Psalm 24:9-10 Lift up your heads, O gates; lift them high, O everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. ‘Who is he, this King of glory?’ ‘The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.’

Introduction

We love to speak of love. We talk about the things we love. As we do, a glow enters our face and light twinkles in our eyes. We grow passionate speaking of and discussing things we love—things we love to study, read about, watch, examine, play, create, etc. Love and passion seem to level the playing field between introverts and extroverts. Introverts come roaring out of their shells when given an opportunity to talk about their passions and loves. Most people who encounter me through study of theology or proclamation of the gospel are shocked to find out I’m introverted. I am…truly. But here, in this moment, I’m lit up, excited, filled with passion infused blood cells coursing through my body and love-struck animation taking over as I get to talk about divine love and liberation! Buckle up! Cuz there’s no rollercoaster quite like that!

We also love being in love. There’s a powerful chemical embrace of euphoric proportions as we are enveloped and elevated into something more profound than our own existence. Love is an intoxicating sensation in the body and mind, one moment where head and heart not only shake hands but enter full bodied embrace. We write movies, stories, and songs describing and depicting the profundity of being in love, highlighting our deep desire to be in love and to be loved. Even the most emotionally stoic of us have dreams and desires of being truly loved and truly loving even if we don’t and can’t speak of it in the floral of poetry or the fluidity of prose.

The worst is when we don’t feel loved. When our desire for love is met with silence and absence, neglect and violence. Or, when we feel as if we aren’t good enough for love—overworn scripts with lines repeated in inner monologues: love isn’t for you. Or, when we feel we are only loved because of or due to and not just because. We become paralyzed with fear of being ontologically unlovable. So, we battle against feeling unlovable and try to fight the two headed dragon of performance and condition. And we lose every time because that fight is unsustainable. If we believe we can earn love then we must also believe that love earned can be lost if we cease to be, to do, to act etc. And therein lies condemnation. Conditionality in love renders it no longer love but a violent contract wedded to production and performance. No on in the equation is loved; rather both are pulverized by the demand to measure up.

This one’s for the lonely, the ones that seek and find
Only to be let down time after time
This one’s for the torn down, the experts at the fall…

Greg Laswell “Comes and Goes (in Waves)”

Ephesians 1:3-14

Blessed is God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who blessed us with all spiritual blessing in the heavenly sphere in Christ, just as [God] chose us with [Christ] before the conception of the cosmos to be holy and blameless before [God] in love, [God] foreordained us for adoption as a [child] into the divine family through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the divine happiness of the will of [God], for the praise of [God’s] glory of grace that [God] endowed us with in the one who has been loved [and still is].

Ephesians 1:3-6, translation mine

Do you know what Ephesians is? It’s not merely an epistle supposedly written by Paul;[2] it’s a love letter. There’s little in the letter about the supposed wretchedness of the human condition, considered trademark Paul;[3] its emphasis and thrust is the activity of divine love in the world for creation and humanity. The Christian sacred text—its stories and letters—are verbal moments of encouragement to a fledgling church teetering on the brink of the abyss. Rather than seeing these texts strictly as sources of doctrine and dogma, see them as divinely inspired love letters written by human hands, a gentle bellows upon a small ember threatened with being snuffed out: Don’t give up, Beloved, you are loved; truly and fully loved.

Here, in this introduction, the author sets the scene and thematic structure of the letter: God’s love has come and called us to God[4] through God’s son—Jesus—the Beloved,[5] in and through and by whom we are chosen and liberated[6] to be the beloved since the beginning of the universe.[7] This is good news. The emphasis is on the manifestation of divine Love in the person and work of Jesus who is the elect one of God and in whom we’re elect.[8]^,[9] Jesus is the one who loves God and is the love of God come to the world and for humanity. According to Ephesians, Jesus is—literally—God’s love among and God’s love of humanity.[10] What does God’s love look like? It looks like Jesus the Christ the one loved by God loving us.[11] While we’re unable to look upon and touch the flesh of divine love set loose in the world in an active and a revolutionary way, we hear the words of these ancient stories by authors writing to long gone first churches of the followers of the way. In hearing these words of this story, we are grafted into the history of these stories and into the proclamation of divine love. In this way, we, also, encounter divine love made manifest in Jesus Christ as if we walked dusty roads with him.

