Prayer by Timothy Keller

Author:Timothy Keller [Keller, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780698161405
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

Grasping the Love

Paul asks the Holy Spirit to give “power to grasp.” The word grasp means “to wrestle” or it could mean “to capture,” as in capturing a city in battle. It means to jump on somebody, overpower him, wrestle him to the ground, and knock him out. At first it seems a very strange word to use when talking about the love of God, but Paul is talking about meditating and pondering something until you break through, until, as we say, it “hits” you. The breakthrough will happen, of course, only with the Spirit’s empowering help.

How does that happen? It is through the Spirit’s blessing of our meditation on the saving work of Jesus. I believe that in Ephesians 3 we are given a case study of this. Why does Paul spell it out, calling us to consider the width and breadth and depth and height of Christ’s love? He is proposing a way to meditate and inviting us to do it. Let’s take up his invitation.

How wide is the love of God? Think of Isaiah 1:18: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” Scarlet is the color of blood. This was God’s way of saying through Isaiah, “Even if you have killed somebody, even if you have blood-guilt, blood on your hands, my love is wide enough to enfold and embrace you. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you have done. It doesn’t matter if you have killed people. If Jesus Christ died on the cross so that you are saved by grace alone, then my love is infinitely wide. It is wide enough for you.”

How long is the love of God? Jesus says in John 10, “I know my own. I give them eternal life . . . and no one can pluck them out of my hand.” In Philippians 1:6, Paul says to the Christians, everybody he is writing to at Philippi, “I am convinced . . . that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Not “may.” Will. His love is infinitely long. And when did his love begin? We are told in the book of Revelation that the Lamb of God was slain before the foundation of the world. God put his love on you in the depths of time, and he will never remove it from you. Why? Because salvation is by grace. It is not by works. It is not given to you because of what you do. It has begun in the depths of time and will last into eternity. It is infinitely long.

The reason that the love of God in Christ is infinitely wide and infinitely long is because it is infinitely deep. How deep is the love of God? Without Jesus Christ, talk about the “depth of God’s love” would be simply an abstraction. Without Jesus Christ, God could send you sixty volumes, with every page saying, “I

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