The Love of Christ Revealed
Series: The Heart of God (Part 2)
Scripture:
I pray 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. Ephesians 3:17-19
Introduction
Two thousand years ago, a man stands outside a tomb. The air is thick with grief; ritual wailing echoes through the dusty streets of Bethany. Friends press in close, their voices laced with confusion and accusation: Where were you? You knew he was sick. If you had only been here, he wouldn't have died.
The tomb belongs to Lazarus. The man standing before it is a humble carpenter from Nazareth, yet He is the Messiah, the Christ, the creator of heaven and earth.
As Mary and Martha weep, Scripture records an astounding moment: Christ looks upon their pain, and His heart breaks. He does not remain distant. Jesus wept. He stands in the dust, tears streaming down His face. The onlookers, surprised by the intensity of His sorrow, whisper among themselves: See, how much He loved him!
Suddenly, Jesus steps toward the grave. He is the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, Author of Life, the God of the universe, yet clothed in frail human flesh, holding all power in heaven and on earth. However facing these sisters whom he loved, He offers no theological lecture, nor does He retreat. Deeply moved and groaning in spirit, He approaches the shadowed cave, sealed shut by a massive stone.
When He commands the stone to be rolled away, Martha recoils, warning him of the gruesome reality: a body four days decaying in the heat. Unshaken, Jesus reminds her that true faith beholds the glory of God.
He lifts His eyes to heaven, praying aloud so the crowd might know He was sent by the Father. Then, with a voice that reverbs through the valley of death, He roars into the darkness: Lazarus, come out!
A deafening silence falls. Then, movement. A corpse walks out from the cave, still wrapped head to toe in burial linen. Into the stunned silence of the crowd, Jesus speaks the final command: Unbind him, and let him go.
Last time, we launched our series, The Heart of God, by exploring the foundational truth of the Father’s Heart. From Moses in the desert to the Apostle John in his letters, we saw that the infinite God reveals Himself as a perfect, loving Father.
Yet as finite human beings, we are left asking: How does an invisible, infinite Father make His love tangible, touchable, and undeniable to us?
We spoke last time that the only way we can know the heart of God is by how much is revealed to us. Paul writes that by knowing the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge means that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.
The love of Christ is partly revealed at that tomb and then ultimately, at the cross. The love of Christ is not a different love from the Father's; it is the Father's heart made visible in human history. As Jesus declared, Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9).
In our text, Ephesians 3:17-19, the Apostle Paul falls to his knees and prays this prayer. He asks for supernatural strength to comprehend a love that surpasses human comprehension. He wants us to see that Christ's love is a multidimensional reality it has a breadth, a length, a depth, and a height.
Today, we will examine the three ways the love of Christ is put on full display for us:
- The Breadth of His Love: A love that stretches wide across our self-made barriers to embrace the outcast.
- The Length and Depth of His Love: A love that stoops into our darkest pits to execute a sacrificial rescue mission.
- The Height of His Love: A love that does not merely pull us out of the mud, but lifts us to sit in royal places with the King.
Point 1: The Breadth of His Love Revealed in His Wide Embrace
Christ loves us this much!
The breadth of Christ's love is revealed by who He invites into His inner circle. Often mere human love is naturally narrow; we build walls, draw boundaries, and decide who belongs based on status, background, or behaviour. But Christ's love reaches boldly across every cultural, racial, and moral divide we erect.
Story
In the heat of the midday sun beating down on Jacob’s well. Jesus sits and waits. A Samaritan woman approaches, holding an empty jar. She comes at noon—in the scorching heat of the day—perhaps intentionally to avoid the whispers, the stares, and the judgment of her community. She is an outcast among outcasts.
He looks at her and breaks every social, cultural, and religious rule of His day with four simple words: “Give me a drink.” She is stunned. Jews didn't speak to Samaritans, and Jewish rabbis certainly didn't speak to isolated, compromised women in public. But Jesus doesn't see a scandal to avoid; He sees a someone in desperate need. He shifts her focus from physical water to living water—a supernatural spring that wells up to eternal life and satisfies the deepest thirst of the human heart.