The author continues: Love not only walked the earth, calling and liberating humanity and creation, Love also adopted us as Love’s children. The “us” being important and inclusive unrestricted by time and space: anyone who comes into contact with this story is looped into the “us”. When we encounter the love of God in the event of faith in Christ, we are reborn of God[12] by the Holy Spirit; and if reborn of God then we are children of God and thus heirs with Christ in love.[13]

This adoption provides a new framework for those who are called and liberated.[14] We’re radically and profoundly loved and wrapped up in God’s good happiness and pleasure,[15] and we are animated by this Love in whom and by whom we are reborn and loved. Our rebirth isn’t some singular trite tabula rasa situation; it’s the substance of our new existence in the “kingdom of the son of his love.”[16] We are now children of love, radically loved and provoked into loving our neighbor as we’ve been loved.[17]

Conclusion

This one’s for the faithless, the ones that are surprised
They’re only where they are now regardless of their fight
This one’s for believing if only for its sake
Come on friends get up now love is to be made.

Greg Laswell “Comes and Goes (in Waves)”

It is this divine love that is our message into the world in word and deed. When we Christians lose this part of the story, we become a very toxic and violent bunch unfit for the status of the messengers of God. When we cease to tell and hear this story, we lose our identity as those who follow Jesus; when we demand that something else be shared, we will lose our focus and our grounding and become as noisy gongs and clanging cymbals.[19] Our world needs all willing participants in the profound and active message of divine love; our world needs not just good vibes and thoughts and prayers, but people who dare to be motivated by divine love and run the risk of loving those long deemed unlovable by society. As we are loved, so we love.

God’s love in Christ has nothing to do with how good or bad you are. You don’t earn that love. You are loved (full stop). I know love can feel illusive. I know the sadistic whisper of unlovable. I know the battle against performance and condition to earn love. I know the dastardly silence and absence filling love’s space, the neglect and violence. And I know profound love. I am here because God so loved the world, so loved us, so loved me. While that story is for another time, it’s the motivation for why I’m here dressed in alb and stole. I’m set aside not strictly to perform rituals or what looks like divine magic, but to tell you and anyone else this particular story of divine Love for them—Love without hesitation and condition, a full blown apple-of-the-eye type of love. I’m charged to communicate to you the type of love that

… will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free
Be more like the [person] you were made to be

Mumford and Sons “Sigh No More”

And not just talk of it in abstract terms seeming to float above and just out of reach; rather I’m charged to bring it to you in space and time, to look you in the eye and tell you that you are loved—profoundly loved—and then to love you: to make space for you, to accept you, to walk with you, to be divine love present for you when you can’t feel it, when it feels gone, when you just want to call it quits…to remind you with echoes of ancient authors: Don’t give up, Beloved, you are loved. Truly and fully loved.

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[1] Greg Laswell “Comes and Goes (in Waves)”

[2] In other words, I am not opposed to or deny the possibility that someone else wrote this letter in Paul’s name. Authorship doesn’t minimize the profundity of the articulation of God’s love described in this letter.

[3] Barth Ephesians 84, “In Ephesians there is no trace of a tragic harmartology (doctrine of sin). As was earlier observed, sin is not the basis or presupposition of grace. Neither is it the foundation upon which theology rests. Its incidental, senseless, wretched character deserves no better than the demeaning term ‘lapses.’ Even the plural of this noun (which is always used in Ephesians) appears to make sin a series of pitiable mishaps rather than the grave force it appears to be when Paul discusses sin in the singular.”

[4]Markus Barth Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on Chapters 1-3 The Anchor Bible Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974.   Barth Ephesians 80, “‘Before him’ denotes the immediate presence of God to man, and the closest proximity of man to God. The image suggests the position and relationship enjoyed by the cream of society at a royal court; by children to their father; by a bride to the bridegroom (see 5:27!), by the priest in the sanctuary or another elect servant of God; or, by a supplicant seeking legal help from a righteous judge.”

[5] Barth Ephesians 82, “Jesus is not one among those loved by God. He is The Beloved Son. In the time of the Apostolic Fathers ‘the beloved’ appears as a designation of Jesus Christ which need not be supplemented by the noun ‘Son’.”

