Walk in Love (4:31 - 5:2)

Walk in Love: Ephesians 4:31-5:2 I. Walking in Love is behavior consistent with loving relationships. Love is a relational thing. Without relationship, there can’t be love. – So this is about your loving relationship with God b/c of his love for you. He has loved you b/c God is love. – It’s also about your loving relationship with others b/c of God’s love IN you through Christ and following his model.  It’s that overall understanding we need to grasp the weight of Paul’s instruction in our text today: Love God, and imitate Christ’s love in forgiveness and sacrifice. [Read Passage] I’m going to divide this into two parts from our verses here: 1. Don’t bite and claw; be kind and forgiving. 2. Be imitators of God, and live a life of love. II. Don’t bite and claw; be kind and forgiving. A. Put away: take up for disposal/termination – All, meaning every kind of… 1. Resentment/bitterness – an acrid taste; eating away at your heart and mind 2. Rage (outburst) – explosive 3. Anger (festering, seething) 4. Clamor: loud scream or shout (not restrained) 5. Blasphemia – (slander) abusive, profane speech (cursing or abusive language, or defamation/slander) 6. Plus put away any kind of intent for evil that flows in the flood of anger. A lot of malicious design is born from bitterness and anger. (like grotesque children of evil spawned to wreak havoc against unity and edification) B. Drop the competitive, combative, controlling spirit. INSTEAD… Be (to one another) kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving. – Col. 3:12-13 (parallel with more) 1. God’s kindness (soft, mild; rather than harsh or severe), Eph. 2:7 and Titus 3:4-7!  How can we be kind? By the Spirit – Gal. 5:22 [remove verse] 2. Tenderhearted: Compassionate, sympathetic – again, as God in his mercy is compassionate toward us – vs. hardness for having been wronged 3. Graciously forgive (continually), as God in Christ forgave you  His forgiveness is the cause of our forgiveness, His sacrifice the cause of our sacrifice. Forgiveness and sacrifice become the pattern of Christ to which we are called to conform. [next section] a. Lack of forgiveness is an arrow in the devil’s quiver. – 2 Cor. 2:11 b. Freely forgive. (In frequent situations in which need arises, keep graciously forgiving.) Measure as much as you have been forgiven. – Mt. 18:22 (70x7) c. [From his forgiveness flows the next, synthesizing thought] III. Be imitators of God, and live a life of love. A. Imitating him is based foundationally on our being his dearly loved children… b/c he chose us for adoption as sons (1:5) – Like Father, like daughter.  1 John 4:7ff B. (Imitate God how?) That is, walk in love. 1. Walk – (4:1 – walk worthily of the calling; 4:17 – unlike Gentiles, walk in holiness and righteousness; now, walk in love; two more walks in 5:8 &15, light and wisdom) 2. Love – O’Brien: “The second half of Ephesians (chaps. 4–6) contains a series of instructions to love (4:2, 15, 16; 5:2, 25, 28, 33; 6:24; see on 4:15), the fulfilment of which is the outworking of the apostle’s prayer (3:17, 19).” C. Christ both the foundation and model for our love. 1. (By Christ’s own initiative) Loved us and Gave himself up – relinquish (hand over) his own control, rights, will… in submission to the Father. 2. For us – substitution, atonement – Rom. 3:22-26 3. Offering and sacrifice to God (hendiadys for all forms of sacrifice, whether grain or animal/burnt or peace offering) – This love is a costly, sacrificial love. But it is also “a fragrant aroma”  To serve others through costly sacrifice is to both please God and imitate him. – That marks us for who we are—His beloved children. IV. How’s your love life? A. Love for God is at the very heart of the gospel. – Loving God is our response to the gospel of God, which is God revealing his righteousness and love in Christ Jesus. B. Love for others is the overflow, or the concrete evidence, of love for God (of God’s love in us). – As God has poured his love into us by His Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5), so we also live by that love. C. In the Christian walk, the life of love you live depends entirely on the flood of God’s love overwhelming you. That means that the most important thing you can do is devote your heart to knowing and pursuing God. – When you do that, God does with you what he designed you for… in making you new by grace through faith in Jesus—his workmanship created for good works (Eph. 2:10). He remakes us and continues re-educating us to display his glory and grace in us as instruments (and examples) of his love. Col. 3:12-13 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Titus 3:4-7 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. 2 Cor. 2:10-11 [Forgiving the one who has sinned by causing another pain; namely Paul] Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, 11 so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs. Rom. 3:22-26 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. John 15:8-17 [Scripture Reading] 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants,[a] for the servant[b] does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.