"Un-Limited" Edition
by David Jeremiah

How wide, long, deep, and high is God's love? Paul prayed that we would grasp the width and length and depth and height of the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:18). He likens the love of God to a cube, which the Bible treats as a form of perfection. It appears the same from every angle, with every side a perfect square.

So it is with Paul's description of the love of Christ in Ephesians 3. Christ's love is unlimited, the scars on His palms are unlimited prints, and the extent of His love is described in an unlimited edition, a cube-shaped wonder of endless proportions.

The Width of Christ's Love
How wide is Christ's love? Wide enough to include all. He said, "I love you this much!" and He stretched out His arms and died. Perhaps the position of His arms, nailed fast to the cross, was preordained to show us the open-armed width of His love-broad enough to encompass all of humanity, wide enough to include you and me.

In her autobiography, Over Mountain or Plain or Sea, missionary Trula Cronk wrote of her sadness upon realizing how few people in India think of God as One who could love them. She recalled a little girl who visited her house one evening and stayed just a little too long. Darkness fell, and she was afraid to walk home. Trula explained that she should not be afraid, saying, "Dolan, God loves you and He will take care of you as you walk to your house."

The little girl replied very solemnly, "No, memsahib, God does not love little girls." Trula was never able to forget that simple statement, and it made her want to tell all little girls everywhere that God does indeed love them.1

The first verse many of us memorized was John 3:16-"For God so loved the world." The first song we learned was "Jesus Loves Me." People everywhere need to know of the width of Christ's love.

The Length of Christ's Love
How long has Christ loved us? That, too, is unlimited. Jeremiah 31:3 offers the answer: "Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you." He loved us before the foundation of the world, and He will love us into the realms of eternity. God's love is as infinite as He is. Because it is one of His attributes, it shares the characteristics of His other attributes. Because God is an eternal being having neither beginning nor end, His love is timeless, endless, unbounded by clock or calendar. Because He is omniscient, knowing the end from the beginning, He knew and loved us before the sun began shining or the moon shed its beams across the nocturnal landscape.

The Depth of Christ's Love
How deep is His love? So deep it descended to earth, submitted to torture, and became obedient unto death on the cross. So deep that no one can ever sink below its availability.

One man said, "God could never forgive me after what I've done." That man didn't understand the depth of God's love. "It goes beyond the highest star, and reaches to the lowest hell." That leads to . . .

The Height of Christ's Love
How high is Christ's love? High enough to carry us to heaven and into the endless day of the New Jerusalem. High enough to seat us in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus. His love reaches as high as He himself is, enthroned "high and lifted up."

"Not until you can measure the measureless heights to which it lifts you," wrote Pierson, "exalting you side by side with Jesus Christ and making you a partaker of the Divine nature and the Divine glory; not until you can understand those heights can you understand the height of the love of God."2

No wonder Paul prayed that his readers would grasp the unlimited, cube-like nature of God's love and know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God-an unlimited edition of love, stretching endlessly in all directions for you and me.

This article was an excerpt from Turning Points, Dr. David Jeremiah's devotional magazine. Call Turning Point at 1-800-947-1993 for your complimentary copy of Turning Points.

1 Trula Cronk, Over Mountain or Plain or Sea (Nashville: Randall House Publications, 2003), 162.
2 Pierson, 163.

Thursday, January 15, 2009