MONDAY March 31st
Ephesians 5:2
‘And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.’
A walk in love
It is often the case with the apostle Paul in that he sometimes hits us with something that should cause us to stop and examine our ways. The same also when we consider so much of what Jesus had to teach, for when it comes to the Christian Walk, or faith so much of it goes against what we see as being the norm in a fallen world. That is why we need to allow God to work on us, by his Spirit and through the application of his word to make us more Christlike.
And here in Ephesians 5, Paul starts the chapter by telling us that we need to be imitators of God (v1), and then he tells us that we need to walk in love.
How are we to measure this love? Humanly we can love some people more than others, we can love certain things more than other things, and our love can oftentimes fluctuate. Well, Paul gives us the standard to which our love needs to measure up to, and it is the standard that Christ set, in that he loved us so much, that is with an immense love that he was willing to give himself up for us. WOW! What a standard, and I readily admit that I often fall far short of that standard.
Yes, there may be those who I would do anything for, but others—well I would stop and think about it first! But we as the family of God in our imitating of God, need to learn to walk in love.
Now, it doesn’t mean that we must like everything about a person, but we learn to love them despite those things we might not like, for at the end of the day, I would also have to admit that although I may easily find things in others that I do not like, others perhaps even more easily will be able to point out things in me that they don’t like. There is also absolutely no doubt, that when God looked at me before I was a new creation, he saw lots of things about me that he didn’t like, but he still loved me, enough to send Jesus who himself loved me sufficiently to give his own life for me. And to be honest there are probably still lots of things about me that God doesn’t like, but he still loves me! And this is the measure to which we should love one another.
John in his epistle speaks much about the love that should be found in the family of God, and I will add some of those verses at the end, and Peter in his epistle wrote the following ‘Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sin’.
If we really want to grow in God, then we need to ensure that love permeates our relationships, we need to love even as Christ has loved us.
Application: How is your relationship with your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ? How about learning to love the ones you find it more difficult to relate to with the same measure of love that you have towards those you more easily relate to.
1 John 3:16, 1 John 4:7-12,20