1 Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Ephesians 5:1-2)
Christianity is not about getting us ready for heaven, though many falsely teach this.Christianity is a personal relationship with the Father through the Son, designed to equip us for influencing others for Christ.
The Apostle writes,"Follow God’s example." This is the goal of a personal relationship with God. Mind you, we can not produce this, He must. The role we play is to resist the flesh and to appropriate His presence and person in and through our lives. There is no strength like God's strength. His is the greatest strength. His is a different kind of power. It is quieter and less obvious. It changes us from the inside out. Make no mistake, we aren't getting better, but He is getting more prominent.
Paul identifies in v.1 the inertia behind our desire to follow God ... "loved." This is a foreign love to us fallen humans. It is a love that loves no matter what. You're thinking, "if God loves like this, then why doesn't He love everyone? Why do some suffer the penalty of hell?" He does love everyone. By nature, He loves, but He does not force His love on us. This is why we have a choice to access His love through the Lord Jesus. He desires us to desire Him. This is a true love story of the best kind. The kind that led Him to drink every drop that hell threw at Him. He did this for love for you and me, He did this for the willing.
This kind of love not only breaks our hearts, but fills our hearts. This love reshapes our hearts, it enables us to see others as the people they are, made in His image. Just like Bruce at the end of the movie Bruce Almighty, we want to see others through His eyes. Once we wanted to use people and love things. Now we discover we want to love people and use things.
This kind of love not only breaks our hearts, but fills our hearts. This love reshapes our hearts, it enables us to see others as the people they are, made in His image. Just like Bruce at the end of the movie Bruce Almighty, we want to see others through His eyes. Once we wanted to use people and love things. Now we discover we want to love people and use things.
The more we get to know the Lord Jesus, the more we will see Him in all of life. In fact, we will find ourselves looking for Him in everything, even in that which we do not expect. This is what Christ is like. He emptied Himself and embraced the cross on behalf of those who hated Him.
Chuck Colson tells a story of a group of American prisoners of war during the Second World War, who were made to do hard labor in a prison camp. Each had a shovel and would dig all day, then come in and give an account of his tool in the evening. One evening 20 prisoners were lined up by the guard and the shovels were counted. The guard counted nineteen shovels and turned in rage on the 20 prisoners demanding to know which one did not bring his shovel back. No one responded. The guard took out his gun and said that he would shoot five men if the guilty prisoner did not step forward. After a moment of tense silence, a 19-year-old soldier stepped forward with his head bowed down. The guard grabbed him, took him to the side and shot him in the head, and turned to warn the others that they better be more careful than he was. When he left, the men counted the shovels and there were 20. The guard had miscounted. And the boy had given his life for his friends.
Can you imagine the emotions that must have filled their hearts as they knelt down over his body? In the five or ten seconds of silence, the boy had weighed his whole future in the balance, a future family, an education, a new truck, a career, fishing with his dad—and he chose death so that others might live. Jesus said in John 15:13, ""Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." To love is to choose suffering for the sake of another.
To invest in BYM, click here
Chuck Colson tells a story of a group of American prisoners of war during the Second World War, who were made to do hard labor in a prison camp. Each had a shovel and would dig all day, then come in and give an account of his tool in the evening. One evening 20 prisoners were lined up by the guard and the shovels were counted. The guard counted nineteen shovels and turned in rage on the 20 prisoners demanding to know which one did not bring his shovel back. No one responded. The guard took out his gun and said that he would shoot five men if the guilty prisoner did not step forward. After a moment of tense silence, a 19-year-old soldier stepped forward with his head bowed down. The guard grabbed him, took him to the side and shot him in the head, and turned to warn the others that they better be more careful than he was. When he left, the men counted the shovels and there were 20. The guard had miscounted. And the boy had given his life for his friends.
Can you imagine the emotions that must have filled their hearts as they knelt down over his body? In the five or ten seconds of silence, the boy had weighed his whole future in the balance, a future family, an education, a new truck, a career, fishing with his dad—and he chose death so that others might live. Jesus said in John 15:13, ""Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." To love is to choose suffering for the sake of another.
To invest in BYM, click here
