Love

Advent 2024

“That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17b-19).

“I love you to the moon and back.”

Thought to have been inspired by Sam McBratney’s children’s book, Guess How Much I Love You, this expression attempts to express the immeasurable quality of love.  

And yet, the idea of “love you to the moon and back” remains inadequate to describe the depth of even human love.

Expressing the fullness of God’s love is even more challenging.  Perhaps the verse that comes closest is when Paul prayed that we could “have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:18-19, emphasis added).

God’s love is truly limitless, and our finite minds will not fully grasp its magnitude this side of eternity. But Christmas serves as a reminder of just how much God loves us.

For on that first Christmas, God sent His own Son, Jesus, to live among us and to experience what we experience. He loved us from Heaven to Earth.

He sent Jesus to rescue us from the penalty of sin, taking all of God’s just wrath and punishment in our place.  He loved us to the cross and back.

Yes, God sent us Jesus, in whom resided the power to defeat sin and death. In power Jesus died to live again, so that we, too, can gain new life now as well as eternal life in Heaven.  He loved us to the grave and back.

Friend, God’s love is so immeasurable it is incomprehensible.  But He offers it freely to us today.  God longs to fill us with the fullness of His love (Ephesians 3:19b).  So let us come to Him, surrender to Him, and experience His great love—a love that surpasses understanding.  

Until next time,

Shelby