Sermon Snippet – Unlimited Love
INTRODUCTION – Our primary text today is Ephesians 3:14-21. Paul’s prayer includes that we “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” (verses 18-19a). We are limited; God’s love is unlimited. How then can we “comprehend” and “know” the extent of this love? Well, let us try, based upon the teaching of the Word of God.
1. THE BREADTH OF GOD’S LOVE IS INFINITE
This love is available to everyone: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). His love is so wide that it includes a poor, pitiful sinner like me. Isaiah 38:17 tells us that God has cast our sins behind His “back” – and no one is strong enough to push through His omnipotence to retrieve those sins and condemn us with them. Colossians 2:14 tells us that our sins have been nailed to the Cross of Christ, behind His bloodied back; His precious and efficacious blood has covered those sins utterly. No one is powerful enough to go through our Lord, and no one is able to outflank His infinitely wide love to seize what no longer exists – our forgiven sins.
2. THE LENGTH OF GOD’S LOVE IS INFINITE
Jeremiah 31:3 explains that the love of our Lord has no end and also no beginning – nothing can possibly be longer! Revelation 17:8 tells us that each believer has his name “written in the book of life from the foundation of the world,” and I Thessalonians 4:17 says, “And so shall we ever be with the Lord.” “Everlasting” stretches back and forward – there is no time when God did not love us, does not love us, and will not love us.
3. THE DEPTH OF GOD’S LOVE IS INFINITE
His love touches us in the deepest depths of human need. He is with us in sorrow: He is “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3).He is alongside us in death. How deep a grave can be! Yet, God’s love digs deeper than any grave: “Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, [Who] was crucified: He is risen; He is not here” (Mark 16:6). Our deepest need pertains to the reality of our sins. I Peter 2:24 says of Jesus that “His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree. To bear something, we must be below it. On the Cross, Jesus got below our sins and carried them. There is no sin, no sinner, that is beneath God’s love, for “underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27).
4. THE HEIGHT OF GOD’S LOVE IS INFINITE
Jesus, God the Son, came from His home in heaven to lift us up to be with Him in heaven, to make His home our home forever: “[God] hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6). Real human love always lifts us up and encourages us to be better people. The infinitely greater love of God lifts us up and places us alongside our Savior.
CONCLUSION – We must remember that Jesus was “lifted up” on the Cross (John 12:32-33). “But God commendeth [demonstrates] His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). We must “comprehend” this love; that is, each of us must come to a personal understanding of this objective truth – a truth that is crucial to the faith of “all the saints.” We must also “know” this love through a personal trust in and a personal relationship with the Savior, Jesus Christ. Then, as His very own, let us love His love, and let us live His love.