Ephesians chapter 3. And I just want to thank for
a few minutes on this one passage here in verse 19. And to know
the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. To know the love of
Christ which passeth knowledge. How in the world are we to know
it if it passeth knowledge? Well, we have some knowledge
of it. We just can't grasp the depths of it, and the height
of it, the width of it, and the length of it. We can't comprehend
the fullness of it, the perfection of it. The greatest knowledge
that you and I can come to concerning the love of Christ is that it
passes knowledge. Now, it's difficult to come to
that place. And when we reach that knowledge, it's difficult
to retain that knowledge. I know me, and I know the limits
of my love. I can reach that. But there is
a limit in the love of Christ that cannot be reached. A perfection
of love in Him. And to reach that point, for
us to know, Lord, Your love passeth my ability, my intellect, to
comprehend it. The love of Christ which passeth
knowledge. And that's what I want to emphasize
just for a few minutes. The love of Christ which passeth
knowledge. To know the love of Christ which
passeth knowledge. To know that we must know this.
Who it is that loves. The love of Christ. That in itself
will let us know that it passeth knowledge. Because Christ is
no ordinary person. He's not like you and He's not
like me. He's a Prince. He's a King. He is a Governor. He is King of Nations. He is
a Potentate. He's a Sovereign. He's a Creator. He's a Sustainer. He's Lord over
all. He's the Lord of Glory. He's
the Son of God. He is God. To know the love of
Christ. He's the Judge of all the earth.
He's the only Savior of poor sinners. To truly be loved by
a good man. That's very cheery, isn't it?
Glenn, it cheers my heart to know you love me. To be loved
by a great man That's very humbling to me. You and I have some people
that we count great in this life. They've accomplished some things
in the kingdom of Christ. I think it's a very humbling
thing for a man that God has greatly used to come up to you
and look at you and I and say, Bruce, I love you. I love you.
That's a humbling thing. But to be loved by the God man? That's something else altogether,
isn't it? How can we describe such a thing? To understand the love of Christ,
to know that it passeth knowledge, we first and foremost must remember
who it is that loves the love of Christ. Christ loves. And secondly, to know this love
that passeth knowledge, we must remember who are loved. Who does He love? And in the
Scripture they are described under different titles and different
names. Listen to this. They are called
transgressors. They are called sinners. They
are called enemies. Dust and ashes. Fleas. Dead dogs. Worms. Shadows and vapors. vile and
sinful and filthy and unclean and ungodly and fools and madmen. Now that's just a few names that
go to describe the objects of His love. The God-man loving
madmen. That in itself would have to
pass novel. Thirdly, to know the love of
Christ, which passes knowledge, we must know the nature of that
love. The love of Christ. And what
is the nature of the love of Christ? It's unconditional. It's free. Brother Bob read it
to us in Hosea chapter 14. I will heal their backslidings.
I will love them freely. That word means voluntarily.
I will love them without obligation. I will love them without any
persuasion. I will love them freely. John
said it like this, not that we loved him, but that he loved
us. His love is unconditional. It's
not dependent upon anything it sees in its object. Human love
must have an attraction. It must have something to appeal
to it. Human love is a mere emotion
of the soul. That's what it is. Who can tell? You think sometimes, all of the
ways, that human love is attractive.
But it must be attractive. Human love never loved anybody
just because of itself. It has to be attractive. Have
you ever seen I mean an ugly man. And he's married to a beautiful
woman. And you go off wondering, what
in the world does that woman see in that man? But you know,
she sees something in him. She loves him. But there's a
cause. Something in that man appeals
to that woman. It may be he's smart. It may
be his intellect. It may be his security. It may be something emotional.
It may not be physical at all. But there's something in that
person that appeals to that woman. That's human love. Because it's
in an emotion of the soul, it must find something appealing
in its object. It has to be persuaded to love. That's why so many times human
love ends in tragedy. It ends in sadness. It ends in
heartbreak. It even ends sometimes in hatred
or contempt. How many men and women, husbands
and wives, do you and I know that used to love one another?
