Dear Veritas,

There is something I want you to know…

It is an awful thing to know something wonderful in your mind but have that information mean nothing to your actual life. Someone might question whether you truly know it at all, if that is the case. In fact, it may be worse to half-know something than to not know it at all (Luke 12:47-48). Oh, that we would truly know what must be known.

Paul prays that the Ephesian believers would know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3:19). Are you wondering, how can you know something that surpasses knowledge? The word is ginosko (ghin-oce-ko)—it means to come to know, perceive, understand, or become acquainted with. It is also the word used to refer to sex. You know, Adam “knew” Eve (wink, wink). It is more than head knowledge, it is experiential knowledge. Before Paul prays for the Ephesians to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, he wants them to comprehend how big God’s love is—its breadth, length, height, and depth. He wants them to get in it, experience it, climb the heights, plumb the depths, run the lengths, swim the breadth of it, discover that you can’t find its end. Know it by experiencing it.

I can read books on skydiving. I can watch documentaries on it. I can learn how parachutes work and at what height to jump from. I can interview skydivers on their experiences. But I’ll never truly know it until I jump out of a plane.

Do you know the love of Christ? I’m not asking if you have been to Sunday school, read the Bible, and hung around other Christians. But do you know it-know it? Have you floated in the ocean of His love, feeling just how deep it is under your dangling feet, where the clear water gives way to a continuing darkness in the sea of forgetfulness? Have you looked across the horizon of His love in both directions to a distance farther than your eyes can travel, as far as the east is from the west? Have you gotten lost staring up at the countless stars in the night sky, only to finally understand what they are saying as they declare the glory of God?

There is a knowledge of God that doesn’t save, and there is a knowledge of God that changes everything. Paul prays that we would know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. But how do you know if you know it—really know it, not just have a knowledge of it?

Paul uses this phrase again in his second letter to the Corinthians, but this time in a way that speaks to the effects of knowing the love of Christ:

“For the love of Christ controls us…” (2 Corinthians 5:14a)

The effect of really knowing the love of Christ is being controlled by the love of Christ. Now, that word, synecho (soon-ekh-o), can have two meanings. It can mean to constrain or restrict movement, or it can mean to compel or encourage movement. So which one is it here? You betcha. Both. Paul is saying the love of Christ—knowing the love of Christ—impacts his life. It compels him to do things he wouldn’t normally do. And it constrains him from doing things he might want to do. It has a synecho effect on him. It shapes his life. In fact, what Paul says is this: “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15) The love of Christ led Paul to a conclusion that his life is not about him and it should not be lived for himself. A sign of knowing the love of Christ is a life that is shaped by the love of Christ—a life that is both compelled and constrained by it, a life lived differently because of it.

So, do you know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge? Are there things you are doing in life because of the love of Christ? What are they? Are there things you are not doing in life because of the love of Christ? What are they?

I pray that we would know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge—that we would be in it, familiar with its heights and depths, overwhelmed by the scope of it all. I pray that we would be people who have experienced the depth of the sea of forgetfulness, and His mercy that stretches as far as the east is from the west. I pray that we would be changed by it, compelled by it to live differently.

Love, Jake