About two years ago, God began to convict me about the need to build some more spiritual depth into my own life as well as into the life of all of us together as a body. So nearly two years ago, on January 7, 2007 we embarked together on a verse-by-verse journey through Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church. When we began our journey that Sunday morning, I shared with you this excerpt from the todaysmilitary.com website:
Basic Training—officially called Initial-entry Training—prepares recruits for all elements of service: physical, mental, and emotional. It gives service people the basic tools necessary to perform the roles that will be asked of them for the duration of their tour.
That’s essentially what we’ve been doing in our journey through Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. In essence, his letter has been our basic training manual that has given us the basic tools necessary to perform our roles as followers of Jesus Christ for the duration of our tours.
Roughly the first half of our training program focused on the first three chapters of Paul’s letter that described what God has done for us. There we established the doctrinal foundation that would be necessary to understand Paul’s practical instructions in the last half of his letter. In those first three chapters, we discovered that everything about our life in Jesus is totally and completely a result of God’s work in our lives and not as a result of our own merit or works:
• God the Father chose us and He predetermined that we would become part of His spiritual family and be adopted as His children.
• God the Son, Jesus the Messiah, redeemed us through His sacrificial death on the cross and His resurrection. He provided the payment that freed us from the slavery of sin and allows us to live an abundant life, both now and in eternity.
• God the Holy Spirit came to dwell permanently in our lives at that very moment we committed our lives to Jesus Christ. He remains there as a guarantee that we will one day receive the spiritual inheritance that God has promised to us.
Taken together, the work of all three Persons of the Godhead have provided us with salvation. And that salvation, as we’ve seen time after time in our training, has three aspects to it:
• There is the past aspect of salvation – I have been saved. At the very moment I trusted my life to Jesus Christ, I received the positional righteousness of Jesus and all of my sin was forgiven once and for all. Because Jesus redeemed me, when God looks upon my life, He no longer sees my sin, He sees the righteousness of Jesus.
• There is the present aspect of salvation. It is that part of the salvation process that Paul addresses in the last three chapters of his letter where he provides some practical instruction on how to live out the righteousness Jesus has given us on a day to day basis. That aspect of salvation provides me with a fruitful, abundant life right here and now.
• There is the future aspect of salvation. As good as our present lives may be, what God has in store for us in the future will far surpass even the best we have here on earth. For those who have trusted their lives to Jesus, there is the promise that we will spend eternity in the presence of God, worshipping and serving Him in a place of unimaginable beauty and glory.
And God didn’t just leave us here on earth to live out that salvation in solitude. He has placed every single believer into the body of Christ, the church. And God has given all of us together, as members of that body, the great privilege and responsibility of making known His great plan, which He put into effect before the foundation of the world. So together, we are God’s co-workers in carrying out His will and His plans here on earth right this very moment.
Had Paul just ended his letter at the end of chapter three, we still would have had a training manual that would have laid a great foundation for our lives as followers of Jesus. But God, in His infinite love and wisdom didn’t want to leave us there. So under the direction of the Holy Spirit, Paul wrote three more chapters that provided his readers, and us, with some very practical instruction on how the salvation that God has provided for us ought to impact the way we live our lives on a day-to-day basis.
So the last half of our basic training has focused on how we can apply those principles in our lives. And Paul’s instruction in that last part of his letter is very comprehensive. He’s provided us with principles about how we are to treat and deal with each other within the body of Christ, the church. He’s given us guidelines about how to live together as husband and wives and parents and children. He’s addressed how to treat each other in the workplace. And he’s described how to put on the full armor of God in order to stand firm against the attacks of the devil. He’s even dealt with how we can pray for one another more effectively.
To be real honest, when we started this journey together, I was a little apprehensive. I have never really preached through a book of the Bible in this much detail and I wondered if there would be enough meat to sustain us week after week. And I know that some of you, many in jest and probably many of you quite seriously keep asking if we’re ever going to finish this series on Ephesians.
Well, tonight we finally reach the end of that journey together. But I have some really mixed feelings about that. On one hand, there is a sense of accomplishment, not just personally for me, but for us as a body. And so it’s certainly appropriate for us to celebrate that tonight. But on the other hand, there is almost a sense of loss, something similar to what would happen when a life long friend moves away.
For me personally, this journey has been life-changing. God has certainly used this last two years to reveal Himself to me in new and exciting ways and to help deepen my commitment to Him and develop my walk with Him. As a result, God has renewed my desire to know Him and serve Him and given me a new sense of urgency about the work He has called me to do.
