I pray that we love Christ so greatly that our souls feel that Christ deserves more love than we have toward him, so we continually cry out to Him to help us love Him more. I pray that we love the Lord Jesus Christ with an incorruptible love.
In the final verse of Ephesians, Paul brings up something he has not mentioned at all previously in the book: the believer’s love for Jesus Christ. Five times he has mentioned Jesus’ love for us, and eight times he describes our love for each other, but he saved this final category for the very end. It is as if everything Paul had written in this incredible letter (and everything God’s grace accomplishes in us) is supposed to lead us to loving Christ. Inevitably and gloriously this is the all-important goal of Christian life. And not just any kind of love: it is an incorruptible love for Christ which marks out a true Christian.
Thomas Vincent began The True Christian’s Love to the Unseen Christ with this:
The life of Christianity consists very much in our love to Christ. Without love to Christ, we are as much without spiritual life as a carcass when the soul is fled from it is without natural life…Without love to Christ, we may have the name of Christians, but we are wholly without the nature.
Where there is no love for Christ, there is no true Christianity.
That’s why this Ephesian church, some 30 years later in the book of Revelation, was threatened by Christ to be destroyed. Although they had all of their doctrine right and were fastidious about kicking out false teachers, they had neglected true love for Christ. The same warning applies to each church that has lost its love for the Savior.
Nevertheless, the goal of the gospel is true love for Christ, incorruptible love for Christ in our hearts. This should be the heart’s desire of every church that seeks to honor and follow the Lord.
