We are indeed rooted and firmly established in the love of God, for God has not left His love in doubt. No matter what might happen to us or around us circumstantially, God has demonstrated His love for us in that Christ has died. This case is closed. But the love of God is not only the foundation upon which we built the Christian life; it is the continual experience of the Christian life. We are meant, having been rooted and established in the firm love of God to continue to grow in our knowledge of this love.
The entire Christian experience is an experience of love. The longer we walk with Jesus, and the deeper our relationship grows with the Father, the more we realize this. It’s not that God loves us more over the course of time; it’s that we have an ever-increasing awareness of that love. This is what Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus:
I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:18-19).
We are indeed rooted and firmly established in the love of God, for God has not left His love in doubt. No matter what might happen to us or around us circumstantially, God has demonstrated His love for us in that Christ has died. This case is closed.
But the love of God is not only the foundation upon which we built the Christian life; it is the continual experience of the Christian life. We are meant, having been rooted and established in the firm love of God to continue to grow in our knowledge of this love.
This is an amazing thing—so amazing that Paul actually prayed that we would be able to comprehend the length, width, height and depth of God’s love. But that’s the thing about the love of God – just when you think you’ve got a handle on it, you are overwhelmed again and again. You might say, as Paul did, that this love is not the stuff of intellectual pursuit, but instead of experience. This is knowing God’s love that surpasses knowledge. And knowing beyond knowing that we are, once and for all, rooted and established in the love of God changes us in any number of ways. Here are five of them:
