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Ephesians |
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| Chapter 1 | Prayer | Devotional | Chapter 4 | Prayer | Devotional | |
| Chapter 2 | Prayer | Devotional | Chapter 5 | Prayer | Devotional | |
| Chapter 3 | Prayer | Devotional | Chapter 6 | Prayer | Devotional |
Prayers
Sovereign Lord, our lives have been saved through Your powerful and merciful love. You chose us, O Lord, before the foundation of the world. We are blessed through the blood of Jesus Christ. Your plan is wonderful, and with great expectation, we long for it to be fully accomplished. You will surely bring about all of Your perfect and holy will. Thank You for the seal of Your Holy Spirit. Give us confidence in Your Son, and grant to us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation that we might know Your love and power, and have an even greater hope. We believe Your promises and submit to Your Son.
Lord God, could there ever be a greater love than Yours? We were dead in our sins. You loved us and saved us. You gave us life in Christ. In Him we are with You in heaven even now. Thank You, Lord. We rejoice in Christ and in His wonderful cross. We will take up the life of love, following Him, for He has prepared good works for us to walk in. He is our peace. We are together as Jews and Gentiles in one church, fellow citizens with our brothers and sisters in an apostolic faith. We boast in the Cornerstone of this temple, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has risen from the dead.
Father God, we thank You for the witness of Your apostles in the Scriptures. We especially thank You for Your great works of revelation, through which we have Your sure Word of truth. Through Your church the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ are now proclaimed. You are bringing about the fulfillment of Your eternal purpose even now. Grant us power though Your Spirit, that Christ might dwell in our hearts by faith, and that we might know the love of Your Son. You are able, O Lord. We believe, and we will follow.
Lord God, we thank You for the blessing of Your church. We are together in Christ, and united in our enjoyment of all that Christ has for the church. Though we have a variety of gifts, we rejoice in You, our one Lord. Help us to grow together in Christ through the ministry of pastors and teachers who bring us the Word day by day. Grant us willingness to use the gifts that You have given us, not for the service of our own foolish pride, but to serve You and one another. We put on the new man in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We hate the works of the devil and the filth of corruption that battles for ascendancy within us. Bring relief to those who are in pain and trouble today, for we care for one another and forgive each other, as members together of one body.
Great God and Father, teach us to walk as we should, in a way that is proper for those who are to be holy in Christ. We turn away from all immorality and idolatry. Please help us to live as children of light. Teach us not to hide in the darkness just to win the approval of the world. Show us how to live as the light of Your Son, that the darkness would be exposed. Fill us with the Spirit, that we might worship You always with great thanksgiving and submission. Teach us how to live in our marriages as followers of Your Son. Help the wives in Your church to respect their husbands. Show our men how to love their wives as Christ loves the church. Grant to all of us a solid awareness of the pattern of life given to us in the cross of Your Son.
Almighty Father, we need help in our homes. Forgive us for our many family sins. We have not done what Your Word has clearly commanded. Bring the hearts of fathers back to their children, and the hearts of children back to their parents. Bring about a fruitfulness through the church that will overflow into the world with a yield of much love and righteousness. We commit ourselves to prayer, seeking Your power for Your purposes. We long to see Your churches moving forward in health. Grant boldness to Your servants who bring Your Word in truth to Your people. We love You with an undying love.Devotionals
Ephesians 1
Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus is a succinct statement of a well-formed
and sincere faith. The first three chapters are about Christian thinking, and
the last three are about Christian living. This structure (renewed thinking
first and renewed living flowing from it), is very instructive to the church in
every age. We may want our lives to be fixed right now. We may want to get
right into the practical matters of obedient living, but we will not have much
success at reforming our behavior unless we first allow our minds to be renewed
with thoughts about God, and particularly about our new position before Him in
His Son Jesus Christ.
