President’s Challenge

by Matthew Little

Trying To Comprehend The Incomprehensible

The Apostle Paul gives us an apparent paradoxical statement in Ephesians 3:17-19. He suggested, “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be lled with all the fulness of God.” Have you identi ed the dilemma at hand? God desires us to know something that is unknowable. Maybe we need to unwrap those verses a little more.

First, note that the verse speaks of “the love of Christ” rather than “love for Christ”. Our love for Christ is rooted in our daily experience and our constant walk with the Lord through faith. On the other hand, the love of Christ is xed on the immutable character of God and laid out through the cross.

Second, look at the enormity of Christ’s love. It is incomprehensible because it is limitless. Regardless of height, depth, length or width, there is no end in sight. You can climb the mountain from an aspect of God’s love only to reach the top and discover there are a thousand other mountains in the distance. If you had 10,000 lives to live, you could not even begin to understand completely the profound love that God has for you.

Third, Christ’s love de es human reasoning. It “passes knowledge” and therefore takes us beyond our human experience and understanding. God in His in nite knowledge reached out with His love, through Jesus (Rom. 5:8), but man in his sinful condition cannot reach up to understand God’s love apart from divine intervention. Left to our intelligence and thinking of God, we would never know the love of Christ, but that is why God gave us His Word. In Jeremiah 15:16a the prophet said, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart…”.

Henry Moorhouse was a famed English Evangelist who deeply impacted the life of D.L. Moody. It has been said that Moorhouse was, “the man who moved the man (Moody) who moved the world.” Moorhouse did a week of meetings in Moody’s church in Chicago and preached on John 3:16 every night. On the last night of the meetings, he said, “I have been trying to tell you how much God loves you. Suppose I could borrow Jacob’s ladder and could climb that shining staircase until at last I stood on the sapphire pavements of the city of God. Suppose I were to seek out Gabriel the herald angel and were to say to him, ‘Gabriel, you stand in the presence of God. Tell me, how much does God love the world?’ I know exactly what he would say. He would say, “Henry Moorhouse, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. That’s how much God loves the world.” God’s love may be incomprehensible but it is never more in focus than when you are gazing upon Jesus.