Love is seemingly everywhere. We hear about it in movies, books, political rallies, and yes, the Hallmark channel at Christmas time. But how does a Christian love? Even more directly — how does a Christian walk in love?
Paul in his letter to the church at Ephesus encourages them to walk in love and gives some descriptors of how they are to do so in Ephesians chapter 5.
Imitate Christ
Firstly Paul says for the Ephesians to walk in love, they need to be imitators of God. Think about this — Christ loved us so much that He gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God. If Christ did that for people who had not even been born yet, how much more should we walk in love around those who we can physically see and tangibly touch?
But then Paul gives the Ephesians some practical ways they could walk in love in their everyday life.
In Your Behaviour
Paul says be imitators, but then also let there be no sexual immorality even named among you. No filthiness, foolish talk, or crude joking. Wow! In the #churchtoo culture that we are living in today, many may come to believe that there is no one in the church who is behaving in a way that is according to this passage.
I would argue there are many brothers and sisters out there who are fighting to not be associated with any sexual immorality, who are seeking to not be a part of filthiness, foolish talk, or crude joking. However, we have a lot of work to do to walk in love in this manner in our sexually obsessed culture. The church should look different in this regard, but it can only look different if we fight this inner sin struggle together instead of living lives of secret sin.
We can walk in love by fighting for our behaviour to look different than the world around us.
In Your Thankfulness
Paul says instead of being sexually immoral, let there be thanksgiving. Do you know what keeps the proper perspective on thankfulness? Remembering the work that Christ did on our behalf so we could be forgiven of our sins. We can never get over our salvation, we can never move past the joy of it — there is nothing more. The Gospel is all! So we live lives of joy, of thankfulness, not in a fake manufactured way, but in a way that we can’t get over Christ’s work on our behalf.
We can walk in love by living lives filled with thankfulness.
In The Company You Keep
Paul warns the Ephesians to be careful to let no one deceive you with empty words. When we walk in love, we keep influential company with those who encourage our obedience in the faith, we walk as children of the light, discerning what is pleasing to the Lord and taking no part of the unfruitful darkness of the world.
We can walk in love through keeping company that will influence us to be obedient to the Lord.
In Your Mission (Exposing Darkness)
Paul tells the Ephesians to “take no part of the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” We walk in love by exposing the darkness. As believers today there are many ways that we are to walk in love by exposing darkness. We expose human traffickers, we expose humans mistreated and advocate for them, we expose the evil ones within churches that seek to prey and bring harm to anyone, we call sin sin and seek to expose it always.
Paul says a little later, “when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light.” To walk in love we seek to expose darkness and bring it into the light. We live in a sinful world that is in need of a Redeemer. Good news — there is a Redeemer! We know who that Redeemer is, so we seek to mitigate the effects of sin and share the Good News that Jesus Christ is that Redeemer!
We can walk in love through exposing darkness and seeking to bring it into the light.
