Ephesians 3:17b-19 – “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.”

How can we know that which surpasses knowledge? At first, this might seem self-contradictory. It doesn’t seem possible to know the unknowable. But Paul is not saying that Christ’s love cannot be known, only that it will always exceed our knowing. No matter how much we understand the love of Christ, we will never completely understand it. Yet, we are able to know Christ’s love truly.

…When Scripture speaks of knowing, it almost always envisions a relational, experiential kind of knowing, a knowing that includes but goes beyond intellectual understanding. You and I are privileged to know the love of Christ, not just as a wonderful idea, but also as something to be felt and treasured. Yet, even in the realm of personal knowing, there is always more of Christ’s love to be experienced. To put it plainly, Christ loves you more than you can understand, and he has still more love for you to experience.

Read/sing/pray:
O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!
Rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me!
Underneath me, all around me, is the current of thy love
Leading onward, leading homeward to thy glorious rest above!

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, spread his praise from shore to shore!
How he loveth, ever loveth, changeth never, nevermore!
How he watches o’er his loved ones, died to call them all his own;
How for them he intercedeth, watcheth o’er them from the throne!

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, love of every love the best!
‘Tis an ocean vast of blessing, ’tis a haven sweet of rest!
O the deep, deep love of Jesus, ’tis a heaven of heavens to me;
And it lifts me up to glory, for it lifts me up to thee! Amen.
“O, the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus,” by Samuel Trevor Francis, 1875.
(Taken with edits from the High Calling/Theology of Work’s devotional.)

-AP