The depth and breadth of God's love

Ephesians 3:18 (NLT)

May you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love really is. 

The human mind and spirit cannot understand the true love of God.  We can understand some of it as we experience “bits and pieces” of it in our own limited life experiences.  But, we cannot understand, as Paul states, the width, length, height, and depth of God’s love. 

However, the context of this verse starts back in verse 16 when Paul prays that “He would grant you…….to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man…..”  Now, indeed, if a person is given strength with power through the Holy Spirit within him/her, then there is much greater comprehension and appreciation of the limitless boundaries of God’s love.

With the power of the Holy Spirit, how can you understand the width, length, height, and depth of God’s love?  Here are some examples:

·  You will be able to love Jesus like the Cannanite woman in Matthew 15:22-28 who kept following Him and worshipping Him in the face of all the rejection.  She was able to get into the depth of the heart of God and had her daughter delivered from demon-possession.

·  You will be able to understand the length and depth of God’s love that went to the cross for you and find that compassionate love found in the heart of God for all people. 

·  You will be able to understand why Jesus’ disciples and many others throughout Christian history become willing to sacrifice their lives for the love of others.  One famous example is the true story of Maximilian Kolbe who offered to die of starvation in the place of a husband and father, Franciszek Gajowniczek, who was a fellow prison-mate at Auschwitz.

I think those of us who interacted with Matt Lemmons and read and were inspired by his writings while battling cancer for three years before his death have to believe that Matt understood the width, length, height, and depth of God’s love.  You must have role models who exemplify the love of God through Christ because of their selfless attitudes and actions on behalf of others.  We all have saints in our midst.  You can learn from them and be such a role model of God’s limitless love to others.