Love Unlimited

Series: Life Unlimited

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

Oct. 12, 2025

Love Unlimited

Let’s turn to Eph. 3. This is the last message in the series Life Unlimited and this morning I want us to consider God’s unlimited love for His children. Before we read in Ephesians let’s set the context. The church in Ephesus is comprised mainly of Gentiles and Paul is unfolding the mystery that it was always God’s plan and purpose to bring Jew and Gentile together as one people through the blood of Jesus.

God loves His people a lot! We are His children, adopted in love (ch. 1). We are trophies of His grace (ch. 2). Through all eternity the church will display the grace and love of God. The question on Paul’s heart is, do we know for ourselves the love God has for us? Do we experience personally the great love God feels for us? Paul literally prays that we do.

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶ that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Eph. 3:14-19

The first thing I want us to notice is that Paul is praying for the part of us people can’t see. He prays we are “strengthened with power through his Spirit in [our] inner being.” God isn’t interested in just cleaning up and fixing the outside of us. That was the Pharisee’s problem – they washed the outside of the cup but the inside was filthy. Paul’s prayer is for the Spirit of God to work on our inner being – our inner world - because that is who we really are. You and I have an inner being, an inner world going on that no one around us can see and that is what we live out of. People look at the outward appearance but God looks at the heart.

Paul’s praying for God to meet us in our inner being and enable us, empower us, to experience God’s love for us deeply and personally.

1. A prayer that we might be rooted and grounded in love

The words “rooted and grounded” speaks to what our lives are built on and rooted in. In Matt 7 Jesus says anyone can build a nice-looking house, but what’s important is what foundation is that house built on? A plant or a tree is only as healthy as its roots are healthy. We are to be rooted and grounded – in other words our lives are to be built on, anchored in, and drawing life from – the love of God. The love of Christ. Paul prays that who we are deep within, in our inner being, is rooted in and grounded on the love of God.

My friend Aron Osborne recently wrote a post in FB called contemplation isn’t escape, it’s preparation. Unbeknownst to Aron, his son Bennett snapped a picture of him standing on a park bench in Lancaster County looking out on a beautiful vista of hills and valleys.

It’s been a while since I sat or stood on a park bench. I’m a nostalgia kind of guy but the brief time there wasn’t just thinking back over the years and all that’s transpired since my youth. It was a moment in a particular place to remember who I am [in order to] to keep focused and walk forward with purpose.

Find a bench or a place to reflect on your past - not to stay there. Let it speak to your future. ~ Aron Osborne

That post speaks to me because I think we often miss quiet moments to contemplate where we’ve been, where we’re going, who we are, and at bottom of it all, what is it that roots and grounds our lives? We move so quickly and have so many distractions that many people’s souls are starving and thirsting for something that all the busyness, all the activities and all the entertainment around us can’t satisfy.

On the other end of the spectrum some people are very contemplative. They think a lot about who they are, where their life is going, what’s at the bottom of it all. But that can’t satisfy either if the roots just go deeper into ourselves. We need to be rooted and grounded in something bigger than ourselves. We hunger and thirst for our lives to be built on bigger than us.

When we are rooted and grounded in the love of God, nothing can knock our life down. We don’t find our identity in what we do or even who we are. We don’t try to derive our identity from success and we don’t define our identity by failure. Who we are and what we do flows from the deepest truth about us: we are loved. Loved by God.

Maybe because as a bus driver I spend a lot of time with middle-schoolers and high-schoolers but I want to say this to our young people: you are loved by God. Your life is precious to him. You don’t have to prove something to anyone or be better than someone else or spend your time wishing you could change that thing you don’t like about yourself. Put your roots down deep in the love of Jesus! Build your life on the love of God! Jesus came to give you abundant life, life unlimited, and love unlimited.

There is no greater demonstration of God’s love for you and me than what Jesus did for us two thousand years ago when he died for us. The greatest measurement of love is what someone will sacrifice for you out of love. God gave His all. He gave His Son.

