What is the love of Christ?

But there was something still deeper than this, and which needed to be known along with it. Therefore he adds, "And to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that ye might be filled to all the fulness of God." Glorious as all these prospects are, what can compare with His love? The best wine is kept to the last. "To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge." It may seem to be a paradox to say so, but a blessed one. He does not mean that we shall ever know it perfectly. But there may be the knowing more and more of that which surpasses knowledge. He supposes us launched upon that sea where there is no shore: we can never reach the end of His love. Yet he speaks of knowing the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ; "that ye might be filled to all the fulness of God." You could no more get to the end of the love, than you could get to the end of God Himself. Nothing can be more wonderful than such a desire for us, feeble creatures as we are, "that ye might be filled to all the fulness of God." And yet it is for the saints now that the apostle thus prayed; not that we might know ourselves to be Christ's body, the fulness of Him that fills all in all, but practically enlarged entrance by the power of the Spirit into God's fulness. It is the heart's condition, and real growth in communion with God that is before us here; and this most appropriately after the standing has been treated, and before the exhortations as to walk and conduct.

Finally, the apostle prays (in Ephesians 3:16, 19) “that He would grant you … to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge.” But do we not know it? Are we quite ignorant of it? Nay, it is our security, it is our motive, it is indeed our portion. It has cast out fear. But who can say he knows that which passes knowledge? The brethren of Joseph thought, perhaps, that they knew his love for them. But the test came, and how they wounded his heart by their fears and suspicions as to it! Christ’s love for His people passes knowledge. The manger, the garden, the cross, the throne, all bear witness to its fullness and eternity. But who can fully know its everlasting strength?

"To know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge." We are to know something which passeth knowledge. It is a paradox. We know that love, and the more we know it the more it passeth our knowledge. Shall we ever know fully the love that passeth knowledge? This ever must be our blessed occupation to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. And what are the consequences? "That ye may be filled unto (not with) all the fullness of God." In the measure in which we know the love of Christ and comprehend the dimensions of this love, in the measure in which we have Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith and are rooted and grounded in love, in that measure shall we be filled unto all the fullness of God.

(V. 19). All this scene of blessedness is secured for us by the love of Christ — the One who “loved the church, and gave Himself for it.” Hence the fourth request is that we may “know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge.” It is a love that can be known and enjoyed, and yet it passes knowing. If we cannot measure the height of glory from which Christ came, or fathom the depth of sorrow into which He has been, still less can we measure the love that has wrought for us, that takes in the vast host of the redeemed, small and great, that is caring for us in our passage through time, and that is coming for us to bring us into the home of love to be there with Him, and like Him, for the gratification of His heart of love. Such love can be known, and yet will forever remain a love that passes knowing.

Secondly, the Apostle prays for a right spiritual state in order that we may know the love of Christ that passeth knowing. The love of the Father purposed us for blessing, and the love of Christ has made it possible for these purposes to be fulfilled. It is true that we can neither grasp the counsels of God in all their extent, nor the love of Christ which passeth knowing. Nevertheless, we can in measure apprehend the counsels and know the love. "To know the love of Christ" is more than knowing through the statements of God's word that Christ loves us. It is an experimental knowledge — the realised enjoyment of the love — this the Apostle desires that we may know. How wonderful that the Christ, Who is the centre of the vast scene of glory in all its breadth, length, depth and height, can be known in a personal and intimate way by each one of us as the One that loves us and has given Himself for us! Christ desires that we should know His love, for He ever appreciates the response to His love that attaches us to Himself. In a pre-eminent degree the Apostle John knew the love of Christ, for five times he describes himself as the disciple that Jesus loved, and in all the nearness that the knowledge of His love gives, he could confide in the Lord and rest his head upon His bosom. The appreciation of the love of Christ by Mary and the Apostle John, brought these disciples nearer to the Lord than the activity of Martha and the zeal of Peter.

Thirdly, the apprehension of the counsels of God and the appreciation of the love of Christ, leads to the third great result of a right spiritual state — that we "might be filled with all the fulness of God." Does not the fulness of God speak of all that God is in His moral attributes, His holiness, His love, and His grace. A vessel could be filled with water, but no vessel could hold the ocean. So our little vessels cannot take in all the fulness of God, but it is possible for the fulness of God to fill our little vessels. Thus the beautiful character of God, as He has been pleased to reveal Himself, should fill the saints, and be seen in the saints.