After one of his familiar introductions where He speaks of His apostolic office according to the will of God and about their station as those who are called out of the world around them to be the “saints” or “holy ones,” the faithful in Christ Jesus who have become recipients of such powerful grace and peace from the Father and the Son, the apostle immediately speaks in the language of one who must praise God. He is blessing God the Father who has blessed us so richly in Christ. Our union with Christ is so real to Paul that He speaks about us as already being in the heavenly places in our Messiah. There we lack nothing, because Christ lacks nothing. This is fundamental to healthy thinking. Our union with Christ and our participation in all kinds of heavenly blessings is a perfect place for us to start.
He then continues with some wonderfully clear statements about God’s electing love for His children. It is God who chose us in Christ from before the foundation of the world. He predestined us for inclusion into His family in Christ. He has blessed us in His beloved Son. We have been redeemed by the blood of that Son. Over and over again Paul emphasizes two things, the glory of God in His sovereign love for us, and that all of the good things that we have been given have come to us because we are in Christ. To be in Christ is to have every reason for spiritual happiness. Our sins are forgiven. We have the riches of God’s gifts lavished upon us. His will for us has now been revealed according to His great eternal purpose.
There is no one better than God. That is why His settled eternal purpose is of the utmost importance. It is amazing that we have a place in that eternal purpose. This plan of God is stated in the most concise and glorious words, “to unite all things in him (Christ), things in heaven and things on earth.” We are absolutely certain that the plan of God will be accomplished, because we are told that God works all things according to the counsel of his will. Explicitly included in that list of “all things” is the matter of loving us and choosing us before the creation of the world to have the inheritance of the children of God. This inheritance must be what was earlier stated concerning the Lord’s eternal purpose, “all things” in that kingdom where everything, all of the renewed heaven and earth, is perfectly united in the only One who could bring back together the world of blessing that has been lost ever since the day when man first sinned against God. Only in Christ can the place of eternal blessing come together, and you and I have our name on the deed of that land as those who are in Him who died for our sins and is the eternal Son of God.
This inheritance is perfectly secure in our Lord’s death and resurrection. In fact, it is so secure, that we already have a generous slice of heaven granted to us in none other than the promised Holy Spirit of God Almighty, with whom we were sealed when we heard and believed the good news of our salvation in Christ. The apostles and the believing Jews in Judea were the first to hold fast to the confident expectation that has now come to millions of believing Jews and Gentiles over many centuries. All over the world people hear of Christ and believe in Him to the glory of God.
The apostle was regularly giving thanks to God for this great salvation which had touched the church in Ephesus. The work of the Lord in them was expressed beautifully in their open proclamation of faith in the Lord Jesus and their actions of love for one another in the church. But God had more for them. The apostle was also regularly asking God for a further good work of the Holy Spirit for the Ephesian church. Specifically, he was requesting that they would be given a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ. It is by the Holy Spirit that Paul says they would come to know in Christ three things: 1. the hope that is ours as those who have a part in the future (and present) eternal kingdom of God, 2. that God considers US, in our perfected state in glory, to be a rich inheritance for HIM, and 3. that the power of God to bring about the perfect resurrection kingdom is unstoppable. These things we can only know by the Holy Spirit, and Paul is asking for this blessing of heavenly knowledge for the church.
Consider the greatest proof of our future hope, the greatest proof of God’s determination to bless redeemed mankind, and the greatest proof that God is able to bring about His full eternal purpose. This greatest proof has come to us in the resurrection of one Man from the dead. The Man who redeemed us with His death has proven that God has life for us in His life. As Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father as the Head of the church, we shall surely experience the fullness of our destiny as His body. He is our everything in the eternal kingdom, for we shall be the fullness of Him who will fill all in all. This is the kind of spiritual thinking that we need the most, and it is the kind of thinking that could really make a difference in how we live.
It is too easy for us to imagine that we bring something to God that makes Him like us. The truth is that God has great resources of mercy and pity for us, and it is His prior commitment of love that makes everything happen in our lives concerning our movement toward Him. The reality of our prior spiritual condition is so far from recommending us to God that Paul can say that we had no life at all with which we could have moved toward the Lord. We were dead in our trespasses and sins.
