By Dan Jones
If you’ve been listening to Kinship Christian Radio lately, you’ve probably heard the song, “Gloria” by Stephen Christian which begins with the simple line “God is infinite.”
Which got me to thinking about this beautiful prayer Paul writes to the Ephesians:
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. 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. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (vs. 3:16-21, NIV)
It’s filled with long, rambling phrases with far too many commas and dependent clauses and it would most certainly send the average ninth-grade English teacher into a red Sharpie hissy-fit, but it is a gorgeous prayer.
And, right in the middle of it, Paul prays that the Ephesians would “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ…”
He’s writing as if Christ’s love had physical dimensions. Never mind that no one’s love has physical dimensions in the first place, he’s praying that the Ephesians would be able to fully comprehend the love of the God who would willing die on the cross to save everyone ever born from all the sins they would ever commit. And he doesn’t stop with just praying that they would be able to understand how big that love is, he asks that they would comprehend it’s width, it’s length, it’s height, and it’s depth. As if three dimension’s weren’t enough, Paul has included a fourth!
In other words, Paul is praying the Ephesians would be able to comprehend the infinite.
And, if you back-track that sentence, you find that Paul is not just praying it for the Ephesians, he’s praying it for “all the Lord’s holy people.” And that sounds like it includes you and me –and every Christian ever born!
Going back even further into the sentence, we find that Paul is praying that the power to comprehend that infinite love of Christ is rooted and established in love, which then fills us with a love that surpasses knowledge, which (by the time we get to the end of the sentence) is filling us to measure of all the fullness of God Himself.
There’s infinity all over this prayer, as if God is not constrained in His almighty love by time, space, height, depth, length, width, or any other physical dimension we care to name.
And that’s some awfully good stuff to remember when some tiny little temporary problem with actual physical dimensions falls into your lap.
Today’s Praise
“But will God really dwell on earth with humans? The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built! 2 Chronicles 6:18 (NIV)