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Deeply Loved

Now hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 1:5, my translation)

How does hope not disappoint or shame? Because God deeply loves us, he pours this love out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. This love is deep, it takes root, it establishes us along with faith so that we endure. When Paul writes that no authority, power, suffering, affliction, persecution, hardship can separate us from Christ he writes, this strength to endure is established in love "who can separate us from the love of Christ" (Romans 8:35-39). Experientially knowing the deep love of God, will establish us so that we will not be separated from Him. In context, this verse speaks of enduring affliction, distress of mind, and Paul writes we can boast in our affliction because of the hope of the glory of God, knowing that affliction produces endurance and endurance produces hope and hope doesn't disappoint because God's love is poured out into our hearts. This deep love of God establishes us, giving us the foundation to endure. Our heavenly Father wants to know how deeply we are loved or said another way he establishes us deeply in love.

... that Christ established in your heart through faith, rooted and grounded in love, so that you are fully strong to lay hold of, together with all the saints, what is the breadth, length, height, and depth, both to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, so that filled to the extent all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3: 14-19, my translation)

The word established κατοικέω (katoikeō) means to inhabit, to settle and is usually used as "dwell in, settle in, am established in, inhabit." Paul prays that God would grant us to be strengthened, grow strong, confirmed (κραταιόω, krataioó) through the power of the Holy Spirit in our inner being. Now, God is one, so Christ and the Holy Spirit dwells in us, in truth Paul writes if the Spirit dwells in us, then indeed the Spirit of God dwells in us which he also calls the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9). So Christ dwells in us if the Spirit does therefore I believe Paul is speaking of Christ not in the sense of dwelling in us but being established in us through faith and as he goes on to say being deeply rooted in love. He could have said rooted and built up, strengthened in faith and rooted and grounded in love. This is so because he writes it elsewhere.

rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught (Colossians 2:7).

Christ is established in our hearts, rooted built up in faith ( Ephesians 3: 17). And we are rooted and grounded in love (Ephesians 3: 17). This John writes is a mature person whom knows Him who was in the beginning, who is Christ. They are established in Christ. We need to be established in faith and rooted in love, as Paul prays, so that we may be strengthened so to grasp, lay hold of, to know the deep love of Christ. As he mentions this was something he had taught. 

How does this work experientially? Are we corporately as a church teaching that each individual part matters? That each one is taught so that they are established, rooted, grounded, and built up in Him, in faith and love? We should as Jesus tells us that without such a foundation they will not endure the thorns; persecution, the cares and anxieties of this world, and the deceit of riches. In the parables of soils, the one who grows up to endure so to bear fruit has been established with deep roots (Matthew 13: 20-23). And we see in Paul's writing two things that we are rooted in; faith and love. What strengthens us so to grasp more of the love of God so that we endure? It is faith working through love (Galatians 5:6). Without knowing deeply the love of God and having been established and rooted in it along with faith we will not endure. Yes, we overcome through faith, but faith is nothing without love as love is the bond that leads to maturity (bearing fruit). Being deeply rooted in the love of God and being strengthened in faith is how we will grasp, lay hold of the fullness of God. 

he will establish you until the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 1:8)

We have access to this grace in which we stand through faith, and we can boast in the hope of the glory of God, as God is establishing us through the trials. God disciplines those he loves, for His glory, that we share in his holiness. This is what he purposed in Christ, that we are conformed to the image of His Son, and he is working out all things for our good, according to this purpose. So we can boast in the suffering, it is for the glory of God, and as we endure God's love is poured out into our hearts rooting us deeper and deeper in his love, to establish us. "At the present reconciled in his body of flesh through his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard..." (Colossians 1:22-23, ESV). This is where God wants his children, rooted, grounded, founded, established, steadfast, not tossed to and fro in deceitful scheming, but growing up truth in love, in unity of faith, and knowledge of the Son of God into mature adulthood (Ephesians 4:13-15). 

Oh, we pray, that we are strengthened through His Spirit, Christ established in our hearts through faith, rooted and grounded in love so we may lay hold, know the deep love of Christ in order that we may be filled to the fullness of God. 





 


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