This is not just about some particularly nasty people. All of us in churches throughout the world were once following the course of this world, following the devil, by nature deserving the wrath of God, just like all the rest of mankind. If we see others who are still living the spiritually dead lifestyle, we can honestly say that we were once exactly like them. We cannot imagine that we were any better than them.
But someone has changed that situation, and that someone is God. God had a great love for us, not because we were of a lovable nature, but because of the richness of His own mercy, and His amazing resources of faithful commitment. He was like the Good Samaritan who had compassion on the wounded Jewish man on the side of the road and was determined to do something about us. He saw us in our spiritual death, He recognized us as His beloved, and He decided to come to us and to breathe new life into us. This is His great gift of love, of Christ, of heaven, of blessing to us, and it is by this grace that we have been saved. He saw us and made us alive together with Christ.
We were deserving of hell, but Christ was deserving of heaven and of the fullness of heavenly riches. Jesus took our hell in His death, and we have been granted the gift of Him and His heaven. Not only are we counted as being in Jesus’ family, we are raised up with Him, and we are seated with Him on His throne in heavenly places. This all seems so foreign to us because of the miseries and uncertainties of this present life. There is another age ahead of us. That age is reserved for us, in a way, in a current place, heaven, as if God is storing up an entire time period of eternity in a spatial entity that is beyond the reach of our technology. The way to that place now, the way to the age to come of eternal life, is only in Christ. One day that place will become an eternal age in a renewed world, and it is the intention of God to show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus when that age is finally here.
Until then we have faith. That faith is the way that the people of God have access to this eternal gift of God’s grace, rather than by our own works. Faith is what connects us to the works of another, the only Man of merit, Jesus. We trust Him. We believe in Him. He is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. When we believe in Him, we have Him, and we have the future He won for us. This is faith, and even that is a gift from God, so that all the credit for our excellent future goes solely to God, who has provided. He has works for us to do, but even that is due to His kindness and mercy, for He has left us a new life full of meaning.
It is amazing that a person can be saved for a great life of service through this kind of arrangement of substitution. To think that those who were far from God among the uncircumcised nations of the world have now been granted faith and life in the Jewish Messiah is wonderfully good news. This has all happened through the blood of Christ. The death of Jesus has accomplished what the Law could never have done for us. We have been brought near to Israel’s God.
In former days the Law was a dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles that kept all but the chosen people far from God. Now that division between circumcised and uncircumcised has been torn down in the death of Jesus. The old ceremonies are abolished. The time of shadows has been superseded by the glory of the brightness of the face of God in the love of Christ for us.
We have peace with God through Christ, and through Christ Jews and Gentiles have peace with one another, and can share complete fellowship in the New Testament church. Gentiles have the Savior of the chosen people. They have the Holy Spirit of God promised to the chosen people. They have the God of the chosen people as their Father. They have the citizenship of the chosen people. Together we are being built up into a new temple of chosen Jews and Gentiles on the cornerstone of Christ, and on the apostolic and prophetic foundation granted to us in the Scriptures. Together we are growing in what is destined to be the promised resurrection temple of God. God Himself died for us in Christ, and God Himself lives in us together by the Holy Spirit. Together we are the chosen people of God by His grace, through the faith He has granted to us in the Son of God who died for us. All this has sprung up from the inexhaustible wellspring of the electing love of God for the unworthy and not from anything that we could have offered to God. This is grace, and it is worthy of celebration. Blessed be the Name of the Lord who saves unworthy and desperate sinners!
