Main Thought
Many of us have experienced love in and through our families of origin. Sadly, that’s a blessing that not everyone can say they’ve had. Still, everyone should be able to agree that we’re supposed to love our families. Even that can be more complicated than it should be. We fight; we have misunderstandings; we are hurt, and we hurt others. We need someone to show us how to love our families.
God’s love can show us how to love our families. God sees each of us at our absolute worst, yet He offered us His absolute best through Jesus Christ. He adopts us into His family. This is grace: the undeserved, unearned kindness of God. If you’ve experienced God’s love and grace, then you should remember what you’ve received and offer it to your family. We can greet our family’s failures with grace, and help them grow. We can look for opportunities to serve. We can love and forgive quickly, while choosing to trust or develop relationships with care and time. That’s how God can show us to love our families. If we do our best to love like Jesus, then God’s love can fill and heal our families.
Main Passages
'For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. '
- Ephesians 3:14-19, ESV
‘But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.’
- Ephesians 2:4-7
'Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.'
- Ephesians 2:11-13
Main Passage
It can be said that the first imperative (or command) issued in the Book of Ephesians is to remember the love that we’ve received from God. Why do you think we’re encouraged to begin living for God, and loving like Him, by first remembering His love for us?
Has God’s love changed your understanding or experience of love? If so, how?
What would it look like for you to remember what you’ve received from God (love, grace, forgiveness, etc.) and offer that to someone in your family? Try your best to do that this week!