Graduate 188: Advent & Ephesians, Day 15

"For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you, and your love for all the saints,..."

Having concluded the great doxology of verses 3-14, Paul now turns more directly to address the church of Ephesus. As he prepares to speak about His prayers for the Ephesian Christians, there are two things in the background: the first is the list of numerous blessings that he has just delineated in the last twelve verses. "For this reason," he says. Because the Ephesian Christians have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, because God chose them, because they had been predestined, because they had been adopted and made recipients of incredible grace in the Beloved, because they had been redeemed through Christ's blood, because they had been forgiven, because God had revealed His will to them, because they were looking forward to the future administration and summing up of all things in Christ, because of the inheritance that they had obtained, because they had heard and received the gospel of salvation and been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise and were looking forward to the future redemption of God's own possession to the praise of His glory, because of all this Paul offers prayers with thanksgiving for these Ephesian Christians. We shall see that his prayer is that they would continue in what they have already begun.

Paul does not just focus on what God has done for them but also on their response. "[H]aving heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you, and your love for all the saints". It would be easy to overlook such a simple line, but we should actually pay attention to it. Paul has heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus and of their love for all the saints. Apparently people have been talking about their faith and their love for all the saints. Reports have been circulating and have gotten back to Paul about the Ephesian Christians' faith and their love for all the saints. What would these reports consist in? Just the news that the Ephesian Christians were saying that they believed in Jesus? Surely not. Rather, these were reports of how the faith of the Ephesian Christians was being worked out and manifested in good works and help given to all the saints.

This should cause us to pause and consider: are people hearing of our faith in the Lord Jesus and of our love for all the saints? Are reports of our good deeds and transformed lives going out? And this is not an invitation to start a massive advertising campaign. I am not recommending that we start broadcasting all our good deeds. But if our lives are really being transformed. If we are loving others in a manner radically different from the way the ordinary people love others, then you can be sure that people will hear about it. Because this is exactly what the world wants and needs--people who love radically, people who are willing to go above and beyond mere duty, people whose faith is being demonstrated by how they act and behave twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. This is the kind of difference that only comes from the work of the Holy Spirit and is so needed by our world and that Jesus came to announce and offer to those who would actually follow Him in that way.

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.