Ephesians 3
The Apostle Paul was given a special job that had much to do with God’s plan to
bring the message of grace to the world. The pivotal figure in the plan of
grace was not Paul, but Jesus. It is Jesus who had provided the obedience
necessary for Gentiles (and Jews) to have right standing with God. It was Jesus
who took the sins of the elect on Himself through His death, so that the debt
that we had before God could be cleared. It was Jesus who proved the reality of
the plan of God in His own resurrection. It was Jesus who sent forth the
apostles to make disciples of all nations. It was Jesus who met Saul of Tarsus
on the road to Damascus, and left this persecutor of the church blinded and
bewildered, so that he had to be led by the hand to the home of a Christian man
named Ananias. It was Jesus who informed Ananias that Paul would be His chosen
instrument to carry His name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of
Israel. It was Jesus who gave Paul great insight into the mystery that Gentiles
would be on an equal standing with Jews in the Lord’s church as fellow heirs of
the promises of God together with circumcised believers. There were many
passages in the Old Testament that had clearly indicated that the plans of God
for mercy extended far beyond Israel to all the family groups of the earth (See
Genesis 12:1-3, Psalm 100, and so many others). What was something of a mystery
was the extent to Gentiles would be members of the same body with Jews, and that
they would be able to remain as Gentiles, rather than having to become Jews
according to the ceremonial laws of the Old Covenant. This blessed message,
entrusted to Paul, came from Jesus.
As with all gifts that we are given, Paul’s knowledge of the Scriptures and the eternal plan of God was a trust given to him by God, and it was something that He saw as a matter of stewardship, not of money, but of something far more valuable, the gift of salvation that the Bible calls “grace.” The way that elect Gentiles would become fully acceptable to God would be through the message of God’s grace to us in the death of Christ.
This message is called the gospel, which means “good news.” Paul was made to be a messenger of that good news, a servant of Christ and of the good news of Christ that people everywhere needed to hear and to receive. The fact that Paul had a very important and special role to play was obviously not a matter of Paul’s merit, since he was chosen in the act of troubling the church. There was no better choice, in a sense, to remind us that Christ has brought us this good news by the working of His power through servants that He chooses to use for His own purposes. If we have heard the Word of grace and have been given the great task of proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ, none of this is for the purpose of glorying in ourselves. It is our privilege to stay at our post, and to rejoice in Jesus Christ.
God’s plan (Ephesians 1:10) to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth, is now moving forward. The way that Jews and Gentiles have become one body in Christ is now clear, and should be clearly proclaimed. Together in Him we have been given this sacred trust as well, since it is through the church that the manifold wisdom of God is being made know, not only in all sorts of lands on the present earth, but even to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places. All of this is happening according to the Lord’s eternal plan that God has realized in the Messiah, Jesus Christ, who is our Lord and King.
In Jesus we have a new boldness and a confident access to the throne of Almighty God, so that we can come to Him with praise, thanksgiving, and all kinds of petitions, both on earth and in heaven, and we are heard as the beloved of God through faith in Jesus. Meditating upon these privileges and making use of them in prayer will help us to grow in courage and hope. The troubles that we face in a world of misery might cause us to be tempted to give up and to leave our calling behind. We need to remember the eternal purpose of God to bring glory to Himself in the reuniting of heaven and earth in Christ. The decisive victory has been won at the cross, and the best evidence of that victory has been provided through the Lord’s resurrection. By God’s grace, it is ours to stay the course that has been charted for us.
Meanwhile, the church faces troubles, the ministry runs into obstacles, and individual Christians suffer. Paul writes this letter from prison, but look how he is getting through this challenging providence. He is persuaded that the trials he faces in the course of preaching the gospel to Gentile lands is for their benefit, and that somehow it is glorious, and not some accident or mistake. He is not writing to get their pity, their money, or their approval. He is writing to be a blessing to them and now to us as we receive this message of true Christian thinking.
He is moved to prayer and not to bitterness. He knows that God’s plan is big, and that he is privileged to be despised and imprisoned as a part of that plan of bringing together all things in Christ. He wants them to have spiritual power from the Holy Spirit. He wants them to have Christ, to have faith, to have love, and to have all the good things of God in increasing measure, so that they might be filled with all the fullness of God together with the church everywhere. No matter how deep your trouble may be, no matter what prison you are in, no matter how dark your night is, take in the truth of these words: God is able. He is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us. May He receive all the glory for His grace among His people who worship Him, now and forever and ever. So be it.
Ephesians 4
The foundation for obedient spiritual living is obedient spiritual
thinking. For the first half of this letter, the Apostle Paul has presented the
truth to the church in a way that should thrill the hearts of the redeemed.
