The Breadth, Length, Depth, and Height of God's Love
By D. MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1898-1981) We are dealing, not with our love to God and to Christ and to the brethren, but with His love to us. What can be known of the love of God?
“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 filled with all the fulness of God.” —Ephesians 3:18-19
As we examine this passage we must remind ourselves that we are dealing, not with our love to God and to Christ and to the brethren, but with His love to us. We examine what can be known of the love of God. The Apostle sets this before us in an extraordinary manner in the words I have just quoted.
The terminology used by the Apostle in and of itself suggests vastness. And there is no doubt that he chose to describe it in this four-dimensional manner in order to give that very impression. It is interesting to speculate as to why he decided to do this. At the end of the second chapter, he had been describing the Church as "a holy temple in the Lord", as a great building in which God takes up His abode and in which He dwells. I am ready to believe that that was still in his mind, and that as he thought of the vastness of the Church as an enormous temple, he felt it to be a good way of describing the love of Christ to His people. It is similar to the breadth, length, depth and height of such a great building.
Whether that is so or not, the Apostle was certainly concerned to bring out the vastness of this love. Indeed in doing so he almost contradicts himself by using a figure of speech which is called oxymoron. He prays that we may "know" the love of Christ "which passeth knowledge". How can you know something which cannot be known? How can you define something which is so great that it cannot be defined? What is the point of talking about measurements if it is immeasurable and eternal? But, of course, there is no contradiction here. What the Apostle is saying is that, though this love of Christ is itself beyond all computation, and can never be truly measured, nevertheless it is our business to learn as much as we can about it, and to receive as much of it as we can possibly contain. So it behoves us to look at this description which he gives of the love of Christ.
We are about to look into something which is so glorious and endless that it will be the theme of contemplation of all the saints, not only in this world, but also in the world which is to come. We shall spend our eternity in gazing upon it, and wondering at it, and in being astounded by it. But it is our business to start upon this here and now in this life. Indeed, our chief defect as Christians is that we fail to realize Christ's love to us. How often have you thought about this? We spend time thinking about our activities and our problems, but the most important necessity in the Christian life is to know Christ's love to us, and to meditate upon it. This has always been the spring and the source of the greatest activity that has ever been manifested in the long history of the Christian Church. So let us try to look at it in terms of the dimensions which the Apostle uses.
Have you ever considered the breadth of this love?
There are several places in Scripture where this particular dimension is put before us in a striking manner. In the Book of Revelation, for instance, we find the words: "…and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue and people, and nation". And again: "…and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands" (5:9, 11). The Book of Revelation seems to be particularly interested in the breadth of Christ's love. As it gives us the picture of the glorified saints, and of the Son of God with His redeemed, it uses these figures: "After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the Lamb" (7:9). One day, in the glory, we shall see that perfectly. But in a discouraging time like this in the history of the Church, what can be more encouraging and more exhilarating than to think of this breadth of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ? As Christians we are but a handful of people in this country today, a mere small percentage. That thought sometimes tends to depress us and to discourage us. The antidote to it is to consider the breadth of Christ's love.
The ultimate cause of the failure of the Jews was that they never grasped this particular dimension. They thought that salvation was only for the Jew. But those of them whose eyes were opened by the Spirit, including the Apostle himself, who was "a Hebrew of the Hebrews", and had once held this exclusive view, had come to see that that narrow, naturalistic dimension was altogether wrong, and that in Christ there is "neither Gentile nor Jew, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free" (Col 3:11) Nothing is more encouraging and invigorating than to know there are in the world, in every country, in every continent—though differing in colour, in culture, in background, in almost everything—men and women meeting together regularly to worship God and to thank Him for His dear Son and His great salvation. In the glory we shall all be amazed at this, as we realize what the love of God in Christ has accomplished in spite of sin and hell and the devil.
