Love For All the Saints

 DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE EPHESIANS

LOVE FOR ALL THE SAINTS

Eph 1:15-23

15 For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. 17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18 I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, 20 which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

NIV

We have another rather long thought that is crammed full of theological points that we are going to need to take one at a time. First, it is good to hear about the faith of others. Someone had informed Paul of the faith of those people in Ephesus, but it does give us this clue as to how we should be glad about the faith that other believers have and how much they love all the saints. Here is where we might run into a snag. We do wonder when we are in the presents of some believers whether or not they actually have love in their hearts for all the saints, which would include us. Then we have to face the issue of whether we actually can say that we have love in our hearts for all the saints. Even within the local church, we find love may find some that we do not love as much as we should and that there are some who most likely do not love us as much as they should. How do we deal with this, if we are supposed to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and body and love our neighbor as ourselves? We do wonder if Paul was talking about their love for all the saints in the hope that his saying would encourage them or spur them to love. We also wonder how it is possible to love all the saints, especially when we do not know all saints. Then we wonder what love for all the saints looks like, how is love for all the saints expressed in their lives, and how can we express our love for all the saints. In all truth, we have witnessed the lack of love for each other in local churches we have been a part of over the years. We have witnessed unforgiveness, jealousy, envy, judgementalism, and even disdain toward other believers. However, we have also witnessed love as well, but it is not a universal love for everyone in the local community of faith. But if that is going to happen it must start with us. We would have to go back to that letter Paul wrote to the Corinthians when he gave that great definition of what love is in order to examine our hearts to see if we do love all the saints. Let us always be aware of our love for Jesus and make every effort to love our neighbor, which in this case is other believers.