[6] Barth Ephesians 83, “‘Freedom’ is the clear purpose and result of redemption…Jn this verse Paul does not speak of a way to be followed, a function to be fulfilled, or an action to be completed, but of the complete attainment of the ultimate.”

[7] Barth Ephesians 78 “The totality of God’s gracious manifestation is extolled in the blessing of 1:3-14. This part of Ephesians is a summary of the whole message the apostle wants to give.”

[8] Barth Ephesians 86, “If Christ’s title ‘the first-born’ is considered a parallel, then Eph 1:9b intends to say, the same Jesus Christ in whom the saints have been elected, through whom they were adopted, and through whose blood they were liberated and forgiven—this Christ is granted God’s favor at the head of all creation. In this case Christ is here characterized as the primary and exemplary elect. Election is then, as it were by definition, first and essentially the election of the Son by the Father.”

[9] Harold W. Hoehner Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2002. 175, “The words ἐξελέξατο “[God] chose us,” are very comforting for the believer….The choice of Levi for the priesthood does not imply negative about the other tribes. Furthermore, nowhere is election contrasted with reprobation. It speaks only of those who are chosen and nothing of those not chosen.”

[10] Barth Ephesians 80, About “in love” “According to Ephesians Jesus Christ is the epitome of both, the chosen one beloved by God and the man loving his fellow man. The reception and the demonstration of God’s love among men are as inseparable in this epistle as in I John. The translation of Eph 1:4 must give expression to each of the possible meanings.”

[11] Barth Ephesians 82-3, “(c) The coming, the death, the resurrection of Jesus—in short himself is the form, the content, the revelation, the transmission of God’s overflowing grace. Several Pauline passages support the third among these alternatives …things do appear certain. The election of men by God and his outgoing grace are inseparably connected with God’s warm and personal relation to Jesus Christ. And election cannot be separated from love—or else another election is spoken of…”

[12] cf. John 3

[13] Barth Ephesians 80-1, “Among the NT writers Paul alone speaks explicitly of adoption. Others speak of the father-child relationship between God and man, but they prefer biological imagery and mention a specific role which the word of God, the Spirit, the resurrection of Christ, or the reception of Christ in faith has in the act of birth or rebirth. Paul’s utterances on adoption emphasize the causative and cognitive power of the Spirit and at the same time the juridical-economical implication of adoption: those adopted receive an inheritance. His specific concern is always the inclusion of the Gentiles among the children adopted by God.”

[14] Hoehner Ephesians 196-7, “The point is that the one adopted acquired a new status, privilege, and property that would not have been available under [their] old [parent].”

[15] Barth Ephesians 81, “Far from any idea of arbitrariness, it has warm and personal connotations. When God’s good pleasure is mentioned, his willingness and joy in doing good are indicated. The happiness that accompanies a radiant good will is implied.”

[16] Barth Ephesians 82, “Lit. ‘in the beloved.’ The term, ‘the beloved,’ is a Messianic title. An equivalent, but heavier formulation is found in Col 1:13 where reference is made to the (lit) “kingdom of the son of his love.” In the LXX the passive perfect participle egapemenos, which is also used here, occurs as name of the chosen people or their personal representative. In the Blessing of Moses and in Isaiah this participle renders either Jeshurun or yadid, i.e. titles or attributes that almost mean ‘darling.’ The verbal adjective agapetos is in Hellenistic Greek synonymous with the passive participle.”

[17] Hoehner Ephesians 184, “To have love without righteousness is to have love without a standard of right and wrong, and to have righteousness without love lacks warmth and personal interest. In reality, both work in harmony because love is the essence of all virtue for it fulfills the whole law. God has restored what humans lost in the fall. [God] is both love and holy and a person is to manifest love with holiness as a result of being elected. This will be fully realized in the future when believers will stand in God’s presence. However, if it is true that they will be holy and blameless before him in love, the purpose of God’s work in believers today is to produce holiness within them and love toward one another.”

[18] Greg Laswell “Comes and Goes (in Waves)”

[19] Cf 1 Corinthians 13:1ff

[20] Mumford and Sons “Sign No More”