And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Ephesians 3:19
When I was a teenager, a friend of mine took the time to show me how the pieces of a chess game were moved on the board. We played a game or two, just to get the feel of the moves by each piece. Some years later, as we were waiting for our wives to return from shopping, a neighbour asked me if I knew how to play chess. When I replied in the affirmative, he pulled out a board, set up the pieces, and invited me to begin. To my dismay and embarrassment, he defeated me in four moves, and he put the board away. He had revealed that I did not know how to play chess; I simply knew how the pieces moved. There is an incredibly vast difference between knowing the chess pieces and knowing the strategies and moves that make for winning chess. But the difference is not as vast as knowing about the love of Christ and knowing the love of Christ.
We all know about the love of Christ. We recite verses such as John 3:16, which tell us that God so loved the world. And we know Galatians 2:20 which refers to the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me. Gospel preachers place great emphasis on the love of Christ, because of its great importance to the message. Awareness of the love of Christ envelopes us as we gather to worship, as we bow in prayer, and as we meditate on the Word of God. Yes, we are more than aware of the love of Christ, but how well do we actually know this great love? How well do we understand the character of this love, or grasp its magnitude? As much as we appreciate and treasure the love of Christ, we must shake our head and acknowledge, as our text declares, that it passeth knowledge.
If I take a shaker of sea salt and sprinkle a little on my food, I can enjoy the savour of that salt. And I can understand a little of the benefit to my body of receiving the minerals contained in that salt. But that enjoyment and that understanding gives me little grasp of the amount and the value of all the salt that is contained in the oceans of the world. That is a little like our appreciation and understanding of the love of Christ. We grasp but a tiny sprinkling, like a few grains of sea salt on our food. And the love of Christ stretches out before us as the great motive of His coming into the world to redeem us, of His sufferings and sacrifice on Calvary’s cross, of His promises and His words of welcome and blessing, of His eternal guarantee of safety and bliss. These are beyond the possibility of our understanding, although thankfully not beyond our appreciation in a small measure.
Our text is almost a contradiction, a prayer by Paul for us to know that which is beyond knowing. And yet, that which we learn of the love of Christ causes us to desire to know and appreciate more. -Jim MacIntosh