Holy and Without Blame Before God in Love
Scripture: Ephesians 1:4; 3:18-19; 4:14-15; 5:1-2; 6:23-24
A word before the church's evening prayer, livestreamed, Monday, April 27, 2020
Dear brothers and sisters, I greet you on this livestream before our prayer. Today, Monday, April 27, we are going to pray together with you, but, as always, we turn first to the Word of God. Since this week we are reading and studying the Epistle to the Ephesians, today I want to read from five of its chapters one important theme that runs through it. There are many themes here, but one of the important ones I want to underline, or single out, today before our prayer. The first passage is chapter one, verse four, where the apostle Paul says: “just as He,” that is, God, “chose us in Him,” that is, in Christ Jesus, “before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love” (Ephesians 1:4).
Before the foundation of the world God saw His children, saw the people who would receive salvation, and He appointed a special portion for our lives: that we should be holy and without blame. For this Christ shed His blood on Golgotha, for this He suffered and died: that we might be sanctified and set apart from this world, crucified with Him and raised together with Him, and live a new, renewed life in Christ Jesus. This is the gift of God, about which much is written in this epistle.
But notice: it does not simply say “holy and without blame.” Many people think this way: God has called me, forgiven me, sanctified me, so that I would be holy and without blame. But here stands the conclusion of this sentence, an important word, and this is the theme of our reflection today: holy and without blame before God in love. This is what I want to speak about: the importance of love, so that you and I, called by God, may be filled with this blessing. Take away that last word and what remains is “holy and without blame,” and a person says: “I am holy, I walk uprightly, I have nothing to do with anyone…” You know, that kind of Pharisaism. But God has called us to love, because He is love (1 John 4:8), and He sent His Son because He loved us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). And once we are called, God’s purpose, and this is what I want to speak about today, is to sanctify us, to wash us, and to bring us to the main point, to the main, important state: in love, brothers and sisters, in love.
Let us open the next passage, chapter three of this epistle; we will read verses 18 and 19: “that you, being rooted and grounded in love,” again, in love! “may be able to comprehend with all the saints.” You see: saints, sanctified ones, as we read at the beginning, but they comprehend something, God gives them something special. And it is said to you and me: “that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height.” What is it? “To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18-19).
It turns out that simply being holy and without blame is not yet everything. All the fullness is in this divine river that flows from the throne of God, that is, in the love of God. And God leads the saints into this river, He leads you and me, to this main knowledge, in other words, to the knowledge of God, because God is love: so that you and I, together with all, may comprehend that which passes the understanding and knowledge of the human mind, the love of Christ. This is what God calls us to, this is the meaning of life, of being a Christian. This is the main thing; take this part away, and everything loses its meaning. One can, as Scripture says in another place, do good works and have great knowledge, but without love it is nothing, there is no profit at all (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). Therefore love is the main thing that we must attain, come to know, and live by.
Let us read another passage, from chapter four of this epistle, verses 14 and 15: “that we,” again, he is addressing us, “should no longer be children.” Who are the children? Children are those who have recently received Christ; they have not yet grown up, and here a warning is given, especially to new converts: that we should not be children, “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine.” You know, a little child is very easy to deceive: show him something, and he is already off after it, already distracted; he does not yet have that kind of focus. And Scripture says that you and I should not be in such a childish state. Children are carried away; they are exposed precisely to the temptation of various winds of doctrine, various delusions of this kind: it seems to him that this is so important! But Scripture says that we should not be like that, because in this wind of doctrine, as it is written, it is “by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.” And this deceit comes, and today, in the age of the internet, there is a great deal of it. I have spoken about this before, I have warned, and I warn and remind you again: there is much of this deceit, and it is full of philosophy, as it says here, of a human kind, even of a cunning kind, and we are not to be carried away by it.
So where should we go, what should we strive for? The next verse, verse 15, tells us clearly: “but, speaking the truth in love,” in that love which is in Christ Jesus, that pure love, “may grow up in all things into Him who is the head, Christ” (Ephesians 4:14-15). This is our growth: that we grow up into the Head of the Church, who is Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Lord. This is what matters: not to be carried away by various strange doctrines, but to strive to know God, to know the love of God, to understand it and to grow in it. This is everything; this is the meaning of our Christian life. May the Lord help us in this; let us pray about this now, dear brothers and sisters.
Let us open chapter five, the first two verses. Here we are coming, as it were, to the summing up: “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.” We are children, and He says: dear, beloved; that is the word He calls us by. You and I are the beloved of the Lord. I am speaking to you, my dear brothers and sisters, beloved of the Lord: be imitators of God, as His children, as His dear, beloved children. And the second verse: “And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma” (Ephesians 5:1-2).