Here are some of the things we have learned: God is big. The Father has chosen
us in love. The Son shed His blood for us. The Spirit is enlightening the eyes
of our hearts. Our God has a wonderful eternal plan concerning heaven and
earth. He is bringing about that plan in Jesus Christ and in the church that is
united to Him. Our lives are full of meaning in Jesus. God is able to do far
more in and through us than we can even ask or think. These are the ideas to
which we must continually return if we want to grow spiritually.
There is a way to take in these truths, a way of thinking about and talking about the Lord, and a way of responding to God’s gifts which can yield real progress that brings glory to God. Paul explains this way of life in the remainder of this letter. We start with God. Paul calls himself a prisoner for the Lord. What a way of speaking! He is a happy prisoner, because he loves his Keeper and his Keeper loves him. Paul wants to walk in a manner worthy of the calling that we have. Yes, we are captives of Christ; yes, we are His servants; but we are so happy to discover that we are fellow-heirs with Christ, and sons of God in Jesus Christ our Lord, that we are willing to consider real change according to the command of the one who gave His life for us.
It seems ludicrous for us to even say something so weak as this, that we are willing to consider obeying God, but it is better for us to be honest, rather than to have overly high spiritual pretensions combined with low spiritual attainments. The humility, gentleness, patience, and love of Christ are not optional for us, but real progress in these areas does not come easily. We are still too ready for division in the church and too slow to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Because we would rather not deal with people, we might prefer anonymity in large crowds of worshipers who will not know us. We might choose to use some kind of technology that allows us to keep our spirituality private and personal. This is not God’s way. He wants us to be working with real people as we live out the oneness of the body of Christ. There is only one church with Christ as the one Head. Though we have particular assemblies and particular individuals within every church that have specific gifts, the individuality that we have should be working toward a unity that is ours to experience in Christ within local gatherings of worship where we come to know people in person.
According to Psalm 68, despite the separation we feel because of time and distance, Christ is our one King in all eras of the life of the church, and He has ascended to God’s heavenly sanctuary. Before He ascended, He first came down from heaven in order to do His great work of redemption. It was necessary for Him to become man in order to die for men. He descended from heaven for this purpose, but having accomplished that great atonement for us and having been raised from the dead, He then returned to heaven, and from that great height of the power of God, He showers His beloved “captives” with heavenly gifts. We are being taken up with Him, and He is with us here below by His Spirit. He gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers in the church. They are gifts from Him, not for their own pride but for the good of the whole body. They are serving up the Word in all sorts of contexts that help the church to move forward in faith and love. The source of everything good for us is Christ, and the goal of every step of real spiritual life is Christ. He is the maturity we seek in the church.
The Lord has a plan for His worldwide assembly, and for each of us individually within each church. That plan involves not only the end result of what we will be like in heaven, but also the way that we grow toward that end now on earth. That way will come by His Word and Spirit working through all kinds of people. We are to do and speak the truth in love; not blasting people with everything all at once with no concern for their feelings, but living the truth of love in their midst, and seeking opportunities to build each other up in faith that can be received by those we want to bless in some way. Everyone in the body has a part in this life of grace.
What that means is that each us needs to be willing to put off old patterns of life that do not conform to the love of the cross and the glory of the resurrection. We will only do this if we have been renewed in the spirit of our minds. As we put off the old self of the man of the Fall, we simultaneously put on the new self of the Man of the resurrection. This will only happen if we are willing to confess our sins to one another, pray for one another, and help each other in this new way of life. It is best for each person to do their own confessing, and for those who love to speak words of forgiveness and life. This is the way for people to change patterns of falsehood, sinful anger, stealing, corrupt speech, and bitterness of heart. By the Lord’s blessing of the body working together in true Christian relationships of love we find divine resources by the Holy Spirit enabling us to walk in truth, forgiveness, diligence, and spiritual edification.
