that this might happen through ‘faith’.

What else? That they ‘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’ (v.18-19). Again, the verb ‘comprehend’ sounds very dry to English ears, like when we are forced to do comprehension at school. In the Greek, the word ‘katalambano’ can be translated in various ways: to seize, grasp, attain. And it has a far more violent connotation, as when a wrestler seizes his opponent in an athletic contest. That you may seize the love of Christ.

Finally, that ‘you may be filled with the fullness of God’ (v.19). And that is the way the prayer ends, that you might be filled with God’s fullness, whatever we are to make of that.

My point here can be drawn out by observing a seeming contradiction in what Paul says: he wants the Ephesian Christians to ‘know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge’ (v.19). Both the words ‘know’ and ‘knowledge’ derive from ‘gnosis’. They are the same. The question is therefre: How can you know something that surpasses knowledge?

The answer is that there are different types of knowledge. We might call them ‘theoretical’ and ‘experiential’. Paul is praying that the Ephesian Christian would not only know something about God and about the Gospel and about Jesus Christ, but that they would experience these things deeply in their hearts.

Last week, I said that evangelism is a normal and central aspect of the Christian Church and that since the earliest days of the Church and throughout Church history this has been so. The same is true for what I am saying now: Christianity is not merely a set of theoretical beliefs but it is about an experiential relationship with the living God. I will take two examples from across the spectrum of Western Christianity to illustrate this.

The first is from the seventeenth century mathematician, philosopher, and polymath, Blaise Pascal, who happened to be a Roman Catholic. When Pascal died, it was discovered that he had an account of an experience of God sewn into the lining of his jacket. The vision of God took place on November 23rd, 1654. He recorded it as follows:

‘The year of grace 1654,Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,FIRE.GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacobnot of the philosophers and of the learned.Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.GOD of Jesus Christ.My God and your God.Your GOD will be my God.Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.Grandeur of the human soul.Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.I have departed from him:They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.My God, will you leave me?Let me not be separated from him forever.This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.Jesus Christ.Jesus Christ.I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.Let me never be separated from him.He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:Renunciation, total and sweet.Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.May I not forget your words. Amen.’

Notice the distinction he makes there: ‘Fire. God of Abraham. God of Isaac. God of Jacob. Not the God of the philosophers and of the learned’. This was not an experience of mere belief in propositions, but an encounter with the living God.

The second example is taken from a different place: England in the eighteenth century and the brothers Charles and John Wesley, who both became convinced that their Christian faith was dry and lacked authenticity. This happened particularly when they accompanied some missionaries on a trip to Georgia in the USA. John Wesley wrote in his journal of that experience, ‘I went to America to convert the Indians, but, oh, who will convert me?’

What happened next was that both had an experience of genuine faith which affected them profoundly and changed the rest of their lives. A note in John Wesley’s journal describes his experience. On May 24th, 1738, he wrote: ‘In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.’

Three days earlier, Charles had been similarly impacted on the day of Pentecost, writing in his journal that the Spirit of God ‘chased away the darkness of my unbelief’. He would later go on to pen the immortal words of the hymn ‘And Can it Be?’, part of which describes his conversion to living and genuine faith:

‘Long my imprisoned spirit lay,Fast bound in sin and nature’s night,Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,I woke, the dungeon flamed with light.My chains fell off, my heart went free,I rose, went forth, and followed thee.’

Fire, warmth, light, power, freedom. All of these occur where the Spirit of God moves in power in the life of a believer. And that, the Apostle Paul is saying, is what he is praying for for the Ephesians Church

‘Theoretical’ Christians are those who believe in theory in the faith. This was the experience of John and Charles Wesley. They believed it, they knew on some level, that is was true. But they had not ‘known the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge’. The American pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards once preached a sermon on Psalm 34 and the verse which says ‘taste and see that the Lord is good’. He commented that it is one thing to know theoretically that honey is sweet and another to actually taste the sweetness of honey. The Wesleys, and theoretical Christians, lack that latter experience.

You may know that honey tastes sweet. But have you ever tasted it? Similarly, you may know that God is good, but have you tasted his love? Do you know it in your inner being? Has Christ taken up residence in your heart? Has he given you strength to seize his love? And do you know the love of Christ that surpasses merely theoretical knowledge?

A word for the family and godparents of young Sofia who will be baptised today: it is your responsibility not only to teach Sofia about the love of God but to pray that the fire of God would take up residence in her soul, so that she may not only know about him as she grows but that she may taste his goodness also. And if you do not taste this goodness – or if you cease to taste it – then you are responsible not only for yourselves but also for her now to seek it.

But I can’t leave the sermon there. I hope you desire to know Christ in the way I describe. A word on this. Jesus put it very simply: ‘Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you’ (Matt. 7:7). There is much more to say than this, of course, but that is a good place to start.

Finally, the briefest of words on applying this to the Church: the Church is always a mix of people. But Paul is praying for the presence and power of God to become evident among the Ephesian Christian. This is my hope and my desire also, that in this place we might not only acknowledge with our minds some vague truth about Christianity but that each one of us would know, deep within our inner being, the reality and presence of the living God. That we, as Paul says, ‘may have strength to comprehend with all the saints…the love of Christ’ (v.18-19).

As we seek and find this fire for ourselves, the gathering of believers becomes a supernova of God’s presence. The warmth and light of Christ becomes an existential reality. Last week I spoke about reaching out with the love of God to a world of emptiness and darkness. In order to do that, we ourselves need to have something offer. And all that we have to offer ultimately is Christ and his presence. So we seek him not only for ourselves and for the abundance of blessing that we find in him, but so that we, as a community of believers, might have a great flame of fire to share with all the world.

Let it be, friends, a reality to us all. Let each one of us seek not the dry theoretical knowledge of the God of the Philosophers but the fire of the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ.

Amen.