The Dimensions of God’s Love

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,
may have power, together with all the saints,
to grasp how wide and long and high and deep
is the love of Christ….
Ephesians 3:17-18 NIV 

In school we learned that there are three dimensions – length, width, and height.  Using those measurements, we can determine the size of anything.  Later, I heard that the fourth dimension is time.  That put a new kink into it.

However, in Ephesians, it says that God’s love for us has four dimensions – width, length, height, and depth.  Isn’t that using one twice?   And what about time?

God is Eternal, and his love for us is eternal.  He chose us before the foundation of the world…. Before time.  OK, that takes care of the dimension of time.  But that still leaves four dimensions of his love.

Think of it this way.  Picture yourself standing before God.

You stretch out your arms to the sides.  If you are close enough, you may touch someone else.  Maybe you give them a hug…. Maybe it is someone you don’t want to hug.  Now God does the same thing.  You can’t reach very far, or very many people, but God’s arms are much longer.  They reach as far as there is to reach.  They can hug the whole world.  They can hug those you want to hug but can’t reach.  That is the width of God’s love.

OK, now you stretch out your arms in front of you.   Again, you can reach only a very short way in the direction you are facing.  God’s arms can reach much farther than yours, and he can reach behind too.  Here I again thought of time.  I can touch now.  God can touch the future, and what is past.  That is the length of God’s love.

Two more directions to go.  Reach up.  No matter how tall

or short you are, compared to God you can’t reach very far.  He is El Elyon, the Most High God.  No thing, no one, is higher that he is.  Not Satan, not sickness, not poverty, not terrorists, not anything…. Nothing is higher, bigger, stronger, taller than God.  That is the height of God’s love.

One more to go.  Reach down.  Better yet, think of how

down you’ve felt.  How deep the pit you are in or have been in.  No pit is too deep for God’s love to reach you and lift you out.    Psalm 40:1-2 says “I waited patiently for the Lord, he turned to me and heard my cry.  He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.”  You can almost hear the sucking sound as the Lord lifts you up out of the muck that is trying so hard to

you.  And he sets you a on a rock.  Jesus is the Rock.  And you are filthy and smelly.  But wait, this rock is different.  You don’t stay filthy and smelly.  He cleans you off.  That is the depth of God’s love.

Thank you, Lord, that you have such long arms to love me.

I asked Jesus….
     “How much do you love me?”
And Jesus said…
     “This much.”
Then He stretched out
His arms and died.