Eph. 3:16-19: Paul has a prayer you can pray that will increase your love exponentially: “That God may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being ROOTED AND GROUNDED IN LOVE, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know THE LOVE OF CHRIST that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
“WALK IN LOVE” (Eph. 4:31-5:2) “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all hatred. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children. And WALK IN LOVE, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
- Faith and love work together. Galatians says, “Faith works BY LOVE.”
- GUARD YOUR HEART, it’s not worth it to open up a big grudge door to sickness and disease!
- The mountain you need to rebuke may be a big old grudge living INSIDE OF YOU! Be “quick to repent and quick to forgive, and slow to anger.”
The “Love of Christ” Gumbo (Romans 8)— length, breadth, depth, and height. (Gumbo has four ingredients: roux, stock, Creole seasoning and a meat)— will “cure what ails you!”
1. “NO CONDEMNATION” (Romans 8:1)
- “Therefore, now, there is not even one bit of condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1, Wuest). If you have ONE BIT of condemnation in you, you are not walking in the love of Christ.
- “What IS CONDEMNATION?” This whole verse is a courtroom scene.
- Satan is the “Prosecutor.” He’s got your NUMBER. He knows all of your faults, your failures, your past, and your mistakes.
- JESUS is your “Defense attorney.” This is the first thing about the “love of Christ”: He loves you. He’s on your side. He lives for you. He is representing you.
- THE HEAVENLY FATHER is the “Judge”! He cannot play favorites toward you but he IS YOUR FATHER.
- “I will remember their sins no more.” (Heb. 8:12)“ Faith comes from a clean conscience.” YOU ARE FORGIVEN. (Robert the Bruce and his hounds).
2. “LEGAL ADOPTION”
- “The love of Christ”: You are not only justified and forgiven, YOU ARE legally ADOPTED:
- “You have received the SPIRIT OF ADOPTION as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then HEIRS—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” (Romans 8: 15-17)
- Because of the “love of Christ,” God the Father has legally adopted us in Christ. GOD IS NO LONGER YOUR JUDGE. He is your Daddy, your Papa. Jesus, God’s natural born son, became your LEGAL, BLOOD BROTHER! We are now CO-HEIRS, JOINT-HEIRS with Christ.
3. “PERFECT INTERCESSION.”
- There is a third part of the “love of Christ” because there is another person in the courtroom: THE HOLY SPIRIT. He is our “INTERCESSOR.” This was the person who handed the Judge a perfect, written petition of your plea.
- “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the SPIRIT HIMSELF INTERCEDES FOR US with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom. 8: 26-27)
- WHEN WE PRAY IN THE SPIRIT, The Intercessor speaks to God a PERFECT PRAYER through us! It is the perfect will of God.
- “For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters MYSTERIES IN THE SPIRIT. (1 Cor. 14: 2).
4. “NO SEPARATION.”
- This last dimension of the love of Christ is also a legal term (force mah-zhur). It means that absolutely no catastrophe or circumstance can CHANGE THE CONTRACT OF THE JUDGE’S RULING. IT STANDS FOREVER. Nothing, absolutely nothing, that you can ever go through in your entire lifetime can separate you from the “love of God in Christ Jesus.”
- “Who shall SEPARATE US (“divorce us”) from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? NO, in all these things we are MORE THAN CONQUERORS through him who LOVED US. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor demons, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to SEPARATE US from THE LOVE OF GOD WHICH IS IN CHRIST JESUS OUR LORD.”
- NO CONDEMNATION, LEGAL ADOPTION, PERFECT INTERCESSION, NO SEPARATION!