Love is a decision, fed by emotion, based on words or actions of another. We all long to hear someone tell us they love us, but it means so much more when we can experience that love. Actions do speak louder than words but words are cheap unless they are backed up with evidence that proves they are true. Christ was the perfect example of experiential love. Romans 5:8 teaches us that he demonstrated His love for us by giving His life for ours. When you experience the love of Christ that is full you will not be satisfied with less.
Romans 5:8 “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Ephesians 3:19 “And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Are you having a hard time spending time alone with Jesus? When you do find time, does it feel more like a duty than a privilege? Has your prayer and study time become an item to check off the list? Do you feel defeated before you begin? Your problem may stem from not truly experiencing the love of Christ. To experience something, and to know it in your head, are two different things. To obey because of knowledge makes something a duty or a chore, but when you experience something, it becomes a joy!
When you experience something that surpasses knowledge, you have no words that adequately describe it. This is the love that Christ has for us. When we are saved we have a sense of that love, because we realize how unloving we are, and how much we deserve Hell.
Romans 5:7-8 “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Our relationship with Christ is much like our earthly relationships. When we meet someone and seek to develop a relationship with them, it takes much time and effort. When I met my husband, we began developing a relationship. We fell in love and we are even more in love now than ever, but it did not grow deeper because we both continued our own path. It grew deeper because we took measures to sustain and grow our love. Our relationship with Jesus begins when we give our hearts to him and accept him as our Lord and Savior, but that is only the beginning. We must put effort and focus into knowing the love of Christ.
In our key verse, Paul is praying that we will be able to comprehend the infinite dimensions of the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge. To know something that cannot be known, or understand that which cannot be understood, is not possible, but Paul had such a deep sense of the love of Christ, and he wanted them to understand and feel what he was feeling. He wanted them to seek the ultimate relationship and never be satisfied. The love he experienced with Christ controlled everything about him. Paul is praying that we who already know Christ’s great love might come to experience it at ever-deepening levels.
All Christians know about Jesus’ love for us that sent him to the cross. John 3:16 is the perfect verse to teach that, but I think sometimes we read it, feel the guilt of our sins, and ask forgiveness because we don’t want to go to hell. However, as we grow in our walk with Christ we come to understand how awful our sin truly is. As we study about God’s holiness it exposes the filthiness of our sins, and we begin to understand how bad we were before salvation. We can then truly experience real love as we get a picture of his love for us when we were living a life against Him. When we were his enemies he still loved us.
To experience the depths of God’s love we must understand who we are without Him. Without him, we are doomed to Hell. We are selfish to the core; our main thought is self-preservation. We may love others but when that love is not benefiting us, we are ready to be done with it. This is the opposite of how rich God’s love is for us. When we sin, he continues to draw us to himself. He loves us so much that he allows circumstances to come into our lives to bring us back to Him. Even when we turn our backs on him he still loves us.
Paul says that he wants us to be filled with the fullness of God. Albert Barnes explained it this way, “that you may have the richest measures of divine consolation and of the divine presence; that you may partake of the entire enjoyment of God in the amplest measure in which he bestows his favors on his people.”
We are not to have partial or stinted measures of his gracious presence, but all of it. We are to dwell with God; walk with God; live with God; commune with God; and we are to be holy as he is holy. Peter tells us in II Peter 1:4, that we become partakers of the divine nature.
II Peter 1:4 “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
As we go through this sanctification process of growing to be like him, we will experience a love that is beyond any other love we could ever imagine. Begin today to seek to experience His love, not just know about it.
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