When she asks for this water, Jesus gently touches the hidden wound of her life. He says, "Go, call your husband." She replies, "I have no husband." And Jesus reveals His divine knowledge: "You are right. You’ve had five husbands, and the man you’re living with now is not your husband."
Notice what Jesus didn't do. He didn't condemn her. He didn't recoil from her past. He exposed her secret shame not to crush her, but to heal her—showing her that He knew every detail of her broken story, and He was pursuing her anyway! This is truth spoken in love.
When we see people either not fulfilling their potential or leading self-destructive lives, those who love them want to speak into their lives, but are often misunderstood. Jesus never told us not to judge, in fact, wise judgment without condemnation is encouraged. When we judge others we are aware of our own shortcomings, the plank in our own eye, our propensity to fall and willingness to bear the consequences of the same standard of judgment upon ourselves.
Jesus then goes on to tear down generations of religious division, teaching her that God is not seeking worship locked in a specific mountain or building, but true worshipers who worship in spirit and in truth.
And then comes the climax of the story. When this rejected woman mentions that the Messiah is coming, Jesus utters one of the most amazing declarations in all of Scripture: “I who speak to you am He.”
He didn't make that glorious revelation to the religious elite in Jerusalem. He gave it to a broken, five-times-divorced Samaritan woman at a lonely well!
What happens next shows us the power of His wide embrace. She leaves her water jar behind—leaving behind the very weight of her past—and runs back into the town that had rejected her. She cries out: “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did! Could this be the Christ?”
And while His disciples are worried about buying lunch, Jesus looks at the crowd of Samaritans streaming out of the city toward Him and tells His followers: “Lift your eyes! The fields are white for harvest!”
This is the breadth of the love of Christ.
Human love draws boundaries. Human love builds walls to keep the broken out. But the love of Jesus steps straight into Samaria. It sits at the well with the outcast. It looks past our scandal, past our shame, past our messy histories, and says: I have living water for you.
Christ doesn't wait for us to clean up our lives before He approaches us. He meets us right in the middle of our heat, our isolation, and our regret—and He offers us a place at His table.
- The Outcast Met: In John 4, Jesus intentionally breaks the social taboos of His day. He walks straight into Samaria to sit at a well with a rejected, isolated woman carrying the weight of five failed marriages. Where society saw a scandal to avoid, Christ saw a daughter to reclaim.
- The Barrier Broken: From embracing touch-deprived lepers to dining in the homes of corrupt tax collectors, Jesus proved that His love is wide enough to enclose the very people the world writes off.
Scripture: For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.” 2 Corinthians 5:14
Point 2: The Length and Depth of His Love Revealed in His Sacrificial Action
Christ's love is not passive or distant. True love moves; it has a destination. The length of His love shows how far He will travel to find us, and the depth shows how low He will stoop to save us. Christ's love is not merely a warm emotion it is a bloody, sacrificial act of history.
Look at where this length and depth are put on display: the Upper Room on the eve of the Passover.
John 13 opens with a line that sets the stage for the entire story: “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”
Think about that moment. Death on the cross is hours away. The devil has already put betrayal into the heart of Judas Iscariot. Jesus knows that within hours, these very men surrounding Him will panic, desert Him, and scatter into the night.
He knows all power in heaven and on earth has been given into His hands. He knows He came from God and is going back to God.
So what does the Sovereign King of the Universe do with all that power?
He doesn't demand a throne. He doesn't call down twelve legions of angels.
He gets up from the table. He strips off His outer garment. He ties a slave’s towel around His waist, pours water into a basin, and kneels in the dust.
Imagine the silence in that room as he kneels before these fickle men—and begins to wash the dirt off their feet.
He moves from disciple to disciple. He kneels before Peter, who recoils in shock: “Lord, do you wash my feet? You shall never wash my feet!” Jesus looks at him and says, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” Desperate not to be separated from his Master, Peter cries out: “Lord, not my feet only, but my hands and my head!”
Jesus reminds him that the one who has bathed is already clean—showing us that His cleansing is complete, though we still walk through the grime of a fallen world.
Then, think of the absolute depth of this love: Jesus gets to Judas Iscariot. Jesus knows every detail of the treachery in Judas's heart. He knows the thirty pieces of silver are already spoken for. Yet the Lord of glory holds the feet of His betrayer in His hands, washes away the dirt, and wipes them dry with the towel around His waist. He did indeed love them to the absolute end.
