In a Word

As we concluded our series at church in Ephesians it struck me how often we came back to the same topic: How do you sum up the word love? We had varied answers, all of them correct. It is an emotional feeling. It is a noun. It is a verb. It is sacrifice. It is God. It is hard.

In chapter three, Paul prays for the church in Ephesus. He says, "14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 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, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Here, love surpasses knowledge. It goes beyond just knowing and feeling and furthermore it fills us with God. Love is outwardly expressed and inwardly felt. It dwells within so we are never without.

The letter goes on to describe what it means to live in the light of Christ: to confess sin, to live not as the Gentiles do "in the futility of their thinking" (v. 4:17) Paul even talks about putting away the old self that didn't know God and embracing the new creation He has made you into. He says it starts with the attitude of your mind. So love is thought driven.

He then goes on in the chapter five to give us real life examples of what this love is. He puts it in the context of husband and wife, parent and child, and slave and master. Love is sacrifice and submission in all of these things. The husband, the parent, and the master (of whom we can think of as a boss in our culture) all have the jobs of loving like Jesus; giving up their own lives for the lives of the ones they are to care for. If they are to do this, then those submitting to that love should have no problem agreeing to it. The thing is, those charged with loving like Christ don't. When that happens, we can't respect those we are in submission to. It doesn't make sense. Thankfully Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, knew this. This is why he concludes his letter about love with talking about the armor of God.

Why do we wear armor? It's not to go hang out at a friends house. It's not to go play with puppies (depending on the puppy). It's to go to war. It's because we know the battle we are entering is dangerous and we're going to get hurt. Love. Is. Dangerous. But with the right preparation, it's a battle worth fighting. Even more, a battle we called to fight. After all that love does to you, after all who have abused it, after all who have used it to solidify their own agenda, we are to take up our armor and when evil corrupts love we can stand our ground and "after having done all, to stand." (v. 5:13)







I learned early on in dating Jill that she loves words. Not just words, but how they look. When we went to places to eat she would point out to me what font our menus were in. I found the same to be true of her dad. Get them together, and they will look at the typescript and tell you whether it's of an acceptable standard. But how could how a word looks tell you so much about the word? I just didn't get it. Then I read the opening to John and understood:




14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.




That sums it up.