TRANSCRIPT February 25, 2018 • WHI-1403 …

1 TRANSCRIPT February 25, 2018 WHI-1403 Knowing the love of christ 00:00:02 Michael Horton: We're familiar with people pitting emotion against intellect. So, you have the eggheads who just want to take the doctrine and the emotional folks who say I just want to feel it. I don t need to know it. Paul just blows all that to bits. It is filled with emotion but it's cognitive at the same time, that you 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 . 00:00:37 Narrator: Five centuries ago in taverns and public houses across Europe, the masses would gather for discussion and debate over the latest ideas sweeping the land. From one such meeting place, a small Cambridge inn called The White Horse, the Reformation came to the English-speaking world. Carrying on the tradition, welcome to the White Horse Inn.

2 00:01:02 Michael Horton: Hello and welcome to another edition of the White Horse Inn. With us in the studio, we have Adriel Sanchez, Pastor of North Park Presbyterian Church in the San Diego and Steve Parks is Professor of Theology at Concordia University in Irvine, California, and Neil Edlin, Pastor of Saint Mary Magdalene's Anglican Church in Orange, California. I'm Mike Horton, I impersonate a professor at Westminster Seminary, California. Great to have you guys back again on the White Horse Inn. We were ending last program with Paul's wonderful climax of his argument that really the church is the revelation of the mystery of God, particularly the uniting of Jew and gentile into one body with christ as the head. And that s why Paul says we don t lose heart even in my suf-fering. Look, I'm in jail for Pete's sake writing to you. Don t lose heart. If christ 's suffering was the means of him trouncing Satan, our suffering is part of that.

3 Our suffering can only tear down the remnants of Satan's kingdom. And so now in chapter three, he turns in verse 14 to say, " For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." First of all, I mean, I got to say, one of the things that leaps out here is as in many passages in Paul is Trinitarian. I mean, you have christ dwelling in our hearts through faith. You have him saying, "I bow my knees before the Father," so that he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit, so that christ may dwell in your hears through faith. So, we bow to the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit. That s what's wonderful about preaching this gospel, that with him, we can all fall on our knees in praise of the Father for this glorious plan that he has fulfilled in his Son and now is completing by his Holy Spirit.

4 Why does he say, "From whom every fami-ly in heaven and on earth is named?" 00:03:36 Steve Parks: Well, I think you get the idea here. Sometimes, people suggest that God is father like people on earth sometimes are fathers, when in reality the exact opposite of that is true. People on earth are said to be like God. God is not like them. In other words, it's God who's given the precedence, it's God who is the archetypical Father. He is the one who is the head of all creation and then you have human beings who are sometimes said to be like him when they head up their own families, when they head up their communities, when they head up their own nations and so forth. And so, I think there's the idea that human beings can sometimes reflect certain communicable attributes or aspects of God and be a father similar in ways that he is a father, though, of course, not identical to. 00:04:23 Michael Horton: So let's move to verse 17 then, "So 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.

5 " 00:04:48 Neil Edlin: These are more those unsearchable riches. The love of christ surpasses knowledge, meaning, the love is just incomprehensible to us. The breadth and length and height and depth of God's love for us in christ , so it goes in all directions and then that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. 00:05:05 Michael Horton: I'm reminded of Romans 8:29 through 35 where Paul says, "What then can separate us from the love of God which is in christ ? Neither height nor depth nor things present 00:05:21 Neil Edlin: nor things to come nor angels, rulers or principalities. 00:05:23 Michael Horton: Nothing in all of heaven or earth will ever be able to separate me from the love of God that is in Jesus christ . 00:05:30 Adriel Sanchez: And how important it is for us to grasp that. It's one thing to say, yeah, we know that God loves us, but it seems like what the Apostle Paul is doing here he's long-ing for the people to whom he's writing to have the illumination that we spoke about in a previ-ous episode, the genuine understanding of something that ultimately is beyond our fully being able to grasp it, but to know the love of christ and he's praying to that end.

6 00:05:57 Michael Horton: We're familiar with people pitting emotion against intellect. So, you have the eggheads who just want to take the doctrine and then the emotional folks who say I just want to feel it. I don t need to know it. 00:06:14 Neil Edlin: Head knowledge versus heart knowledge. 00:06:17 Michael Horton: Yeah, we don t need no education. And Paul just blows all that to bits because it is filled with emotion. It is filled with praise even to the point where I fall down on my knees before the Father. It's filled with gratitude, grounded, rooted and grounded in love but it's cognitive at the same time, that you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height. That s what we're doing when people say, well, going through all these doctrines. Well, actually what we should be doing, I hope, is trying to compre-hend with all the saints, present and those who have gone before us, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of christ that surpasses knowledge.

7 We're not saying that we can comprehend it in the sense of being able to know the truth as God knows it. All we're saying is, hey, let's come scuba dive into this so that we may be filled with all the full-ness of God. Folks, this isn't just about knowing more facts, it's about being filled with all the fullness of God. I love the line from J. Gresham Machen, the New Testament Professor at Princeton who kind of led the charge against liberalism. He observed that liberals of his day were, "Constantly talking about applied Christianity without having any Christianity to apply." You can't apply these great doctrines of the faith without comprehending with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of christ that surpasses knowledge. 00:08:16 Neil Edlin: And Paul knows that this is incomprehensible to us in the ultimate sense. But he's saying pursue it.

8 You have to pursue it anyway. He's praying for the church. He wants it to grow and increase. christ 's love is incomprehensible. 00:08:29 Michael Horton: Just because you can't touch the bottom of the lake doesn t mean you shouldn t swim in it. Then verse 20, Ephesians 3:20, "Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in christ Jesus throughout all generations, for-ever and ever. Amen." I picture there's still -- I mean, this is all still part of it, on his knees col-lapsing before the Father in tears in doxology and saying, now, to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. Wow, far more abundantly. There's this thing in Paul throughout his letters, lavishly, which he lavished upon us the grace, the riches he lavished upon us in christ Jesus.

9 It's not that he gave us a few riches. It's not that there are a couple of things that he did that you really need. And if you improve on it, you can really get somewhere. He lavishes. He gives us more than we need. 00:09:44 Neil Edlin: Right. This is not just your dad giving you a few quarters to go down and play in the arcade. This is the ultimate father giving you all that's his through his Son. 00:09:54 Steve Parks: Part of that here, he says, "To him be glory in the church and in christ Jesus throughout all generations." So, the idea here is that one of the things that he lavishes upon us is that he sees to it that the church continues to exist throughout all generations. So, in the United States especially, we're surrounded by all kinds of cults and sects and other groups that suggest that the church stopped existing after the apostles died and then sprang up again usually in the 19th century.

10 But the Apostle Paul says here that the church glorifies God throughout all generations. Why is that? Because again, it has its foundation laid in christ himself and christ himself builds it and christ himself preserves it throughout all generations. 00:10:38 Michael Horton: Yeah, such a great point. And again, even the glory. God shows his glory in the church. That s amazing, a church full of us. Isn't it amazing to think of yourself as a living stone in a building, a living organic and growing building? 00:11:01 Steve Parks: Especially when you know yourself and you know some of those other stones. I mean, when you look at scripture itself and you see how the church is sometimes de-scribed. Think about the church at Corinth, for example, where they're struggling with division and they're struggling with questions of church discipline and they're struggling with celebration of the sacraments.