And I know what we say sometimes, if they'd have really loved me,
they'd have never done that. But brothers and sisters, that's
human love. That's human love. It's subject
to change. And when it changes, it can go
from the emotion of love to emotion of hate. Because something in
the object has changed. Our love perceives a change in
the object. So love dies, and it changes. David had a son. His name was
Emma. You probably remember him. And
Amnon loved his half-sister Tamar. He got sick, he loved her so
much. And finally he forced her and lay with her. And then the Scripture says immediately,
he hated her exceedingly. wherewith He hated her was greater
than the love wherewith He loved her. That's the perfect example
of human love, because it's a mere emotion of the soul. But Christ's
love is different because of the nature of it. He doesn't
love because of something which appeals to Him. He doesn't love
a person because there's something in that person that attracts
Him, but He loves because of who He is. Christ is God, is
He not? And God is love. Therefore, Christ
is love. And He loves because of who He
is. He can no more cease to love
than He could cease to be. That's His nature. He is love. And that's why we call it unconditional
love. It's free. I will love them freely. I'm not looking for anything
in them that attracts me. or persuades me to love them. Have you ever known a love like
that? Don't that love like that pass your knowledge? It wouldn't
surprise me if some of your husband's wife left you next year. Or some
of your wife's husband left you next year. Or you had all kinds
of trouble in your family. And the sweet love that you feel
now changes to hate next year. And it tears your family apart.
Because that's human love. And we know that, don't we? We've
experienced it. We've seen it. So when we come
to this love, and we realize that it's altogether a different
nature, we say, my soul, that passes knowledge. It's not like
us at all. It's not like our love at all.
I will love them freely. I will love them because I love
them. I am the Lord. I change not. Therefore, my love don't change.
It don't diminish. It doesn't increase. I'll never
cease to love you. My love for you will never diminish.
The nature of Christ's love passes our knowledge to fully comprehend
it. It's so foreign to us. That's
why we constantly have to study it. We constantly have to be
reminded that His love is not like our love. Listen to this. My thoughts are not your thoughts,
and my ways are not your ways. For as the heavens are high above
the earth, so are my ways above your ways, and my thoughts above
your thoughts. Now, you want to know something
about love? Listen to what Job said in Job chapter 11 and verse
7 through 9. Listen to this very carefully.
Can you by searching find out God? Can you by searching find
out this God-man, Christ, who loves? Can you find out the Almighty
to perfection? That's what we're talking about
here. We're talking about a love that is perfect. Can you find
out the Almighty to perfection? His perfection is as high as
heaven. What can you know? It's deeper
than hell. What can you do? The measure
of is longer than the earth and broader than the sea. There those
things are that we looked at a few Sundays ago. The height
of heaven, the depth of hell, the length of the earth and broader
than the sea. That's the love of Christ. But
to find out His love, you have to find out perfection. And that's
what His love springs from. His nature. And in His nature,
He is Himself. Perfection. Can you imagine trying
to measure the sea by one teaspoon at a time? Can you imagine that? Next time you go back over to
the ocean, try that. Take your teaspoon with you. Take a dip
out at a time. Put it in your little bucket.
and say, I'm going to measure this ocean. I'm going to measure
the mighty Atlantic. You'll be there quite some time.
That's the way the love of Christ is, brothers and sisters. It's
an ocean. It's an ocean. You can wade in
it. You can swim in it. You can bathe
your soul in it. You can bask your spirit in it. You can look at it and marvel
at its beauty and be confounded at its strength, but you can't
measure it. It's perfection. It's eternal. It's who He is. The love of Christ. And until you and I can measure
perfection, we cannot measure His love. Now, don't it pass
knowledge? And fourthly is this. The love of Christ passes knowledge.
And the only way we can comprehend it to its fullness would be to
comprehend fully the very nature of sin. Now listen to me for
just a minute. Here in His love, not that we
loved God, but He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning
victim for our sins. Everywhere in the Scripture we
are told that Christ died for our sins. He gave Himself for
our sins. Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his sins. To grasp the
fullness of Christ's love, we would have to grasp the full
extent of His sufferings for our sins. And to do that, we
would have to grasp the full nature of sin itself and the
full hatred of God against sin. Who can grasp such a thing? I
can't do it. I can't do it. Who can understand
His errors, David said? We can't even understand that.
Who can fully understand the nature of sin? The Scripture
says that sin is exceeding sinful. How sinful is it? We describe
it by adjectives, but can we comprehend the depths of how
sinful sin is? We know this, it turned angels
into devils. It turned our first parents out
of paradise. It turned Solomon and Gomorrah
into ashes. It turns the wicked into hell.
It stirs up the love of God that is the passions of his heart,
that it lets loose his rage. And it's manifested by the fire
of his wrath. And he casts men down to hell
and swears by himself that he'll give them no relief. Not even
so much as water to cool their blistered tongue. There's one
thing that God hates. It's sin. It's sin. The only way He could save us
from it and forgive it in us was to punish His Son for it. Punish it in His body and punish
it in His soul. He bare our sins in His own body. Why did He bare them in His body?