This kind of life must be lived together, since we are one in Christ. In His death we have all the sin-defeating power necessary to move ahead in a life that will be fruitful. The pathway of sin is not the final destiny of the church. As Christ has risen from the dead, we too can walk more and more in the newness of life He has for us. We are forgiven, and now we can help one another to walk in the way of His love by the Spirit He sends forth from on high and in accord with the Word that He speaks through His servants in the church.
Ephesians 5
We could summarize the whole story of Ephesians in one sentence if we wanted to:
Know God more and more in all His grandeur and grace (1-3), and then act
accordingly (4-6). Since the beginning of God’s dealings with man, the root
commandment has been this simple. The Lord speaks as our great and loving
Father. He says to us, “Be like Me.” Of course there are some things that we
just cannot do. God is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His very nature.
Yet as creatures of God, as those created in His image, we can consider this our
prime directive, that in every appropriate creaturely way, we are to be
imitators of God, as His beloved children.
The coming of Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit are together a tremendous advance for us in terms of our understanding of this way of life. We could not conceive of a better way for us to understand this duty of divine imitation than this two-step plan of God. 1. God would become a man in the person of His Son and display the life of love before His people, and then, 2. God would plant Himself within their souls in the person of the Holy Ghost and would move them along in the way of resurrection obedience.
Before we proceed further in the way of appropriate Christian living, we need to remind ourselves that all who call upon the name of the Lord are saved. Even this statement is not broad enough, since there are those who die in the womb before they are born, and there are surely other elect who die in infancy or without the physical capacity to call out to God in a way that any man could here. Can we doubt the Lord’s mercy to His elect in such situations? Therefore we should remember the Lord’s plan to build a kingdom of grace, and we should never doubt that all of God’s elect shall certainly be saved. The point of Christian ethics after this reality of salvation is admitted, is to act as those who are bound for glory, not to win for ourselves a glory that we could never merit through even our best actions.
There is a way of life that is inconsistent with the hope of resurrection glory. Things like sexual immorality and covetousness are so far from the way of heaven that Paul says that they should not even be named among the people of the Lord. We must not think that grace permits us to descend into debauchery. Though Christians may fall into all kinds of sin, we need to think of ourselves, at root, as new creatures in Christ, not as idolaters or swindlers. We are children of light, and we should walk in that way by the power of the Lord. We cannot continue in associations with those who will drag us back into the old ways of darkness, for we are, in Christ and by His Spirit, the light of the Lord in the midst of a world of depravity.
There should be much about us that speaks of good news to others around us, a way of life that says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” It is a way that does not condemn, but which is deeply convicting to others because of the work of the Holy Spirit calling them to the Lord. We cannot live out this calling as monastics who have no contact with the world, but we surely cannot live the heavenly life in drunkenness and debauchery.
We need the way of resurrection thinking to come to us by the hand of Almighty God through the Holy Spirit. We need more than a touch from the hand of God; we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. When God’s Spirit fills His people, what do they do? They worship by the Spirit. They give thanks by the Spirit. Finally, they submit to one another by the Holy Spirit out of a sense of reverence for the One who submitted to the Father and travelled the way of the cross on His way home to heavenly glory.
This Spirit-filled submission is not dismissive of the structures of authority in this world, but deeply respectful of the order that the Lord has established for honest and holy living. As Spirit-filled Christians we do not turn away from an orderly life of marriage and family; we find our place within that life according to our calling. The joy of being a wife takes on a renewed meaning for Christian women, since the church of Jesus Christ is to be the holy bride of our beloved Husband. The privilege of being a man who gives himself for his bride is not a despised entanglement, but an opportunity to serve as one who is thankful for the best of all husbands.
Our confidence is in this great ascended Lord of the church. Not only did He give Himself up for us, but now He is cleansing us by Word and Spirit. We shall be His forever in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. Let us live now as those who are counted as holy in Him. Our faith cannot just be a matter of holy words, it must be more than that, displaying the beauty of our shining Husband who will never leave us or forsake us. We need to live out the glory of our salvation in our homes and in all of the structures of society that our God has established as we await the day of the fullness of glory reserved for us even now in the heavens, where our Beloved Savior lives and reigns.
