Denver Seminary

Have you ever wondered how much God loves you? In the dark, when the day’s failures hold your heart hostage, do doubts about God’s love creep into your thoughts? There are times when most of us wonder if, maybe today, we finally reached the limits of God’s patience and should expect an unloving reaction from him.

Paul knew these universal fears when he prayed that the scope of Christ’s love for the Ephesians might overwhelm any doubts seeping into their souls. He wrote to them:

“I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:16-19, The Message)

Using the language of measurement—breadth, length, depth, height—Paul acknowledged a fundamental desire to know for sure how much Christ loves us. Ironically the desire to define the scope of God’s love often reflects a deep skepticism that anyone can love someone else completely, that is, with absolute selflessness. In other words, we have a hard time believing that Christ’s love has no boundaries, no endpoint.

It’s risky, believing someone loves us. Perhaps we aren’t loved as much as we hoped. But Paul knew that Christ’s love has no boundaries. You can’t measure the dimensions of Christ’s love because it has no beginning and no end. In Romans 8:38-39 Paul reflected on the impregnability of Christ’s love for us. “I’m absolutely convinced,” he wrote, “that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.”

There’s no reason to ever doubt Christ’s love for you. That certainty will change your life.