Scripture teaches that we shall be astounded when we see all the redeemed gathered in - the "fulness of the Gentiles", the "fulness of Israel", "all Israel" saved, and the redeemed standing in the presence of their Redeemer. It is not surprising that the Apostle should pray so earnestly that these Ephesians might know this because this changes your entire outlook when you tend to feel depressed, when you are tempted to doubt whether there is any future for the Church seeing that we are but a handful of people. The answer is to look at the breadth of Christ's love, to look ahead, to look into the glory and see the final result of His finished work. Once you begin to realize the breadth of His love you will lift up your head again, your heart will begin to sing once more, and you will realize that you are having the precious privilege of being one humble member in a mighty army, one in this thronging multitude who will spend their eternity in the presence of the Lamb of God, and enjoy Him for ever. The breadth of His love!
But let us also look at the length of His love.
I am convinced that the Apostle specified these particular measurements in order to encourage the Ephesians, and us through them, to work this out in our minds. To meditate upon the love of God in an abstract manner is not very profitable. We have to work it out in detail as it has been revealed. The length surely conveys the endless character of the love of Christ. Sometimes we read in Scripture about the "everlasting" love of God -"I have loved thee with an everlasting love" (Jer 31:3) Have you ever considered the eternity of Christ's love towards you and towards all the saints? The dimension of length reminds us that this is a love which began in eternity. It was always there.
How important it is to meditate upon such a theme! To do so brings us at once to the realization that the love of Christ to His own began before time, away back in eternity. Christ's love to us did not suddenly come into being, it was there before the beginning of time. Hence we read that our names were "written in the Lamb's book of life from the foundation of the world" (Rev 13:8; 17:8). This is, to me, one of the most staggering things of all, that I was known by Christ in eternity. I, and every one of us who belong to Him, in particular. We were known to Him, and our names were written in His book. What a dignity it adds to human life, and to our existence in this world, to know that He has set His heart upon us, that His affections rested upon us even in eternity! That is the beginning - if such a term is possible - of the length of His love towards us. Before time!
The love of Christ for His own is from eternity to eternity. It began in eternity, and it continues in time. We can therefore always be sure that it will never change, that it will never vary, that it will always be the same. "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever" (Heb 13:8). And His love is always the same. There are no interruptions in it. This "length" is an unbroken line. Whatever may happen, it goes on; it is not a variable, it is a constant. It does not suddenly cease, and then start again. "Thine is an unchanging love". It is a line, a straight line, it is not variable. It is a love that never gives us up or lets us go; it is a love that never despairs of us.
But let us look at the depth of His love.
As we look at each dimension we are tempted to say that it is the most wonderful of all, the truth being that that is true of each one! As we consider the depth we can do nothing better than to read what the Apostle wrote to the Philippians in the second chapter, where he shows that the depth of Christ's love can be seen in two main respects. First, in what He did! How guilty we are of reading hurriedly and perhaps thoughtlessly some of the most staggering words ever penned. In eternity our Lord was "in the form of God". He was God the Son in the bosom of the Father from all eternity. But the Apostle tells us that "He thought it not robbery to be equal with God". That means that He did not regard His equality with God as a prize to be held on to, to be held on to at all costs. Rather He humbled Himself, He divested Himself of those signs of His eternal glory. And He came into this world of sin and shame in the likeness of man, in the form of a man.
This is entirely beyond understanding; as the Apostle says, it is "the love of Christ which passeth knowledge". These are facts. He deliberately did not hold on to what He had a right to hold on to, but rather humbled Himself, and entered into the Virgin's womb, and took unto himself of human nature, and came and lived as a man in this world. Recall what we are told about the poverty and the lowliness of the home into which He was born. Recall what happened to Him while He was in this world, how He performed a menial task; He who was equal with the Father, the Son of God eternal. Next consider what He suffered at the hands of men, the misunderstanding, the hatred, the malice and the spite. Think of His suffering from weariness and hunger and thirst. Think of men laying cruel hands upon Him, arresting Him and trying Him, mocking Him and jeering at Him, spitting in His most holy face. Think of cruel men condemning Him to death and scourging Him. Look at Him staggering under the weight of the heavy cross on His way to Golgotha. Look at Him nailed upon the tree, and listen to His expressions of agony at the thirst He endured and the pain He suffered. Think of the terrible moment when our sins were laid upon Him. He even lost sight of the face of His Father for the one and only time, and gave up the ghost and died, and was buried and laid in a grave. He, the Author of life, the Creator of everything, lies dead in a grave. Why did He do all this? The astounding answer is, because of His love for you and me; because He loved us. Such is the depth of His love 1 There is no other explanation.
