I spent two days last week at a counseling conference at Southern Seminary
in Louisville. It was a very fruitful time. I do
want to learn more and more how to share hope and life through God's
Word.
However, I am more and more keenly aware that knowledge puffs up, but love edifies (1 Corinthians 8:1).
This Rest Stop focuses on the exhortations in Ephesians 3:14-19 for us to comprehend the magnificent love Christ has for us AND to personally know this love.
I hope you are edified by these truths.
LEARN THE LANGUAGE
I bow my knees
to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ...
...that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be able to COMPREHEND with all the saints
what is the width and length and depth and height
of this love...
(Ephesians 3:14, 17-18)
Martyn Lloyd Jones notes that the word "comprehend" in this verse refers to an intellectual knowledge of the concept of love. The word "apprehend" is perhaps a better translation.
In other words, love is not just an emotional, sentimental, and intuitive love. There is an intellectual element to love.
The "width and length and depth and height" is a reference to using our minds to meditate on biblical truths about love.
Christians do not have to depend on emotions to understand love. We can prayerfully and objectively read about love in the Scriptures to receive spiritual understanding through the Holy Spirit.
So, we can learn the language of love through the Scriptures. During the process of reading the Scriptures, we are transformed by personally receiving Christ's love from Christ Himself, as described next.
LOVE THE LINGUIST
...to know the love of Christ
which passes understanding.
(Ephesians 3:19)
Martyn Lloyd Jones further notes that the word "know" in this verse refers to a personal, direct experience of the love of Christ. This is a fruit of meditating on and comprehending the Scriptures as previously described.
To "comprehend the love of Christ" means that we are looking at the love of Christ externally with a sense of wonder and amazement.
To "know the love of Christ" means that we are now experiencing the love of Christ internally! We are now being bathed in His love and filled with His love!
We all can be aware of a person's love for us through their actions for us. However, we all also crave to be told we are loved.
Likewise and even more profoundly, we are aware of Christ's love for us supremely displayed on the cross. And by the Word of God through the Spirit of God, Christ personally tells us His love for us.
Jesus is the linguist who knows the language of love. When He personally reveals His love to us, we can respond with the love of God that has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5)!
My dear friend and mentor, John Best, is a retired professor of Greek at the Dallas Theological Seminary. Dr. Best used to tell his students who were struggling with Greek: "If you want to learn Greek, just fall in love with a Greek person!" And then Dr. Best would always add: "And Jesus knows Greek!"
My personal application of Dr. Best's analogy is:
If I want to learn how to speak the language of God's Word for the ministry of discipleship, I need to fall in love with Jesus who is the Word!
I am not called to share the Word academically, I am called to share God's Word relationally through Christ so that others fall in love with Him too!
Love,
Learn and Love 
