​Over the summer we’ve been studying the Apostle Paul’s 1st century letter to one of his old parishes in Ephesus.  Here we find great teaching and instruction, about God and His plan for global salvation through Jesus, about the Church and the kind of lifestyle its members should be practising.
 
Glancing back over these pages we might pick out some of the key words and phrases:
Grace. Power.  Glory.  Redemption.  Adoption.  Chosen.  Saved.  Peace.  God’s workmanship.  One body.  Life worthy. Thanksgiving.  Service.  Armour.  Pray.  Stand.
 
When we were taught in school how to write a letter we were taught to finish with ‘Yours sincerely’ or ‘Yours faithfully’.  It’s common these days in emails or texts to read ‘Regards’.  I usually put ‘Best wishes’ or ‘Prayerful best wishes’.
 
Look how Paul ends his 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.’
 
The last word in our English NIV and Good News Bible is ‘love’.  Whatever else we do, we are to love Jesus and love others.
 
In the original Greek the last word of Paul’s letter is actually ‘aphtharsia’, translated here as ‘undying’.  It means ‘incorruptible’, ‘immortal’, ‘invincible’, ‘unending’, love that perseveres, that doesn’t give up but keeps going.
 
Paul finishes with a wish and a prayer for his old congregation, that they may live in harmony as brothers and sisters in God’s family, at peace loving Him and one another, depending always on His grace.
 
The last word, the last instruction of Ephesians is to love and this makes Revelation 2 interesting and challenging reading.
 
One way to measure success in life is to observe those coming after us.  If we want to know how we’re doing let’s look at how the next generation is doing.
 
Ephesians was written in the early ‘60s, Revelation around 30 years later.  The Apostle John is granted a vision of the risen, reigning Lord Jesus Who gives messages to a number of 1st century congregations one of which is Ephesus.  So how is the ‘2nd generation’ Church of Ephesus getting on?
 
The Lord commends them for their hard work, perseverance and keeping the faith under trial.  They have maintained sound theology and high moral standards, not going with the flow of the liberal ‘Nicolaitians’.  So Paul’s hard work as pastor/teacher had not been in vain!
 
Oh but look, the Lord points up one key concern – they have forsaken their first love.  They don’t love the way they used to.  It had been their old pastor’s final written instruction but that’s where they’re falling down.
 
This was a good church with a solid foundation and busy programme.  It seemed to ‘tick all the boxes’ but according to Christ the most vital thing was getting lost on the way.
 
Things we do repeatedly become traditions and we can have many good and noble traditions well worth keeping.   The problem is that traditions can turn into institutions which can become mechanical, formal, nominal, cold. 
 
Ephesus had many good things going for them but their work and witness were now under threat because they weren’t practising love like before.  Perhaps some members just didn’t get on.  Personality clashes got dressed up as theological arguments.  They lost their initial zeal for winning and welcoming new members. 
 
Saddest of all, grace ceased to be amazing.  They got used to it. 
 
‘We’re not quite lovers and we’re not quite friends, after the thrill is gone’ goes an old song by the Eagles.   It sounds a bit like that for these next generation Christians in Ephesus in their relationship with Jesus. The thrill with the love was gone.
 
Let me say 3 things about Christian love:
 
1. Love is something we are given in Christ.  It’s not ours by right, not something we earn or achieve – we don’t actually deserve it for we have offended God and broken his commands.  If anything we deserve His displeasure, rejection, punishment.  Instead we read here in Ephesians that from before we were born, before the world was created, God knew us, set His love on us, chose us to be His, ordained that His Son would die to redeem us and bring us to the eternal life of heavenly fellowship.  We should never take it for granted, never cease to be amazed.
 
We are loved.  That cross on a hill outside Jerusalem is the evidence.
 
2. But secondly, although love is God’s gift to us it is also something we must choose to practice. 
 
   We could choose otherwise, choose to be ruled by bitterness or cynicism or retreat into cool distance.  We could choose to reject grace and not forgiven ourselves or others but that’s like requesting cancer for our souls today and damnation in the age to come. 
 
    Love is redemptive, life-bringing, soul-changing.  The love of Christ changed Paul from a cruel racist to a self-sacrificing pioneering church builder among people of all races.  We must choose to practice love.
 
3. Recognising thirdly that love is something with which we need help.  Now let’s be honest, it’s enormously difficult to love some people.  We may be afraid of them or find something distasteful about them.  We may hold different views.  They may have wounded us in the past.  They may hurt us again.  We may feel overwhelmed with every negative feeling other than love.  But Jesus commands His followers to love as He does and He will help by His Spirit all who choose to obey and practice Christian love.
 
The fruit of the Holy Spirit living in the human heart is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.  These are the qualities we’re saying ‘yes’ to when we choose to love like Jesus.  This is the powerful help we need.
 
