Ephesians 1:15

Ephesians 1:15

The believers in Ephesus had faith in Jesus, and they had love. Faith in Jesus and then love. That is the way that it works. It all starts with faith, but faith is just the beginning. There are many other things to add to faith. Of course, we do not mean that faith is not important. “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” “The just shall live by faith.” With faith you can remove mountains, because God can do anything and your connection to God and to Christ and their power is through your faith in Him. You are a wise person to find ways of building up your faith through the reading of the Word and through your relationship with Christ. You are going to need faith in this world of uncertainty and spiritual opposition. You will probably need faith today just to get through the day and what may happen to you. But God does not want you to stop at faith. He wants you to add to your faith other virtues.

There is no greater virtue than love. The only reason that we know anything about love is because of God. God is love. “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son.” Jesus told us that love is the fulfilling of the law. The greatest commandment is to love God with all the heart and all the mind and all the soul and all the strength. And the second commandment is like unto it, Jesus said, to love thy neighbor as thyself. We are even told to love our enemies. Husbands are given an important commandment later on in the book of Ephesians, “Husbands love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it.” It is said of the Ephesians that they were known for the “love” that they had unto “all the saints.”

There is something interesting about the epistle written to the Ephesians by the Apostle Paul. When Paul wrote to them he said very clearly that they were known for their love. A few years later, maybe twenty or twenty-five years later, the Lord Jesus had the Apostle John write to them in Revelation 2:4 and said, “Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.” Love may be the most important of all Christian virtues, but it may also be the easiest to lose somewhere along the way. It looks like it happened to the Ephesians. They lost their first love. You can pass out tracts go to church, and pay your tithes; but that does not mean that you have love motivating you. We are told in First Corinthians 13, “without love I am nothing.”

But at least when Paul wrote the book of Ephesians he was able to say to them that they had “love unto all the saints.” That is an important love to have: a love for God’s children. Jesus wants you to love your brothers and sisters in Christ because He loves them. Remember that Jesus said, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, that ye have love one for another.” It’s not so much how many tracts you hand out, or how many doors you knock on that will make the biggest difference as far as helping the world to see that they need Christ, but it is the love that believers have for their brothers and sisters in Christ.

What is it that keeps Christians from loving one another? Notice what it says here. They had love for “all” the saints. “Let love be without dissimulation.” You do not want to be guilty of contributing to cliques or groups within the church whereby you end up not loving “all” the saints. Another problem that may arise that would keep believers in the church from loving each other is not having a forgiving spirit. When Jesus told us how to pray in the Sermon on the Mount, He told us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” How can you ask God to forgive you, if you are not willing to forgive others? Of course, the other side of the coin may be needed also. Maybe there is someone that you need to ask to forgive you. That should not be an uncommon thing to happen among Christians. You are willing to ask God to forgive you, then surely you are willing to ask one of God’s children to forgive you. People are not going to think less of you because you go to them and give an apology. They are going to think more of you because you are showing yourself to be an honest and humble follower of Christ. Of course, if such one-on-one communication between Christians does not resolve an issue that is causing problems in the church, then church discipline should be used. The most important thing is the effectiveness of the congregation, not if someone’s feelings get hurt or not.

The believers in Ephesus knew two great things, two important things: faith and love. Paul said that he thanked God that these believers had faith in the Lord Jesus and love for all the saints. But then Paul said that he prayed for those believers. There were more things, many more, for the believers in Ephesus to come to know. There were more things that they needed to come to know in order to progress in their walk with Christ, just like there are more things that you and I need to come to know if we are to become more what God wants us to be. It is not so much what they do, but what they know. What you do is important, but what you know comes first. What you know will change what you do.

Paul said that he was praying for the believers in Ephesus, and exactly what he prayed that they would come to know he described in Ephesians 1:17-23. Look at Ephesians 1:17. It says, “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.” Three great things are mentioned right here that we need, and that we need more of: wisdom, revelation, and knowledge. Everyone needs wisdom. Do not ever think that you have enough wisdom of your own to figure things out. “If anyone lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally.” There are going to be choices to have to be made by each of you. You may think that you know what the right choice is, but you do not because you do not know what lies ahead. You do not know what the final result will be. God does. You need wisdom.

You also need “revelation in the knowledge of Him.” That is, in the knowledge of Jesus. Whatever you know about Jesus, there is more to know, more to experience. Jesus asked the disciples perhaps the greatest of all questions: “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” We know what Peter’s answer was: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” That was an answer that was revealed to Peter only by God. Those who can say it and know that it is true can only do so by the Spirit of God. But that is not all that there is to know about Christ, about who He is. There are at least two hundred names given for Jesus in the Bible. All of them reveal something wonderful about Him. There is more to know about Jesus: more to know about His power, more to know about His presence with you, more to know about His person. This is more than the knowledge of facts about Jesus. This is experiential knowledge: in other words experiencing in your personal life things about Jesus your Savior (experiencing more about His presence, His power, and His great love). The Apostle Paul, who was no doubt closer to Christ than any of us, knew that there was yet more to know and experience concerning Jesus. Paul said in Philippians 3:10, “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection.” What he already knew about Christ was so little compared to how much there was yet to know.

