Eph 5:2   live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.         

                           

If you wanted a single guideline verse to help you live out your life in the world as a Christian, this would suit you well. “Live a live of love” says Paul to the church at Ephesus. In other words, let love be the driving force of your life and the expression of your life. Be a blessing to all others as you express love. Check out your behaviour towards brothers and sisters, towards parents, towards children, towards fellow students or fellow workers or neighbours. It is very simple: is my attitude and my behaviour towards them motivated by love and is it an expression of love? Are my words an expression of love? Are my actions always an expression of love?

I have a feeling that, if this verse flashed up in the sky every time we went to say something less than loving, less than gracious, every time we had an ungracious thought, every time we planned an ungracious action, then perhaps our thinking, words and actions might soon be very different for many of us - very soon!

 

But Paul doesn't just leave us with this instruction; he gives us a reason for it. This is how we should live because this is how Christ lived in respect of us. It was his love for us that caused him to give his life for us. His death was the supreme example or demonstration of love that has never been equalled in history, when you look into what it cost him - having to leave heaven to work out the divine strategy on earth, having to be separated from the Father by the Sin of the world on the Cross. THIS is love.

Love, I have concluded is selfless, sacrificial, unrestricted good will towards all others. That is how Christ acted toward us and so that is how he expects his brothers and sisters who share in his life to also live out their lives. It is a very simple direction – but it needs all the grace of God to do! So with his help, let's do it!