Ephesians 6
We have been exploring the Christian way of life that flows from the grace that
we have received. In this life, we know that we will have sin, yet it is the
Lord’s will to sanctify us. The blood of Christ is the power behind our new
standing with God, but it is also the power for our growth in holiness. As
those who have seen what holiness is in Christ, and who have been granted the
Holy Spirit in us, we are given new resources for worship, for thankfulness, and
for godly submission within the structures of authority that the Lord has
established.
This kind of growth in grace is not only for adults, but also for young ones. Children can be filled with the Spirit too. Though they may not yet have the intellectual and emotional maturity that will come with more years, they can hear the law of life and seek what the Lord desires by the Holy Spirit. One of the most important things that they can do in living a life of love is to obey their parents in every way that would be pleasing to God. This is the right thing for a child to do, and pursuing this kind of obedient life comes with the extra encouragement of the Lord’s promise of blessing. If a child wants to have a long life of pursuing what is good, he can do no better than to listen respectfully and lovingly to his parents, and to pursue all of their lawful directives.
Parents, and particularly fathers, are given a commandment here as well. They are to bring up their little ones with the Lord’s nurture and with the Lord’s loving correction. They must seek the aid of God’s Spirit in avoiding the kind of ungodly frustration that does not help in the raising of their children, but tends to produce only anger in those they are trying to lead, rather than submissive and grateful hearts.
In whatever other relationships we may have within our households, or within work environments, or other social engagements of common enterprise, we should try to honor and obey those who have been placed in positions of authority above us, whether with our consent or without it. Those who are in charge are to use their positions of trust in a way of fatherly love, and not according to inappropriate impulses that lead to abuse. In all of these varied relationships we are aided by our consideration of our Lord’s love and our true desire to yield ourselves to His holy will. Even when we may have a human superior who is not particularly worthy, through our consideration of the Lord’s mysterious providence that has brought us into such a relationship, we can serve such a person from the heart, recognizing that when we submit in a difficult situation, our obedience is an offering of love to the Lord who was willing to die for us. The Lord is very willing to repay us in situations where we face some injustice with patience and faith, if not in this life, then in the next. He sees our tears, and he notes our submission to Him, though we may not understand His decrees in every situation. He is not partial to the slave above the master, or to the master above the slave, but He does take notice of the obedience of faith, especially in the midst of trial or distress.
In all situations, however difficult they may be, we are reminded that the source of our strength for this cross-love, this resurrection living, is the Lord Himself. Imagine that in our time of trial, it is the Lord that is giving us the spiritual resources that we need to be patient in affliction. We may not be able to mount up with wings as eagles; we may not be able to run or even to walk with any strength; yet if Christ has given us the grace to stand in Him in the evil day, then He has given us a tremendous gift that should not be despised. Are you standing in Jesus today under a difficult burden? Praise God! You are still standing.
With this in mind, put on the armor that God has for you to fight the good fight today. Do not consider other people to be your foremost enemies, but recognize that behind a Judas is some devil you cannot see. Even fallen angels have some purpose in the movements of the Lord’s good providence. There is a purpose in the cross, even though wicked men seemed to be doing their will through it. There is a higher plan being achieved in it according to the love and justice of the Almighty. Therefore you can put on the truth of Christ, the righteousness of Christ, the peace of Christ, the faith of Christ, and the saving power of Christ. Christ is the perfect warrior who continues to do battle for you. Use His Word as your supreme weapon, and use it with love and grace, remembering that you too have been saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Finally pray to God in all situations by the power of the Spirit who fills you. Pray with a firm acceptance that His will is better than your will, and that He is powerful in the vindication of His own holy Name. Pray for your sanctification and for holiness of the entire church. Pray that the Word of Christ would be boldly preached, and that it would be received eagerly by the power of God. And may God’s grace be with us as we travel together toward that Jerusalem that is above, where evil men and angels will no longer trouble the beloved of the Lord.