+III. For establishment in love.+--True love is rooted in the heart. It is a spiritual affection towards Christ. Its fruits are love to men, imitation of Christ's example, obedience to His commands, zeal for His honour, and diligence in His service. +IV. For increase of knowledge in the love of Christ.+--The love of Christ passeth all known examples of love. This love passeth our comprehension in respect of its breadth or extent, its length, its depth, as the benefits it has procured exceed all human estimate. Though the love of Christ passeth knowledge, there is a sense in which it is known to the saints. They have an experimental knowledge, an influential knowledge, an assimilating knowledge of the love of Christ. +V. For the fulness of God.+--That they may have such a supply of Divine influence as would cause them to abound in knowledge, faith, love, and all virtues and good works.--_Lathrop._ Ver. 19. _The Love of Christ._ +I. The love of Christ passeth knowledge.+--1. _He Himself furnishes an illustrative instance_ when Paul says, "For scarcely for a righteous man will one die"--a merely just and righteous man would be admired; but he would not so take hold of the heart of another to produce a willingness to die for him;--"yet peradventure," in some rare case, "for a good man," a man of benevolence, adorned with the softer virtues and abounding in the distribution of his favours--for such a one "some might even dare to die"; some one, overcoming even the love of life in the fulness of his gratitude, might venture to give his own life to preserve that of such a one. But we were neither just nor good; we were sinners, and "God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." Passes it not, then, all knowledge, all reasonable conception and probability, that this fallen nature should be so sympathised with that these flagrant rebellions should excite, not an inexorable anger, but pity and love? And such love that our Saviour--looking not so much on man as offending, but as His creature, and as His creature still capable of restoration--should melt in compassion and die to effect his redemption; this is indeed love "that passeth knowledge."