And so we must pray for our Lord to help us, to change and nurture our hearts and minds.  Let’s read again one of Paul’s own prayers from Ephesians 3 v 14-19:
‘I kneel before the Father…I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God.’
 
Now that’s what we’re talking about!  For when we know love like this then we shall persevere.  Then we shall overcome.  Then we shall walk on the heights and eat from the tree of life in the paradise of God!

On the night of the Last Supper, Jesus Christ said to His disciples, ‘In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart. I have overcome the world.’
 
Followers of Jesus should expect trouble in the here and now but rest assured.  He overcame it, we can too with His powerful help.
 
Everyone has trouble sooner or later.  Welcome to the real world!  Created beautiful and filled with wonderful potential but temporarily spoilt by human sin and its consequences. We all get our share of difficulty and sorrow, but the Apostle Paul is echoing Jesus here as he writes to his old parish in Ephesus when he says Christians can expect a measure of extra hassle.
 
Paul is writing this from prison where he has been falsely incarcerated as a troublemaker.  It’s about thirty years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and in cities all over the empire churches have been planted by preachers like Paul.  Growing communities of happy people are welcoming Christ as the ‘good news’ that He is.  People are finding forgiveness and new life, reconciled to God AND to each other.  Men, women, people of all ages and backgrounds, different nationalities and social status are uniting in the love of the Spirit as followers together of one Saviour King.
 
 
Yet even as the 1st century Church grows, crosses borders, overcomes fear and prejudice, celebrates and shares grace and freedom, other feel threatened and resentful.
 
Some folk don’t like it if we seem too happy so they slander us.  Some people just don’t like change.  Some of Paul’s fellow Jews didn’t accept Jesus as the Messiah and disapproved of Paul’s open association with non-Jewish people.  This social unrest is what got him in prison.
 
But here in Ephesians 6 the Apostle insists our real enemy is not his Jewish opponents or his Roman captors, not religious hardliners or secular sceptics.  The real source of our opposition comes from a spiritual origin, from that part of reality that for now is usually unseen.  He refers to the ‘heavenly realms’ where a war is raging.  There are angels and there are demons and their influence can be seen all around us in the world.
 
The real enemy, according to Paul, is the deceiver who hates truth, the murderer who hates life, the devil who hates God and Christ and the Church.  He and his crew are destined to suffer in eternal fire and he’s trying to take as many there with him as he can!
 
So the powers of evil without mercy try to bring all kinds of harm on the human race.  They want most of all to keep us away from God and His grace and the love of Jesus so they will attempt to intimidate , deceive or corrupt us in a variety of ways.  For some of us evil will get in with unimaginative classics such as greed, immoral sex or various addictions.  Other people may become  just as bound with habitual self-pity, bitterness, hopelessness.
 
Christ and His apostles warn us to expect and prepare for evil attack but how?
 
Paul instructs his Christian readers to ‘be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power’.
 
We discover spiritual strength in the face of trial and temptation when we remember who we are in Christ.  The earlier chapters of Ephesians tell us we are children of God, chosen before the creation of the world.  We are citizens of heaven, our seats reserved at our Master’s table.  Christ is the Good Shepherd Who protects and provides for His flock.  He has been given all authority in heaven and on earth so the devil has no authority over us unless we hand it to him.  We are helpless only if we choose to be.  Christ came to set us free from bondage.  In Him we are declared free.
 
However, Paul is a realist, his theology does not encourage complacency but spurs to action. He speaks here of ‘struggle’ as in wrestling or hand to hand combat. We are to consciously take to ourselves the ‘armour’, the protective clothing God provides.  No good leaving our equipment behind when there’s a battle brewing!  We should be constantly thanking God for the truth of the Gospel, the covering righteousness of Christ, the peace He brings to our hearts, the faith His Spirit is growing in our minds, the crowning glory of salvation.  We are to claim these gifts of God and work them out in daily living, practising honesty, integrity and so on.  Not neglecting the most potent weapon we’ve been given, the Spirit inspired Word of God – the Bible.
 
Our defences stand as we pray in Jesus’ name.  More, darkness is pierced and banished by the light of the Gospel as we declare  the truth of God’s Word in the power of the Holy Spirit.
 
Not that we should be full of ourselves about this.  Notice how humbly this great Apostle asks his students to pray for him!  The Ephesians had witnessed God doing mighty miracles through Paul and yet here was this great church leader requesting his congregation to pray he would find courage.
 
The devil is a formidable enemy and this side of heaven we are very fallible human beings. Any of us can fall.  Our confidence must be in Someone stronger, in Christ.  On one occasion the disciples had driven out some evil spirits in Jesus’ name and were feeling quite pleased with themselves whereupon the Lord advised them, ‘do not rejoice that the demons submit to you. Rather, rejoice that your names are written in heaven’.
 
In other words success in this struggle – in life – is not taking pride in our achievements but living out His amazing grace.
 
