“Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.” Eph. 6:24
Lord Jesus, you’ve written this final verse in Ephesians upon our hearts with the finger of your Spirit. May it increasingly be all we think about, pursue, delight in and live out… until you take us Home.
Loving you with an “undying love”—what a glorious calling, heart-consuming privilege, and life-shaping honor. Not merely admiring you or greatly respecting you, Jesus,—or even giving everything we have to the poor in your name, or choosing the death of a martyr in service to you (1 Cor. 13:3). But loving you as our greatest treasure, peerless heart-claim, and singular joy. Passion, adoration, enjoyment, intimacy—this is the language of what it means to love you.
It’s the only worthy response to the great love you have lavished on us in the Gospel (Eph. 1:3-14). Your love is the only love with a width, length, height, and depth beyond measuring, and (hallelujah) beyond exhausting (Eph. 3:18-19). Our brothers and sisters in heaven are happier than we are right now, but they are not more loved by you.
Your love for us is the main constant in our lives, only equaled by our constant need for it. Lord Jesus, stoke the fires of our love for you, with by the truths of the Gospel and the power of your Spirit. Restore our first love for you, then take us farther beyond it than we have ever been before. So very Amen we pray, in your glorious and grace-filled name.
