The Heart of Growth

He says that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height of Christ's love? Overwhelmed with the immensity of Christ's love. Overwhelmed with the fact that his love is wide enough to reach the whole world and beyond. His love is long enough to stretch from eternity to eternity. His love is high enough to raise us up and seed us in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. His love is deep enough to rescue the sinner that is enmeshed and embroiled and and shackled in the deepest and darkest of degradations. [01:00:05] (60 seconds)  #RootedAndGroundedInLove

The fullness of God. What's he talking about here? Well, there's some parallel expressions in chapter four verse 13. He speaks about the church and everyone in it coming to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. In chapter five verse 18, he says, don't be drunk with wine but be filled with the spirit. He about the fullness of the spirit. There's some synonymous idea here and the point is simply this, the fullness of Christ to come to be filled with all the fullness of God, to be filled with the fullness of Christ is to become god like. That is in my character to be holy as he is holy, to become like Christ. Again, Carson, he helps us here. [01:07:59] (48 seconds)  #FilledWithChristFullness

Now when you take those three requests together, it comes to it comes down to our Christian growth. What it comes down to is this, that our growth in the grace and knowledge of Christ is this, The heart of growth is a heart that is overwhelmed with the presence of Christ and the love of Christ that then produces the character of Christ. Let's look at how this is developed in these three requests. First of all, he prays, we need the internal dwelling of Christ's presence in verses 14 through the beginning through the middle of verse 17. [00:43:13] (43 seconds)  #GrowthThroughChristsPresence

So what he's praying for here, these three requests, these three interrelated requests, as he takes the lid off the first doll and he says, I'm praying. This is what I'm praying for. First of all, he's praying he's praying for the internal dwelling of Christ's presence. He takes the lid off of that doll, and secondly, he's praying for the paradoxical comprehending of Christ's love. And he takes the lid off of that one, and here's the here's the climax of it all. I'm praying for the wholesale development of Christ's character. [00:42:31] (42 seconds)  #ThreeNestedPrayers

In the limitation of my my thinking, in the limitation of my ability to ask and even knowing what to ask for. God does exceedingly abundantly above all of that. He's not he's not limited by the shackles of my imagination and understanding. To the end that, when all is said and done, he gets the glory. Verse 21, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations. Now this doxology closes this section of his praying, but it also closes chapters one to three, this whole first half of the book of Ephesians. And here's the point. [01:14:28] (45 seconds)  #GloryToGodAlone

So just as God gives the gift of faith to believe and to receive Christ as savior, he gives the gift of faith to believe that Christ is at home, Renovation taking place within you. Again, summarizing this this prayer request, DA Carson says this. He says this first petition is a plea for power, power to be holy, power to think, act, and talk in ways utterly pleasing to Christ, power to grow in conformity to Christ Jesus. Well, we need the internal dwelling of Christ's presence. That's the first request. And you take the lid off of that request and it opens up the second request, and it's related. [00:55:58] (56 seconds)  #GiftOfFaithAndPower

When he says this, we love and there's a question not about whether or not it's we love him or we just we love. But the key is the second part of that verse. We love because he first loved us. Now notice the the the application of this as he continues. If someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from him that he who loves God must love his brother also. What's John getting at? He's getting at the the the same idea that because God has so loved me, there is this expulsive power that then impacts my behavior and I turn around and love because of his love. [01:11:52] (62 seconds)  #LoveCommandsLove

God gets the glory and the enablement of your sanctification. God is to be glorified for the entire scope of his work in your life. You know, in his sermon, Thomas Chalmers said this, he said, quote, we know of no other way by which to keep the love of the world out of our hearts than to keep in our hearts the love of God. Okay? Now based on Paul's prayer, we can expand on that a little bit, can't we? We know of no other way to grow in Christian maturity, to become more and more like Christ in our character and our actions than to keep in our hearts the love of Christ. [01:17:19] (53 seconds)  #KeepChristsLoveFirst