Now That’s a Good Church! Ephesians 1:15-16
Posted by John Reuther on August 18, 2009
Paul got excited about churches whose faith and love were vibrant. He wrote to the Ephesian church and commended them for these manifestations of a “good church.” In fact, he had heard about their faith and love through others. The word about them was spreading, and had reached Paul through those who saw their faith and love as something to talk about. We hear many things today about “good churches,” but those things often have to do with the size of congregations, number of staff, or new ideas which a particular church may be using to good effect.
Let’s think about the significance of Paul’s words: “For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers.” This is Gospel success. People were noticing this church. This was a good church, and for this reason.
Theological Significance
Faith, hope, and love, are cardinal virtues of saving grace. Paul wrote of them in 1 Cor. 13:13. “But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” He commended the Thessalonian Christians in similar words: “constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father” (1 Thess. 1:3). Then he wrote: “But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation” (1 Thess. 5:8). We might call faith, hope, and love, a cord of three strands (Eccl. 4:12).
You may be thinking….Eph. 1:15 only mentions faith and love. What happened to hope? Paul talks about it in Eph. 1:18, 19. “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.”
In the book of Ephesians Paul uses the word love 14 times, the words faith or believe 10 times, and the word hope 4 times. Faith refers to our union with the Lord Jesus. The basis of our salvation is the saving work and accomplishments of Christ, but the basis of our relationship to Christ is faith. It is the river of grace through which the benefits of His salvation flow to us. Our faith is in the Lord Jesus (1:15), but we are saved by grace through faith (2:8). Also, Paul speaks of the “boldness and confident access” that we have through faith in Him (3:12). This reference is particularly important. Two Greek words are used in it. Boldness (parresia) refers to freedom in speaking to God through Christ. We are privileged to have communion with God with liberty to speak to Him. The second word, prosagoge, means to bring near. Faith in Christ brings us near to the presence of God. He accepts us in the Beloved One (1:6).
Love refers both to God’s love for His people (1:4; 2:4) and our love for Him (6:24) and one another (4:2; 4:15; 4:16; 5:2, 25, 28, 33). If God predestined us in love, then we love God, and if we love God, we love one another.
Hope is both the product of faith and the motivator of a growing faith. It refers to “the desire of some good with expectation of obtaining it.”1. Biblical hope is different from the way we commonly speak of hope. We refer to hope as something that we wish will happen, but are not sure will happen. Biblical hope includes the expectation and assurance that God’s promises will certainly come to pass.
Practical Significance
Faith, hope, and love must be intensely personal, practical, and passable. They are Gospel graces rooted in us by the Spirit, serviceable in the advance of the Kingdom of God, and spreading to others. Paul was greatly encouraged by their growth. Christ’s Spirit was pleased, not grieved. So we long for growth in each of them. Every nerve must be positioned for growth in grace. Church ministries must be devoted to facilitating this Gospel growth.
In Ephesians 3:16-19 Paul wrote: “that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge…” This is the language of growth.
We sink our roots deep to grow in faith. Paul says Christ is at the heart of faith, and in our hearts through faith. It seems like repetition to say that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith, for Christ in our hearts is faith. But faith is cultivated and grows when Christ is the love of our mind and heart. The heart is the living spring of knowledge, feeling, and the motivator of our will, desires, and plans. Christ’s words, with His indwelling through His own Spirit, give nourishment to our hearts.
We put our roots deep into God’s love to us in Christ and let His love transform our ability to love Him and others. As we do this individually (4:2; 5:2), the whole body also grows in love (4:16). This is love at work. It enables us to put up with one another and bear with one another’s weaknesses and faults. Eph. 4:1, the turning point of the letter, is a call to walk worthy of the calling with which we have been called (our faith). Paul mentions tolerance of one another first (love, v. 2), then explains that we are one body with one hope (v. 4). Are we walking in a manner worthy of our calling in Christ? We can test ourselves by considering the nature and progress of our relationships to the members of the church body to which we are joined. Are they growing or groaning? And, more to the point, are the words and teachings of Christ the love of our hearts each day? Are we being filled with His Spirit, maintaining our first love (Rev. 2:4), and working our faith (1 Thess. 1:3)?