To be punished there. His soul was made an offering
for sin. You bring sin and Christ together,
and the wrath of God together. And that's something that you
and I can hardly enter into, the depths of it. God punished Christ's body, and
He did it by the hands of wicked men. And I'll leave it to you
to go home and read the Bible in those places where they whipped
Him until His bones in His back appeared, and they plucked out
His beard. And his vestige was marred, his
face was marred more than any man, and his farm more than the
sons of man. You read that in the Scripture.
His body was bruised and mingled and crushed. Why? Our sins were there in his body.
But we read also of his soul, that God afflicted his soul. God made his soul than offering
for sin. Brothers and sisters, we have
to put a difference between our bodies and our souls. And the
greatest suffering of Jesus Christ was not in His body, as dreadful
as that was, but it was in His soul. When they offered those
bullocks under the Jewish law for sin, they separated that
bullock. They took His flesh and His hide
outside the camp, and they burned it. But they took those inward
parts, those vital organs with that sweet, flat fat, and they
burned it upon the altar of the synagogue. There you have the
body of Christ that suffered without the gate, but you have
the soul of the Lord Jesus Christ that suffered under the wrath
of the fire of Almighty God. We esteemed Him stricken, smitten
of God, and afflicted. Lamentations chapter 1 and verse
12. If you haven't memorized this
verse, memorize this verse. Lamentations chapter 1 and verse
12. Is it nothing to you that pass
by? There's the Son of God speaking
to those who are coming around the cross. Is it nothing to you
who pass by? Behold and see if there is any
sorrow like unto my sorrow. were with the Lord has afflicted
me in the day of His fierce anger." Sin is exceeding sinful. And when the soul of Christ was
punished for it, here's what He said, My soul is exceeding
sorrowful, even unto death. Why was He sorrowful? Because
He had to suffer. for our sins. And he had to suffer
the stroke of the wrath and justice of God to satisfy it. And these
things pass our knowledge, don't they? To understand, to grasp the love
of Christ who gave Himself for our sins after such a manner,
we have to grasp the exceeding sinfulness of sin. We'd have
to grasp the full measure of God's hatred for sin, and we
can't do it. We're at a loss. I look at you.
I look at you while I'm preaching this, and you can't even hardly
get a hold of what I'm saying, can you? You can't even hardly
enter into this, can you? And if I just kept on for 10
or 15 minutes, I'd finally lose you. You'd either have to go
to sleep or shut me out completely, because we can't enter into the
depths of this. That's probably why the darkness
came around the cross. It wouldn't have done us any
good if the sun had continued to shine and we stood there and
watched Him as He suffered and died. We can't enter into it
anyway. God hated sin so bad that He
said, if I'm going to save you from it, I'm going to have to
punish it. I'm going to have to punish it
with the fire of my wrath. Somebody's going to have to suffer
the equivalent of eternal misery." And the Son of God said, Father,
I come. Lord, I come. And He helped do
it too, didn't He? To do Your will, O my God, by
which will we're sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ our Lord. And I tell you, you can't find
any reason He did it. But this, He loved us and gave
Himself for us. Love. After you and I have spent our
Christian life learning of the love of Christ and being amazed
by it and surprised by it, we have never learned enough. Until
we come to this, it passeth knowledge. the perfection of it, the vastness
of it, the quality of it, the quantity of it, the eternality
of it, it passeth knowledge. And you know something, brothers
and sisters, we'll not learn all about it in heaven either. It passeth our knowledge here, but even there, when our hearts
are made perfectly pure, And when our hearts are enlarged
and we don't have any sin to afflict us and darken our understanding,
we won't know it all there either. We'll spend eternity, ages without
end, learning, going deeper and higher into this love of Jesus
Christ our Lord. And you can bet this, we'll know
much more about it there than we do here. And bless Him for
that. Oh, Father, wise and gracious
Lord Jesus, our God, our Lord and our God, oh, help us to be
amazed, as so many have in the past, of Your love. We know so
little, Lord. We know so little of You. We
know so little of Your love. You're not like us. We can't
relate to you. Oh, give us your Spirit to teach
us. Oh, may we bask our souls. May we fall upon you with all
the confidence in the world because you love us. Oh, we don't have
to fear life. We don't have to fear dying or
death or the judgment to come because you love us. Love us
with an everlasting love, a perfect love. Oh, we don't know it. Help us to grasp it. Amaze us
with it. For Christ's glory. Amen.