His love shows yet greater and deeper when we remember that there was nothing in us to call forth such love. "All we like sheep have gone astray". We all have "come short of the glory of God". In our natural state we all were hateful and hopeless creatures. That we may have some true conception of our actual state and condition, and the depth of His love, let us turn to what Paul tells us about the condition of mankind until the grace of God in Christ laid hold upon us. "There is none righteous, no, not one.” It was for such people that Christ came, enduring the Cross and despising the shame. The Apostle makes the same point in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. Our Lord had said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends"; but says Paul, "God commendeth His love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" and "If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled unto God by the death of His Son…" He did all this for sinners, for His enemies, for those who were vile and full of sin and who had nothing to commend them. That is the measure of the depth of His love. He came from heaven, He went down to the depths and rose again for such people. It is only as we meditate upon these things and realize their truth that we begin to know something about His love.
That brings us, in turn, to the height of His love.
By this dimension the Apostle expresses God's ultimate and final purpose for us. Or we may say that this is the way in which he describes the height to which God proposes to raise us. Most of us tend to think of salvation only in terms of forgiveness, as if the love of Christ only purchases for us the forgiveness of our sins. Anyone who stops at that has clearly never known anything about the height of the love of Christ. Something of this height is seen in the fact that He died not only that we might be forgiven; He died to make us good. He died not only that our sins might be blotted out, but also that we might be given a new birth; not merely to save us from punishment, but also that we might be made children of God, sons of God, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ. Such is His purpose for us, and all He did had that end in view. Furthermore, having given us this new birth, this new principle of life, He causes to dwell in us the same Holy Spirit that was in Himself. "God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him", we are told (John 3:34). He gives the same Spirit by measure to us. That is the height of His love to us.
But, as the Apostle has already been reminding these Ephesians, His love to us is so great that He has actually joined us to Himself. We are united with Christ, He has made us part of Himself, of His own body. That is why we were "quickened with Him" and "raised with Him" and are "seated in the heavenly places" with Him. In the fifth chapter of the Epistle he goes on to say: "We are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones". It is His love that has done that for us. We must also remember how in His last prayer on earth to His Father, He prayed these words, "Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory" (John 17:24). Our Lord's love toward us knows no bounds; His desire for us is that we should be with Him and see something of that glory which He has shared with the Father from all eternity. He is not satisfied with purchasing our forgiveness and delivering us from the Pollution of this sinful world, He wants us to be there with Him in the glory and to spend our eternity there.
The Apostle John in his first Epistle, describing this height, says: "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth, us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (3:1-2). A lover always desires that the object of his love should share all his privileges and blessings and enjoyments, and so our Lord desires that we should enjoy something of His eternal glory. He will not be satisfied until, as the Apostle says in the fifth chapter of this Epistle, We shall be "a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish" (v. 27). This is His ambition for the Church and for all whom He loves. We shall be glorified in spirit, in soul, and in body: there will be no fault, no blemish, no wrinkle. We shall be perfect and entire and filled with "all the fulness of God". The final word is, "and so shall we ever be with the Lord" (I Thess 4:17)
Conclusion:
Thus we have tried feebly to catch a glimpse of the love of Christ to us. Have you been feeling sorry for yourself, and somewhat lethargic in a spiritual sense? Have you been regarding worship and prayer as tasks? Have you allowed the world the flesh or the devil to defeat you and to depress you? The one antidote to that is to meditate upon and to contemplate this love of Christ. Have you realized its breadth, its length, its depth, its height? Have you realized who and what you are as a Christian? Have you realized that Jesus is "the Lover of your soul", that He has set His affection upon you? Have you realized the height of His ambition for you? "Child of God, shouldst thou repine"? Are we but to shuffle through this world? We should rather respond to this great love with our love for Him and the determination to live every moment in obedience and praise to Him!
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