And remember this: Jesus had us in mind when he died for us. Gal 2:20 is a truth we can anchor our lives in: I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Eph 1 tells us that in love God chose us before the foundation of the world and predestined us for adoption. He didn’t choose nameless, faceless blobs to be His children. He knew your name, your face, He knew you to the depth of who you are deep in here in your inner being. And God loves you. Being rooted and grounded in love. If you’re looking for your identity or the purpose of your life – start there! God knows you by name and He loves you. Live by faith in the Son of God who loves you and gave himself for you.

2. A prayer that we might comprehend the unlimited love of God

…may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (vv. 18-19)

Paul wants us to know the measurements of Jesus’ love – how long and broad and high and deep Christ’s love is so that we can know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. How can we know the unknowable? How can we comprehend the uncomprehendable?

Let’s consider the measurements of Christ’s love. Exactly how broad, long, high, and deep is it? God is infinite. He is from everlasting to everlasting, He has no beginning or end. You can travel forever and ever and ever in any direction and God is there. And so is His love because the Bible says God is love. Christ’s love stretches out east, west, north and south forever and ever for infinity. There is no end, there are no edges, to Christ’s love!

So how can we grasp the breadth, length, height, and depth of Christ’s love and know his love that surpasses all knowledge?

A couple nights ago our son Jared set up his telescope in our driveway and the three of us looked through it to see the Andromeda Galaxy. At 2.4 million light years away, the Andromeda Galaxy is one of our closest neighbors. The universe is incredibly vast. We can’t measure the breadth, length, height or depth of the universe, but it is measurable. It has a size. Isaiah 40:12 says God measured out the heavens with the span of His hand. How big is the universe? Smaller than God’s hand! Maybe one day when we’re in our glorified bodies we’ll be able to go to the edge of the universe. What would that edge even look like? But it’s there. The universe isn’t infinite. God is. The love of God is infinite. So how can we possibly know the measurements of Christ’s love? How can we know the unknowable?

I don’t need to know the measurements of the universe or see its edges to know that I’m in it and I will never be outside of it and we can know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge in the same way: I am in his love and I will never be outside of his love. So that, Paul prays, we are filled with the fullness of God.

Twice Paul says it takes power and strength from the Holy Spirit for this to happen. In heaven it doesn’t take special power to see the blazing sun of God’s love. God’s love is the atmosphere of heaven. It fills every nook and cranny.

But sin and Satan and worldliness are like clouds that block the light of God’s love on this earth. We are weighed down with sin and sadness and worldly distractions that obscure our ability to see God’s love. Just as the fog doesn’t make the sun shine any less brightly, these things don’t make God’s love shine any less powerfully, but what they do is obscure our vision of God’s love. We feel unloved. We feel like God isn’t there for us, that He is distant and uncaring.

It takes the power of the Spirit to pierce the fog and break through the blockages so that we see the love of God for us in Christ Jesus. Rom. 8 tells us that nothing in all of creation – not death or life or demons or things that are going on in our life right now OR things that might happen to us in the future or height or depth NOR anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

For all those who take God at His word and truly believe in Jesus as our Savior, who believe that Jesus died as a ransom to pay for our sins, who believe that Jesus rose again on the third day and is coming back to take us home – nothing can come between us and God’s love. Jesus loves us on our best days and on our worst. He loves us when we’re strong and when we’re weak. When we succeed and when we fail. Nothing can separate us from God’s love.

Find a bench or a park or a quiet moment and contemplate on who you are because Christ loves you. Contemplate the love of Christ in your inner being.

For those who have not received Christ as Savior, God offers you eternal life as a free gift. All you have to do is reach and take it by faith. Believe in Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior. Trust in his finished work on Calvary and accept that he died for you because he loves you.

Christ offers us life unlimited as we live in his love unlimited.

Oh the Deep Deep Love