And I know from talking to many of you, that God has done a similar work in your lives. I know that from my perspective, I can see in very concrete ways how God has matured us as a body and how He is building spiritual depth into individual lives. This is all very exciting and I think that there can be a tendency for us to want to hang on to that. But I’m convinced that this is only a catalyst, only a beginning to what God has in store for us as a body.
I sense that same attitude from Paul as he closes his letter. Let’s read out loud together these last two verses of the letter:
Peace to the brothers, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.
Ephesians 6:23, 24 (NIV)
For Paul, this letter to the church at Ephesus didn’t represent an end, but rather a beginning. His intent was that everything that he had written in his letter would serve as a catalyst for his readers to go on to an even deeper spiritual maturity as they came to know God much more intimately and to serve Him with even more devotion.
So Paul closes with a benediction where he prays for God to bestow three things on his readers. There is a sense in which these three attributes taken together really summarize everything that Paul has written in his letter.
First, he prays that God might give them peace. Earlier in his letter, Paul had written that Jesus is our peace. And, as we’ve seen throughout our journey the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross and His resurrection is the source of true peace – both peace with God and peace with others. Jesus broke down every wall that separates us from others – religion, race, social class, gender, political parties, geography. And it is Paul’s prayer, as well as mine, that we would not do anything in this body to put those walls back up again.
Next, Paul prays that they might experience God’s love. But you’ll notice that there is a qualifier here. He desires that they have love “with faith”. There is a sense in which God loves every man. But the only ones who can experience that love in its fullness are those who have the faith to trust Jesus as the Lord and Savior of their lives. It is that kind of love that Paul describes primarily in Chapter 1 where he describes what God has done for His children completely apart from our own merit. We must constantly keep that sacrificial love in mind as the basis for everything we do to serve a God who has loved us so completely and at such a great cost.
Finally, Paul prays that they might experience God’s grace. In just a few minutes, we’re going to remember that grace, that unmerited favor of God, as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together. The Book of Ephesians is certainly all about that grace. Without it, none of us could experience a relationship with God and none of us could even begin to live a life that would please Him. We must also keep that grace of God in mind as we relate to others in the body. We need to treat others with the same kind of grace that God has bestowed on us.
But you’ll notice that Paul doesn’t pray this prayer for everyone. The peace, the love and the grace of God are reserved only for those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love. So the obvious question we must ask ourselves tonight is, “Do I really love Jesus with an undying love?” Do I desire to get into His Word each day so that I can know Him better? Do I think about Him often throughout the day? Do I use my time, talents and resources that he has given me in a way that brings honor to Him? Do I obey Him?
I have loved my wife now with an undying love for about 33 years now. I certainly haven’t done that perfectly. In fact, at times, I’ve totally blown it. And my love for her today is certainly not the same as it was when I first met her. But looking back I think that overall I can honestly say that I have loved her with an undying love for all these years.
For some of you, your undying love for Jesus may be very young. You’ve just started to learn how to love Him, but you really do love Him with all your heart and day by day you work to get to know Him and love Him better.
For others, you’ve loved Jesus for a long time. Sure, you’ve blown it along the way – maybe many times. But you really do love Him and your love for Him doesn’t look the same as it did when you first loved Him. For all of us who have been here for this two-year spiritual basic training, I pray that all of us can honestly say that our love for Jesus is more mature than it was two years ago. If not, then perhaps we need to ask ourselves if we really do love Jesus with an undying love.
I also know that tonight it is very possible that there are some of you here who would honestly have to say that you’ve never really loved Jesus. Maybe you never even considered that you needed to do that before tonight. Or maybe you’ve known about Jesus for a long time, but you’ve just never made the commitment to love Him with an undying love. If you would like to know more about what it means to love Jesus, Dana or I would love to talk to you more about that. Please see one of us after the service tonight and we’ll be happy to talk to you more about that.
When Paul relayed the instructions about the observance of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11, he wrote that each person ought to examine himself or herself before taking the elements. In just a moment, we’re going to give you and opportunity to prepare your hearts for the observance of the Lord’s Supper as we sing a couple of songs that remind us of God’s unfailing love. As we do that, I want to invite you to think about whether you really do love Jesus with an undying love. If there is anything in your life right now that is keeping you from doing that, this will be a great opportunity for you to confess that to God and get your heart right with Him.