How wonderful it is that we can know this love which, in its fulness is beyond all knowledge. None can know the intimacy and affection that are peculiar to the Godhead, but still, there are the divine affections that we can and do know, and these have been made known in the Son incarnate and in His wondrous death. Christ’s love has been measured in the depths into which His holy soul entered on the cross, when He sustained and exhausted the righteous judgment of God; but they are depths into which the mind of man can never enter. The love and the depths are unfathomable, yet we can know the love, and do know it in communion with Him who gave Himself for us.

Verse 19. "And to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge," etc. This final petition stands in closest connexion with what precedes it. If spiritual comprehension isa faculty common to all saints, by virtue of which the renewed mind may expatiate safely and at large, amidst the boundless fields of Divine knowledge, spiritual affections also appertain to them, by means of which they are enabled to appreciate the love of Christ. But that love, though known and rested in, surpasses knowledge. Its outward tokens are, indeed, most evident; and are the proofs to which the Spirit ceases not to appeal when cheering and strengthening the fainting heart. But proofs, though infallible, are but pledges of the love they prove. By their means we are brought into acquaintance with it, and, by a steady contemplation of such tokens, we are gradually certified of that which our hearts desire. But it is the nature of all love to be superior to its own demonstration. It is known by use. Occasion quickens and enlarges its practical effect. Thus, in measures as different as the uncounted varieties of spiritual growth and capacity, that which is the common life and solace of all saints, is tasted and enjoyed. Vessels of every description hang upon that Nail (Isa. 22:23-24). Every believer knows the love of Christ; for the Cross is its eternal monument. We love Him in the persuasion of His love. And as that mighty evidence of love is pondered in our hearts, and we think of it not only as the cure of our natural miseries, but as the door of access, likewise, to the sure and never-ending blessedness of the kingdom which we have received by faith, and which is ready even now to be revealed, we perceive that we are held in the embraces of an affection which we shall perfectly enjoy, indeed, but which will be greater than our knowledge to the end.

It is on the basis of Personal teaching, so it seems to me, that this petition in the apostle's prayer is framed. It was necessary for them that Christ should dwell in their hearts by faith in order that they might know the love of Christ. The full knowledge of the love of Christ does not imply that we get to the end of it, in the sense that we grasp it in its entirety. The knowledge of the love, of a person is surely a practical acquaintance with the working of the affections of the heart towards us. We do not measure the affections of another. They cannot be weighed, nor can we take the dimensions of even one of them, but yet we do know, without doubt, what a warm-hearted affection is. We never, imagine that we have got it; we know it. We feel its pulsations, and are conscious of the joy and preciousness of it. To get to the end of love would spoil the whole experience of it. Who would ever want to exhaust the love of a loved one?

It is not beginning with the saints, and rising up to Christ, which is a great illusion for the Christian; but when we have Christ dwelling in the heart, then alone can we share in the affections of Christ, which embrace the whole church of God. "That ye may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height." It is the whole question of that wondrous secret of God, in which He has joined together Christ and the church, and that over all things. That counsel of God the Spirit did not give him to express, to make man feel that it could not be expressed adequately, being beyond all utterance in the tongue of men. He does not say what it is. He speaks of the breadth, length, depth, and height, but not of the love of Christ, as so many make him say. And if he does not define it, neither should we. It is left in its own unmeasured vastness. He has brought you, with all saints, to apprehend this illimitable counsel of God. But the heart wants far more than glory; even a human heart could not be satisfied without more, not to speak of God's heart. If I could be in heaven, with all the glory that God could confer upon a creature, even so all would not suffice for what the heart feels the need of even now. Glory, therefore, bright as it is, is beneath what he next brings before us: "and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with [into] all the fulness of God." He who deserves and made possible for us the divine counsels of glory is far above all that will be shown throughout creation by-and-by.

The "breadth and length and depth and height," of which the apostle speaks, are not, of course, measures of "the love of Christ, which," he declares, "passeth knowledge" yet are they the means of better knowing how infinite it is. The "love" in which we are "rooted and grounded" alone enables us to "comprehend the breadth and length and depth and height;" and these apprehended, heaven and earth, time and eternity, are filled forthwith with the fullness of a divine presence. We know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, and are filled up in all the fullness of God.