Look at this wonderful prayer request: “to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God”.[1]
“to know” means by personal experience.
“love” means the most self-giving heart that can only seek out what is ultimately best for the beloved.
“of Christ” calls us to Jesus as the image of God who makes this love known to us, the Word of God who reveals this love as fully as we could ever know it because the same love is in the Son as we find in the Father.
“that surpasses knowledge” means that the love we can know by personal experience is beyond our capacity to ever fully explain or understand even while we enjoy it in its radiant glory.
“that you may be filled” speaks of what will happen to God’s children as the result of knowing the love of Christ.
“with all the fullness of God” means that, when we know the love of God, we know what makes God who he is, hence knowing God as love would fill us with his fullness.
How could mere creatures and churches be “filled with all the fullness of God”?
The way a child’s little bucket at the seashore can contain the fullness of what sea water is, even while never containing all the sea water there is.
We can never contain God in a speck-of-dust receptacle like a human life, or even in the dust-pile of the whole of humanity. However, God’s children as individuals and in family gatherings (churches) can be filled with the fullness of who and what God is, which is love!
Which would fulfill Jesus’ prophecy that the world would know we are his disciples by… (drum roll please…) OUR LOVE![2]
© 2020 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
No comments:
Post a Comment