Knowing...

             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. (Ephesians 3:17-19)

 

First, a translational note. The Greek root for the term translated love is agape. The root for the terms translated to know and knowledge is gnosis.  In other words, we’re not talking about a passing fancy or book knowledge. Even the words filled and fullness hold nothing back. Part of me wants to chirp, “Yep! See, it says to know the love, not feel the love,” but the real point of the language is that we know by experience.

Last night, I watched part of a video in which yet another person decided he had to slam people who think they have it bad, but don’t have it as bad as he does. I’ll grant, there are people out there, including me, who complain even though we don’t have it nearly as bad as the next person. But his tale of woe reminded me of my father and the care that I gave him for as long as it was needed. I can tell you that he didn’t feel very loved. I didn’t give him his way often enough, and he was convinced that I was trying to poison him. Equally, I can’t tell you that I felt loving toward him, or that I ever really felt much by way of love from him.

I’m not telling you this because he didn’t love me, or I didn’t love him. We took care of each other, and sometimes, that was hard for both of us. Now he’s gone, so I’m free of having to take care of him, but I’m also without his care for me. The guy who was complaining about having it worse than the guy who had complained has Cerebral Palsy and other people have to do a lot of things for him, and clearly, they do so. It may be that the person whose petty whining about his day had no one to listen to him, no one to help him, and no one who cared.

The rabbit trail of the last paragraph isn’t really quite a rabbit trail. It all comes back to two things, the first of which is definitions. If we define love differently than God does, He could love us better than anyone ever has (and He does!) but we would be tempted to look at our watches and ask when He plans to start. The other thing that influences our understanding of love is similar. It’s the law of diminishing returns. When you go to a horror movie or ride a roller-coaster, you get a thrill. Unless the next movie or roller-coaster is more, it doesn’t provide as big a thrill. When we get used to someone’s love, we can become bored with it. It’s just more of the same. We want something more, bigger, better.

What this means is that the guy with Cerebral Palsy may benefit from the loving actions of ten or fifteen people in a week, while the guy who doesn’t have it so bad might make it through the week on his own. But the guy who gets all the love may not see it as love. It’s just what’s required to get him through the week, while the guy who gets through the week on his own would feel very loved if someone made dinner for him.

So Paul’s prayer that we would know how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge is a good prayer, because we’re likely to lose sight of it, and therefore no longer know it if we aren’t careful.