We sink our roots into the soil of hope. Paul prayed for this in Ephesians in 1:15-19. In verse 18 he prayed that they would know the hope of His calling. He referred to the hope of our calling also in Eph 4:4. This means that we have a calling from God that gives us a confident expectation and a lively assurance that God is going to do all that He has promised us in Christ. Even though we have tribulation, we know that God’s promises to us in this life and in the next are not worthy to be compared to those sufferings. Are we attaining to a greater knowledge of all that God has called us to in Christ?
In this information age the Bible may become just another volume of data to us. But it is spiritual seed for spiritual growth in every grace bestowed by the Spirit. Paul understood that certain graces were at the forefront of spiritual fruit and Gospel success in church life. And if this is so, shouldn’t people be noticing our faith, hope, and love? What do we want people to talk about as far as our churches are concerned? Our size? Our ministries? As a Pastor I would love to see multitudes of people filling our seats each Lord’s Day to hear the Gospel and worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus in the Spirit. We labor in our community outreach to that end, but God is Lord of the harvest and we cannot force the growth in numbers which we long for. But we can watch over our growth in faith, hope, and love and seek to bear the fruit of the Spirit by responsible filling with the Spirit. We want others to see what Paul saw in the church at Ephesus. We want others to see our faith in the Lord Jesus, love for the saints, and certain hope of the forgiveness of our sins and possession of eternal life.
The Christian ministry is concerned to make good churches by helping disciples to grow in faith, hope, and love. This three-stranded cord will attach us to one another and those whom we seek to reach with the Gospel. Let’s seek to rescue the lost with this rope, and……let’s look for the right things in the Christian church, so that we will be able to say with Biblical authority, that is a good church!
John Reuther
Pastor of Covenant Baptist Church, Lumberton, NJ
Professor of Theology for Reformed Baptist Seminary
- Spiros Zodhiates, Word Study Dictionary, p. 570 [↩]
4 Responses to “Now That’s a Good Church! Ephesians 1:15-16”
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August 18th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Sobering when you consider the state of that church just years later… I wonder what had happened? Scary how so much can change in such a short period of time. May those who come behind us find us faithful, as the song goes…
August 18th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Interestingly enough, this blog post popped up in my bloglines just a second ago:
http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-and-why-did-churches-become-mosques_18.html
Sobering thoughts…
August 18th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Marie,
Good question. And the link you give above provides part of the answer: God’s sovereign plan. It also alludes the Revelation 2:4, which provides another piece of the puzzle–at least with respect to Ephesus. It appears that the church had “lost it’s first love.” Some have traditionally interpreted this to mean that they had cooled in their affection for Christ. I’m inclined, however, in keeping with Johannine usage, to interpret it as a reference to brotherly love. Apparently, the church took seriously Paul’s warning against false teachers (Acts 20) and did not tolerate such (Rev. 2:2). But sometimes a strength–in this case, a zeal for orthodoxy–can also become a weakness–in this case, a cooling of their affection for and kindness toward genuine brothers in Christ. This is a danger we as Reformed Baptists need to guard against. Our zeal for orthodoxy is commendable. But may doctrinal astuteness and precision never cool our affection for true brothers and sisters in Christ though they be not part of our denomination. May we be known for both doctrinal soundness and for the graces of faith, love, and hope!
August 18th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Great article! I recently finished reading John Owen’s book called “The Holy Spirit and the Church” from Banner of Truth, and in that book Owen mentions that the growth and maturity of a believer should me measured by their “internal graces” (fruits of the spirit) rather than their “external graces” (gifts, talents, etc.).
The same holds true for the church which is made up of believers. The church should be measured by its’ faithfulness to God and His Word, and the “fruits of spirit” (love, joy, peace, patience, humility) which believers’ manifest from their lives as a result of being faithful to God and His Word. The success of a church is not measured by the extensiveness of their ministries or programs or how large the congregation is, but the continued spiritual maturity and growth of the people in that church.