◎Wil Rogan (Carey Theological College, Assistant Professor in New Testament Studies)
It is easy to think that we practice the love of God only when we are engaged in prayer, reading Scripture, or singing in worship. But Scripture points us toward the conclusion that it is impossible to love God apart from loving our neighbors. This is disconcerting, because our neighbors can seem to us a distraction from our attempt to love God. The people closest to us demand so much attention and time. Isn’t it surprising that when Paul writes at length about how the faithful ought to live in Eph 4–6, he does not once tell us that we ought to love God? This is because Paul teaches us how we are to live with our neighbors, and, in learning to do that, we learn to love God.
The ground of our love for others is God’s love for us. When we read Ephesians, we find ourselves again and again caught up into God’s great love for us. “In love,” God made us who were once orphans into sons and daughters (Eph 1:4-5). God, because of “the great love with which he loved us,” made us who were once dead alive in Christ (2:4-6). And God now reveals to us a love that surpasses knowing, a love whose length and breadth and heights and depths are inexhaustible, a love that comes to us from Christ and fills us with all the fullness of God (3:19-20). In Ephesians, we are swept off our feet by the love of God, carried along until we find ourselves in the great expanse of God’s love.
We participate in the love of God by imitating the love of Christ toward our neighbors. Paul wants us to become the kind of people who imitate God, since we are children beloved by God (Eph 5:1). God help us, we are to weave our lives into that magnificent pattern of Christ’s love for us, which is seen most of all in his crucifixion. When Christ gave himself for us, Ephesians tells us, he also become “a sweet-smelling offering and sacrifice to God” (5:2). It is striking to notice how Christ’s work of love for humanity becomes an act of worship to God. Like Christ, when we freely give our lives for our neighbors, our lives become a living sacrifice to God, an act of true worship, a work of love toward God.
A Prayer.
LOVING GOD, tell us again that you love us, each one of us and all of us together. We are poor and needy with respect to love. Thank God, you’ve given us a love letter called the Bible. And when we read it, we find out that you’ve given us more—your very self. Strengthen us to apprehend that love that cannot be understood, so that we can’t help but embrace our neighbors in their need and, in so doing, worship you. That will be enough for us. AMEN.
