The Breadth of Christ’s Love
Let’s continue to explore some of the aspects of Christ’s love. In the previous article, entitled “He Loved First“, I wrote about the fact that God’s love for us preceded our love for Him. While this is true, we can go further, and say that God’s love for us had no beginning, and will have no end. We might think of this as the “how long” dimension, or the length of His love. For me, this brings to mind a passage in Ephesians:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. – Ephesians 3:14-19 NASV
This is a somewhat lengthy passage to quote, but I wanted to include context before focusing in on the particular point I was interested in. To paraphrase, Paul is praying that God would give the reader power to comprehend the greatness of Christ’s love, in several dimensions: breadth, length, height and depth. He is praying for the Ephesians to have the power to grasp something that surpasses knowledge. How’s that for audacity? I’ll follow that with my audacity by tackling the subject myself. Paul, after all, was an apostle, who met Christ Himself face to face. Who am I to speak on such things?
My confidence rests in the same Spirit of God in whom Paul placed his confidence. While he recognized the love of Christ as surpassing knowledge, he knew that the Holy Spirit could teach us about it. The word that is translated “comprehend” comes from a Greek word that means to lay hold of, or seize. With this in mind, let’s take a look at another one of the dimensions of Christ’s love, asking for His Spirit’s power to grasp it. We’ve touched briefly on length; let’s look now at breadth.
While I’m sure that the dimension of breadth may have other possible meanings, it seems reasonable to associate it with the scope of Christ’s love. To clarify, if someone loves his family members and no one else, we might say that his love has a narrow scope. It can certainly be stated that Christ’s love has a broad scope.
One example is the often-quoted verse, John 3:16. “For God so loved the world…” This describes the love of God the Father, but the love of God the Son, Jesus Christ is demonstrated by His action. When Christ died, He died for sinners. He did this in spite of the fact that in His flesh, He didn’t want to. Christ died for the Jews, the subjects who looked and waited for a king, but rejected Him when He came. Christ died for the Greeks and the Romans, who were bought by His blood, and adopted into His family.
Jesus loved a fisherman named Peter, a woman caught in sin, a Samaritan from the “wrong side of the tracks”, and a tax collector named Zacchaeus. He died for the soldier who scourged Him, for the thieves between whom He was crucified, and for the one who swung the hammer and nailed Him to the cross. He showed His love to me when He sweat the drops of blood in Gethsemane, and for you when He said, “Not My will, but Thine be done.”
What amazing love! What broad love! We are so immeasurably blessed to be the recipients of this love. If it had been just long and not broad, it might have included someone else, but excluded us. Take a moment, and allow this to sink in. Reach out with your heart and “grasp” it.
And now, as we think with gratitude on what we have received, let us remember that we are to follow Christ’s example, as stated in 1 Peter 2:
For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, WHO COMMITTED NO SIN, NOR WAS ANY DECEIT FOUND IN HIS MOUTH; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously… – 1 Peter 2:21-23 NASV
Christ, who was perfect, suffered unjustly, and did not revile or threaten. As mentioned earlier, this is evidence of His love for all humanity, and as He showed this by His actions, He was setting an example for us to follow. To make this practical, let’s look at the examples of Christ’s love that were cited above, and the responses they should inspire in us.
Peter did a good job of following, some of the time, but we know that he betrayed Jesus. Love the friend who turns his back on you in a moment of weakness. The woman caught in adultery committed a sin that Jesus, being sinless, would never commit. Love the one in your life who is tempted in ways that you are not. Jews didn’t associate with Samaritans. Love the person who has a social standing different from your own. Tax collectors were despised in the time of Christ. Love the people whose professions are not held in high regard in our time.
And the person who hurts us when we don’t deserve it? The ones near us who are being justly punished for wrongdoing? Someone who carries out an evil plan against us? Christ loved them: let us love them.
As I listed some examples of who Christ loved a few paragraphs back, I ended with me and you. If you would, think of “me and you” as covering the people who live in your own home. I hope these people have not tried you in big ways, but even minor irritations over a long period of time can begin to weaken our resolve to love. Let us pray that God will show us how to broaden our love to include those nearest to us, those who are different from us, those who offend us, and those who hurt us.
Following Christ’s example, and loving others will never pay back the debt of love that we owe to Christ, but it is a real and practical way to show our gratitude to Him for making His love broad enough to include us. Since His love is infinite, there is no limit to the growing room that we have.
Again I say, What amazing love! What broad love! We are so immeasurably blessed to be the recipients of this love. If it had been just long and not broad, it might have included someone else, but excluded us. Take a moment, and allow this to sink in. Reach out with your heart and grasp it.
Next, the depth of Christ’s love.
