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The Church is the Place where the Love of Christ is KnownEphesians 3:14-21Today I’d like to speak once again on the New Testament reading from the Book of Ephesians 3:14-21 and to concentrate on what we learn from it about the Church. I’m calling this sermon ‘The Church is the Place where the Love of Christ is Known’.Let’s begin with some observations about the prayer of the Apostle Paul which begins at verse 14. Paul is praying for the Ephesian Christians, and we get to listen in. If we listen closely, we may be surprised and challenged by what he prays for these people.He prays that God ‘may grant you to be strengthened with power in your inner being’ (v.16). ‘Power’ here is taken from the Greek word ‘dunamis’ which is clearly where the English derivative dynamite comes from. But think about that phrase for a moment – ‘strengthened with power in your inner being’. He is not talking about a merely theoretical apprehension of facts, but about an interior experience.What else? ‘That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith’ (v.17). Again, the verb for ‘dwell’ there is taken from the Greek ‘katoikeysia’. Those of you who know your Greek will spot the word ‘oikos’ within that verb. ‘Oikos’ means ‘home’. In other words, Paul is praying that Christ may make his home in the hearts of believers, and that this might happen through ‘faith’.What else? That they ‘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’ (v.18-19). Again, the verb ‘comprehend’ sounds very dry to English ears, like when we are forced to do comprehension at school. In the Greek, the word ‘katalambano’ can be translated in various ways: to seize, grasp, attain. And it has a far more violent connotation, as when a wrestler seizes his opponent in an athletic contest. That you may seize the love of Christ.Finally, that ‘you may be filled with the fullness of God’ (v.19). And that is the way the prayer ends, that you might be filled with God’s fullness, whatever we are to make of that.My point here can be drawn out by observing a seeming contradiction in what Paul says: he wants the Ephesian Christians to ‘know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge’ (v.19). Both the words ‘know’ and ‘knowledge’ derive from ‘gnosis’. They are the same. The question is therefre: How can you know something that surpasses knowledge?The answer is that there are different types of knowledge. We might call them ‘theoretical’ and ‘experiential’. Paul is praying that the Ephesian Christian would not only know something about God and about the Gospel and about Jesus Christ, but that they would experience these things deeply in their hearts.Last week, I said that evangelism is a normal and central aspect of the Christian Church and that since the earliest days of the Church and throughout Church history this has been so. The same is true for what I am saying now: Christianity is not merely a set of theoretical beliefs but it is about an experiential relationship with the living God. I will take two examples from across the spectrum of Western Christianity to illustrate this.The first is from the seventeenth century mathematician, philosopher, and polymath, Blaise Pascal, who happened to be a Roman Catholic. When Pascal died, it was discovered that he had an account of an experience of God sewn into the lining of his jacket. The vision of God took place on November 23rd, 1654. He recorded it as follows:‘The year of grace 1654,Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,FIRE.GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacobnot of the philosophers and of the learned.Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.GOD of Jesus Christ.My God and your God.Your GOD will be my God.Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.He is o