When He puts His garments back on and sits down, He looks at them and asks: “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. A servant is not greater than his master.”
- The Ultimate Descent: On the night before His execution (John 13), Jesus gathers with His disciples. Fully aware that these men are about to panic, desert Him, and run and knowing Judas is actively selling Him out ”Jesus does something breathtaking. The King of Glory strips off His outer robe, kneels in the dust, and washes the filth from their feet.
- The Rescue Mission: Christ does not stand at the top of a mountain shouting instructions down to us in our wreckage. He steps into the mud. He descends into our shame, our darkness, and our sin, ultimately allowing Himself to be nailed to a Roman cross to drag us out of the abyss. He endured the absolute limit of human suffering to secure our liberation.
Scripture: Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends.” John 15:13
Scripture: And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross!” Philippians 2:8
Point 3: The Height of His Love Revealed in Our Royal Elevation
The enemy loves to whisper that even if God forgives you, you will always be a second-class citizen in His kingdom ”permanently scarred by your past. The height of Christ's love utterly destroys that lie.
The love of Christ does not merely pull us out of the pit; it elevates us to the palace. It takes those who feel broken, worthless, and ruined by their choices, and seats them directly at the King's table. There is an illustration of how King David treated the grandson of Saul.
- The Shadow of Lo-debar: In 2 Samuel 9, we meet Mephibosheth, the orphaned grandson of King Saul. Crippled in both feet, he hides in Lo-debar” a desolate wasteland he is terrified that the new King, David, will hunt him down and execute him. But David sends chariots, not soldiers. He brings the outcast into the palace and declares: Do not be afraid... You shall eat at my table continually. In a moment, Mephibosheth is lifted from the dirt and crowned with the honour of a king’s son.
- In Christ’s love: He lifts us out of our ruin and establishes us as a new humanity. Where Adam brought death, Christ empowers us to 'reign in life' (Romans 5:17)—not as second-class survivors, but as a royal priesthood and reigning kings called to represent His kingdom on earth."
- Seated in Victory: This is the height of Christ's love in action. He does not leave us scrubbing the floors of our past. He completely restores our status, invests us with royal authority, and fills us with His divine fullness so we can walk in total freedom.
Scripture: But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions... And God raised us with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” Ephesians 2:4-6
Conclusion
We began today outside a tomb in Bethany, watching the Son of God weep over human pain as onlookers whispered in awe: See how much He loved him!
That moment at the tomb was not an isolated incident it was a revelation of the very heart of God for us. In Jesus Christ, the invisible affection of an infinite Father stepped directly into our broken, dusty reality to make His love tangible, touchable, and undeniable to us all.
Whenever we feel invisible, unreachable, or weighed down by our past, we only need to look again at the multi-dimensional love of Jesus:
- Look at the Breadth of His love: It reaches across every barrier we have ever built. He walked into Samaria for a broken woman at a well, and He reaches straight into our deepest isolation today. No matter who we are, where we have been, or what we have done, His embrace is wide enough to enclose every single one of us.
- Look at the Length and Depth of His love: His love is not a distant, passive feeling. It is a sacrificial rescue mission. He stooped to wash the dirty feet of His betrayers in the Upper Room, and He stooped all the way to a Roman cross to bear our sin, our shame, and our punishment. He descended into our dark pit so He could drag us out of the mud.
- Look at the Height of His love: He does not leave us in the dirt scrubbing the floors of our past. Just as David called Mephibosheth out of the barren wasteland of Lo-debar, Christ lifts us out of the ruin of Adam’s fall. He inaugurates a new humanity in clothing us with royal authority, seating us together at the King’s table, and empowering us to reign in life as kings and priests (Romans 5:17).
We no longer have to wander through this life wondering how the Almighty God feels about us. We do not have to guess His intentions or fear His rejection.
When we look at Jesus sitting with the Samaritan outcast, kneeling to wash dirty feet, and stretching His arms out wide on Calvary’s cross, the entire universe is declaring the final verdict of the Father's heart over our lives today:
See how much He loves us.
