Australia is a big country. Anyone who has looked at a map of the world will notice the land down under, situated between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, occupying a significant portion of the face of the earth. We are comparable to the sizes of Europe and the USA, and while we are smaller than countries such as Russia and China, or continents like Africa, it’s easy to see that Australia is a vast nation.
While we can get an idea of how big Australia is by looking at a map, we get a different understanding of the size of this country when we hit the road and start travelling through it. Anyone who has crossed the Nullarbor Plain, driven up the Stuart Highway to the Top End, travelled along the coast of Western Australia, or explored any of the unsealed outback highways will understand how massive this country is. When you measure journeys in hours or days instead of kilometres, you can drive for hours without seeing another vehicle, or it takes a tank of fuel to get from one petrol station to another, we begin to know how large Australia is in a way we can’t by looking at a map.
When Paul prays for the Christian community in Ephesians 3:14-21, part of his prayer is that they may ‘have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep’ Christ’s love is (v18 NLT). Paul uses dimensional language of width, length, height and depth to give us the impression that Christ’s love for us is more tangible than a feeling. He presents it as being something more concrete which has height, length, width and depth, such as a vast open country to explore.
Like the size of Australia, we gain only a limited understanding or knowledge of how big God’s love for us in Christ is when we learn about it from a book or hear someone tell us about it. We only begin to really know how big Australia is when we get out there and experience it for ourselves by travelling through it. I can try to describe a three-day trip across the Nullarbor Plain to Perth, or a five-day journey up the west coast from Perth to Darwin, but to really know what it is like, the vastness of the country, along with the joys and challenges along the way, we need to get out there and experience it for ourselves.
The love God has for us in Jesus is similar. While we can learn about it from sermons we hear or books we might read, we gain a whole new understanding of God’s love for us in Jesus when we begin to explore and experience it for ourselves. When Paul talks about ‘knowing’ Christ’s love, he means knowing something from personal experience. That’s why the NLT translates verse 19 as, ‘May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.’ We begin to know how wide, long, high and deep is God’s love for us in Jesus when we begin to explore it for ourselves.
We start doing this when we look for it in God’s Word. One reason why the Bible is such a large book is that it tells us what God’s love is like in lots of different ways. Every passage of Scripture tells us something different about Christ’s love for us. Instead of being intimidated by the size of the Bible, we can see it as a treasure chest full of illustrations, stories, pictures and analogies of what God’s love is like. One way we can find meaning in our Bible reading is to ask what each story or passage is telling us about God’s love for us in Jesus.
A next step in exploring the width, length, height and depth of God’s love for us in Jesus is to connect what we learn about his love from the Bible with what is happening in our lives. When we learn to hear how God’s words of love speak into the realities of our lives, we begin to know more and more how vast Christ’s love for us is. Especially when we go through difficult times, when we encounter challenges, problems, uncertainties or loss, hearing God speak his words of love into those circumstances gives us a greater knowledge of the immense size of his love. This is when God’s love doesn’t just become something we know with our heads, but we know with our hearts as we experience the peace, hope and joy his love gives us in even the most difficult or challenging times of life.
We continue to explore how wide, long, high and deep God’s love is for us when we learn to love the people around us like Jesus loves us. Sometimes it isn’t easy to love people who make life hard for us or who are difficult to love. However, loving them helps us know God’s love for us as he continues to love us, even when we are hard to love, we take his love for granted, or we ignore his love. We can also see the difference that God’s love makes in us and our relationships when we love others as God loves us in Jesus. This is a courageous, committed, self-sacrificing love which brings people together, heals the brokenness of this world, and gives us hope, both for ourselves as well as for the people around us.
As we explore the width, length, height and depth of God’s love by looking for it in his Word, applying it to the different circumstances of our lives, and living it out in relationship with others, we put the roots of our lives down into God’s love to draw strength and life from him (v17). Like a plant which has a good root system in fertile soil, when we know how vast God’s love for us in Jesus, we anchor ourselves in the goodness of God, draw on his love to sustain and empower us, and find the strength to stand firm in life’s storms.
When we explore Christ’s love for us, we find that it is so much larger than the challenges we face or the problems we encounter. Paul uses the language of width, length, height and depth to say that we could spend our whole lives exploring it and never reach its limits. Like driving the highways and back-roads of Australia, we can explore God’s love every day of our lives and around every corner is more beautiful scenery to see and another magnificent view to enjoy. God’s love is like that: we can spend our whole lives exploring it and there will always be more to amaze us, and we will never get tired of it.
We can know that Australia is a big country by looking at a map. However, we only begin to appreciate how vast it is when we get on the road and experience it for ourselves. God’s love for us in Jesus is like this. When we begin to explore it for ourselves by looking for it in the Bible, connecting it with the realities of our lives, and living it out in relationship with others, we just don’t know it as an idea, but we know it in new ways as we experience it. God give us the power to know how wide, how long, how high and how deep his love for us in Jesus, so our roots can go deep into his love to keep us strong, nourishing our hearts, minds and souls, and we can produce the fruit of his love in our lives.
More to think about or discuss:
- What is the longest trip you have made in Australia? What did you learn about how big this country is from that trip?
- What comes to your mind when Paul talks about ‘how wide, long, high and deep’ God’s love is for us in Christ? Why do you think he used this language to describe God’s love?
- How might you be able to know how wide, long, high and deep God’s love is for you? How can you put your ‘roots’ into his love? How might your faith community help you?
Pastor Eugene Online 
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