Jesus is the Son of God. He is the second member of the trinity. Because the trinity is one, that means that Jesus is God. Yes, the Father is God and the Holy Spirit is God, but so is Jesus. That is why Jesus could say, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” Only God has all power. After the resurrection the Apostle Thomas bowed before Jesus and said, “My Lord and my God.” Jesus said in John 8:58, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Why did Jesus say that? The answer to that is found in Exodus 3:14 where the Bible says, “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” Of course, we know that I AM is the name Jehovah. By saying, “Before Abraham was, I am,” Jesus was saying loud and clear: I am Jehovah. That is why in Mat. 8:59 the Jews picked up stones to stone Him. They knew that He was claiming to be Jehovah. Do you know that Jesus is Jehovah: that He is God!

There are always more things to know about Jesus: more things to experience. Jesus should always have the preeminence because of who He is. If all that you do is talk about God without talking about Jesus, then you will not be much different than Hindus or Moslems or those in cults. Sometimes you might wonder why certain groups of Christians do not do more to elevate the name of Jesus. One reason is because more about Jesus has to be revealed to the heart by God the Spirit. That is what Paul was saying here when he wrote, “that he may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.” Revelation refers to God revealing something to you that that you could not possibly know except He revealed it to you. Of course, there is the human side to it. He reveals things through His Word, and Paul said to Timothy, “Study to show thyself approved unto God.” If you want to know more about Christ, then seek more. God can certainly reveal more. The love of Jesus what it is, only His loved ones know.

In Ephesians 1:18 the Bible says, “that ye may know what is the hope of his calling.” He already spoke of faith and love in verse 15, and now he speaks of hope. In First Corinthians 13 we are told, “Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three.” When the Bible speaks of “hope” it uses the word a little differently than sometimes we use it in every-day conversation. We say that we hope something will happen, meaning that maybe it will happen and maybe it will not happen. But when the Bible speaks of the hope that the Christian has, it is speaking of something that definitely will happen. It is in the future, but it will happen. It is our hope, our blessed hope, of all that God is going to do for us in Christ and because of Christ. There are Christians who, because of persecution or some affliction, only have the future that Christ has promised them. Some say that the closer that you are to going to heaven, the older that you are, the more that you look forward to going there. But it is also true that the more that the Spirit reveals to your heart about the glory and wonder of heaven that awaits you, the more that you will look forward to going there also. First Corinthians 2:9-10 says, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath appeared to the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God has revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God.”

Looking at the next thing that Paul said these believers needed to understand because they did not understand it yet, we read in Ephesians 1:18, “and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.” There is nothing wrong with having riches if it is God’s will for you, and if you use your riches for His glory, but there is something else that is much more valuable: the spiritual riches, the riches that God has prepared in heaven. That is why they are called the “riches of the glory.” The glory refers to the majestic splendor of the very presence of God. If only we had a little glimpse of glory, then the things of this world would grow strangely dim, and we would live for Him who is taking us to glory.

Notice how this next phrase is worded. It speaks of “his inheritance in the saints.” It had just spoken of the riches in glory that we have to look forward to, so we might think that the Word of God would talk about our inheritance. But it does not. It speaks of “his” inheritance. The great eternal God is looking forward to what He is going to inherit in us. Think of that: sinner that we are and undeserving that we are, and He looks at us as His inheritance. One reason for that is that we are trophies of His grace. Throughout all eternity each one of will bring honor and glory to the name of Christ because it will be shown for ever and ever what He did for us by His grace. That is why it says in Ephesians 2:7, “That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”

In Ephesians 1:19 Paul wrote, “And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power.” Who has access to the almighty power of God? Every believer does. Believe God about just one thing, and the history of the world can be changed. Who will be the next president of the United States? It might just be that one prayer and one person believing God about it will decide the next election.

Concerning the great power of God, one of the best manifestations of that power was the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Death is the last great enemy of mankind. You may acquire all of the good things that humans seek after, but you still are going to die and lose it all. You shall not escape death’s grasp. Go down to the cemetery and you will find that the body of everyone who was buried there is still there. None of them have been resurrected, not one of them, not yet. But that is not true concerning Jesus. Visit His grave and you will find it empty. Death could not hold Him because of the power of God. That same power is available to us simply because we believe. No wonder that Paul was so thankful that they had faith in the Lord Jesus as he stated in verse 15.

___________________________________________________