All the ministries, all the sacrifices that we bring: if this love is not in them, there will be no sweet aroma in them. We must carry within us this fragrance, which is the love of God. The knowledge of God is measured by the love of God: as much as we know God, that much we love. And Paul says: this fragrance spreads wherever we are; people notice our reaction, our words, even our look; they sense this spiritual scent. It is not something we perceive with our sense of smell, yet it is perceived all the same; it is felt in the presence of such people. And so Scripture says: let us imitate God, or, as the English Bible puts it, follow Him, precisely in love. In every situation: which road should I take? Take the road of Jesus Christ, the road of love. The First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 13, explains in full what the love of God is, which has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5).
But if I have this cologne, this little bottle of perfume, and it is closed, no one will smell the fragrance. We may say: there, we have received the love of God, for it has been poured out by the Holy Spirit. But it must be used, so that it pours out. When the woman, six days before the Passover, came to the house of Simon the leper, where Jesus Christ was, Mary brought that precious alabaster flask, opened it, even broke it: inside was precious oil with an extraordinary fragrance (John 12:1-3; Mark 14:3). And that is exactly what we have inside us through the Holy Spirit. When we show it, this aroma spreads, and how often precisely in hard situations, even in the face of our enemies. But it is exactly then that this power of God produces an extraordinary effect: people say, “What is this? What is this?” They are amazed.
I remember one brother; his name was Pyotr Ivanovich. He was originally from Ukraine, but in his last years he lived in Latvia, in the city of Ventspils. I was friends with him, and those were wonderful times when we met. He told how, as a young man, when he was preaching, he was arrested and put in prison, and he spent many years in prison. And it was there that this happened. One day, he says, we went out to work, to fell timber: they were taken outside the camp zone, and there they felled trees. And among the prisoners there was one very spiteful man, an unbeliever, filled with what is written in the Epistle to Titus: “hateful and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). He was full of this bitterness; he hated believers, he says, and caused me a great deal of pain.
But then something happened. When they had stacked the logs they were sawing and working, suddenly those logs rolled and broke his legs and, I think, his arm. And the soldiers said: “All right, take a greatcoat or something and carry him back to the zone; we cannot leave him here, it is getting dark.” But no one wants to carry him: those “friends,” in quotation marks, all step aside, because it is a long way to walk and carry him, and he is screaming. And Pyotr Ivanovich says: “I look, and there is love in my heart. After all those hurts, that pain, that mocking, my heart caught fire.” There it is: the little flask that is inside us opens, and it opened inside him. “I went up and said,” now speaking to the man’s own comrades, to the others, “What if this were your brother or your father, would you abandon him like this?” Because the soldiers were saying: if we leave him now, we will have to shoot him here; we cannot leave him alive. And the guards, of course, did not want to carry him either. And Pyotr Ivanovich stirred them up: they took a greatcoat, he even gave his own greatcoat, and they carried him in it. “And as they are carrying him,” he says, “I am carrying him at the head end, and he says to me: ‘Listen, Petya, drop it!’ ‘But I can’t: everything inside me is burning.’” They carried him back, and he was treated and healed. And Pyotr Ivanovich told me so vividly: “What a believer he became, what a believer!” and he showed me like that. Because afterward that man repented, received Christ, repented with tears, and the Lord saved him: he became a dear, beloved child. Glory to God!
This is what we must strive for, this is growth, this is the essence of the whole Christian path: to attain this love, to live by this love. Therefore, walk in love. Many people say: that is the law, that is all like the Pharisees and Sadducees, and so on. But Paul wrote the Epistle to the Galatians, which we read last week, and in chapter five he says that the law, the whole law of Moses, the whole law, the Old Testament, is fulfilled in one word: love your neighbor as yourself (Galatians 5:14). In these words, in this sentence, naturally, we love God. Many say: “Oh, I love God!” but as for everyone else… “I don’t want that one, I don’t want this one, I don’t want to forgive this one.” Well, what kind of Christianity is that? “But I am holy! I don’t want,” like a Pharisee, you know, “I don’t want to touch that.” Now listen, our calling is to love, and that is great happiness, because it is written: he who loves knows God (1 John 4:7). May the Lord help us in this.
The time has come for prayer. Before our prayer I will finish with the way this epistle ends, chapter six, verses 23 and 24, where the apostle Paul says: “Peace to the brethren,” and to the sisters, of course, “and love,” do you hear? “and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen” (Ephesians 6:23-24).
Let us pray now on our knees, you there where you are, and we here. I hope that by next Monday, such is my hope, my desire, we will already be praying together in church. Let us pray, dear brothers and sisters.