So here’s today’s choice:  You can do nothing and let evil walk all over you and your family and your community.  Or you can kneel in penitent faith and enlist as a solder and overcome evil with good in the name and power of our commanding officer – Jesus.
 
Amen.
 
 
it.

 Ephesians 4 v 17 – 5 v 20

Because of who God is and what He has done for us in Christ, we who trust in Him must be and do something too.  We cannot stay the same.

Jesus gave His life on the cross that our sins might be forgiven and that we might be brought from spiritual darkness to light, death to life.  So we must repent of our sins, turn and leave behind all wrong doing.  We are called to live a new life worthy of our Saviour.

In this 1st century letter to the Christian Church in Ephesus and beyond, the Apostle Paul declares we have been saved by God’s grace, we are already considered God’s children with our places reserved at His heavenly table.  We are described as being ‘in Christ’.  He is described as living in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

Because we are God’s ‘workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do’, we cannot and must not continue to think and act as people do in the non-Christian world.  Our hearts are inspired with new beliefs.  Our minds are being renewed with fresh ways of thinking so naturally these will result in a change of behaviour.

The first section of ch 4 speaks of our calling to unity as followers of Jesus.  We are called to belong together, serve in a variety of ways, mature in our knowledge of Jesus and practice love in all our relationships.

Our readings today speak of how a calling worthy of the Lord Jesus requires not just harmony in fellowship, but personal purity.  We will want to be holy because God is holy.  We will want to imitate our Lord and Master in how we think and act.

Paul describes the tragedy of worldly thought patterns here, how someone could be highly qualified in various ways yet without God their thinking is limited, ‘darkened’ and ultimately ‘futile’.  In Romans 1 Paul speaks of human beings ‘professing themselves to be wise’ but in fact becoming immoral ‘fools’.

Foolish not to acknowledge the original genius Creator.  Foolish to abandon His moral guidelines.  Foolish to settle for the idols of self-worship and self-gratification, living as if these temporary pleasures and honours were all that matter.

Thinking the world’s way we end up deceiving ourselves and one another and experiencing a hunger that cannot be satisfied.  Separated from God, people suppress conscience and often fall into corrupt and abusive practices.

By contrast, those who know and follow Jesus are living in the light of God’s revelation with the benefit of the Spirit of Truth.

Christians don’t imagine we are better than others.  It’s just the Light of Jesus is shining in our hearts and minds, humbling us with grace, enlightening our path with a little godly wisdom and love.  We’re leaving behind our old prison clothes and getting to wear a new outfit of freedom.  We’re learning the joy of imitating Christ!

The Apostle suggests a number of examples here of what this means in practice. Let me summarise them under 4 headings:

Reverence
Respect
Restraint
Rejoicing

Our foundation and starting point are a deep reverence for the Lord our God.  He is the Almighty Creator of all things.  He has given us life, loved us and chosen us before the creation of the world. He gave His Son to be our Saviour and His Spirit to be our Sanctifier and Guide.  See how naturally Paul speaks of Father, Son and Spirit through this section about human attitude and behaviour.  Spiritual and practical, not separate but very closely and firmly linked.  God is not just a refuge and source of comfort, He is the inspiration and guiding principle in everything we do.  He is the fixed reference point in every choice we make.

The knock-on effect of reverence for God is secondly respect for His creation.  We won’t abuse our neighbour made in God’s image or the environment which reflects His glory.  We are learning to give people and things their God-given value.

Reverence and respect need to be expressed through a healthy practical restraint.  Here’s where we get down to the nitty-gritty – Paul warns against spiteful attitudes, hateful, mocking talk, inappropriate sex and substance abuse. We’ll be careful not to get drunk, lose control, lose our temper and do foolish, wicked things.

Observe how the old, corrupt things are being replaced with new positive ones. Instead of greedily stealing what isn’t ours to have we’ll work gladly and share generously what we’re given.  We’ll not let our frustration provoke us to a destructive outburst but channel our indignation where it is valid into positive action.  Instead of abusing or neglecting the poor of the world we will open our hearts to the compassion of our Master and open our wallets and purses to the joy of charitable giving.

Far from being a dour, miserable, controlled lifestyle which is often caricatured, the holiness and purity described here are beautiful, liberating, rewarding!

And so, saved by God’s grace, trusting in Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit we are learning to live in the joy of the Lord.  Reverence.  Respect.  Restraint.  And rejoicing.  Instead of cursing our mouths are filled with thanksgiving and blessing.  Instead of complaints, gossip and criticism we laugh and sing.

We thank our Heavenly Father for adopting us as His children.

We thank our Lord Jesus for dying for our sins.

We thank the Holy Spirit for indwelling and helping us, leading us in this truth that is setting us free.

We give thanks that in a world that is often hideously dark, we are walking in the light of Christ and His love.

And it’s really good!