For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, 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 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 his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ 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 name that is invoked, 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. Eph. 1:15-23
Last passage ended with the process of salvation - hearing, believing, receiving forgiveness and the Holy Spirit indwelling. You then become the Church - God's family here on Earth. Paul has heard that a number of people in Ephesus had become the Church by faith believing. How did he know it's genuine? Not by their knowledge of the scriptures - he was praying that would increase. Not by their power - he was praying they would understand the power they had. It wasn't that they got together and sang songs of Beulah land and the sweet by and by - he was praying that they would grasp that hope.
Paul knew that their faith was genuine by the love they had for all God's people. Love is the indication that we are transformed. Why love? Because love is considering others above yourself - putting their well-being above your own and the only way that is possible because the flesh serves self, is to be transformed by the Spirit.
When I was meditating on or rehearsing a future conversation to be had with a Muslim convincing her that Christianity is a superior religion and she needs to choose her religion not just follow it because her parents do, I was going over the reasons it is superior. For one it teaches that God is approachable and merciful not angry and capricious. Secondly it teaches that you can know that you are going to Heaven. Third it offers forgiveness of sins without works. Fourth it offers equality for all people - women and men are equal. And fifth it teaches love not hate - dying for your faith not killing for it. This last, most important one in our world today with all the hate in the world even caused by religion made me pause. Are Christians seen as loving today?
Christians are seen in general as red. We are conservative, vote Republican, aligned with Trump, watch Fox, etc. You could say that the left is painting us unloving but I think we haven't needed any painting - we are unloving. I think it became magnified with CoVid and has continued on. We were faced with a disease that was killing tens of thousands and didn't know how to combat it so a number of strategies were proposed by infectious disease experts saying let's trust the science. Let's social distance and avoid large crowds. Christians rebelled and said the Government was trying to take away our right to go to Church and we still met and had concerts even. The scientists said wear masks and Christians rebelled saying you can't tell me what to do with my body (sounds familiar). Scientists developed a vaccine thinking it would stop the disease - long story short because CoVid mutated so rapidly it didn't but it did drastically decrease the severity of the disease when you got it- we named it the jab and didn't take it. I'm not saying science was right by any means but they were trying to combat something the likes of which I had never seen in my lifetime and to be frank, Christians came out of this as looking unloving. We were standing up for our rights not placing other's rights above ourselves and that's how the world saw us.
Now we have ICE and Renee Good in Minnesota and Christians are once again looking unloving. We are reviewing the videos saying she is trying to run over the ICE agent rather than seeing her wheels are turned away from him. Whether you agree with me on that or not, it's not something that required lethal force - jump out of the way of a car moving less than 5 MPH! Even me as a 70-year-old could do that and then pull her over and arrest her. Come on - any other take on this is unloving. And then videos of ICE agents going into neighborhoods with screaming, crying families, pinning them to the ground and handcuffing them behind their backs? Do we look like the loving religion? I'm not saying we shouldn't deport illegals but with all the verses on love and care and sympathy for the aliens among us, it should be with tears in our eyes and compassionate treatment rather than high fived bravado.
What I'm saying is that in my future conversation with this Muslim, I have to skip point 5 because I can't claim that Christianity is superior because of its love because she could build too strong of a case against that statement in today's culture. I'm not changing my political beliefs but come on Christians - let's be more loving! It is supposed to be in our new DNA.
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