“...I
heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people” –
Ephesians 1:15
There are two basic things in
the life of Ephesians community which Paul is grateful for; they are
"faithfulness in the Lord Jesus" and about "the love of the
community" for all the saints. Paul's gratitude for these two things
confirms that the true church is a community that maintains loyalty to Jesus
Christ, as well as shows love for others. These two things must go together,
because loyalty to Jesus Christ without being accompanied by love for others is
really useless. The proof that Ephesians Community has shown loyalty to God is
their love for others. On that basis, Paul then prayed expressing his hope for
the church so that their knowledge of Christ would be deeper and truer.
First, Paul prayed that the Lord's community in Ephesus would be given the Spirit of wisdom, that is, the Spirit who helps the community to know God more properly and experience the great power of God in their lives. Paul's prayer at the same time shows his hope that God's people will see and fend for themselves according to God's wisdom, opening themselves to be guided by the power of God's Spirit. This point is contrary to our people today. There are Christian people who claim to know a lot about Jesus; it's a shame they don't know Him completely. Many people are searching and investigating many things about Jesus, but are unknowable and with inexperience of Him fully by their heart.
The second, Paul knew that life is plagued by problems, and those may well cause the faith and love of Ephesians Community to decline. Paul himself was in prison when he wrote this epistle to the Ephesians. This proved that knowing the Lord properly, even serving him wholeheartedly, can lead to problems or difficulties. When this is not properly followed, it can lead to disappointment, unrelenting despair, and the community can become pessimistic about fending or standing up for themselves.
When facing problems and failures in their life, hope in the Lord must be constantly played. It is true that there are many phenomena of life in this world that tend to corrupt and destroy, but Paul, in his prayer, invited the community to view the situation as a scourge to place their hope in the Lord while crying out and presenting that hope through their faithfulness to the Lord and their love for others as they had begun to do so long.
It is undeniable that we are
living a life with uncertainty, obscurity, and despair now. That is why there
are a growing number of people who are pessimistic, and even not a few who turn
to false reasoning simply because of problems that disappoint them.
In the world with situation
like this, we are called upon to hold fast to our hope in Jesus Christ, and
raise that hope in the world where we are. That is the tangible manifestation
of our loyalty to our Lord and our love for others. The essence of all this is
the greatness and glory of the name of the Lord that can be seen in our reality
of life as the believers.
Reflection on by Ephesians 1:
15-23 by Paulus Renggo
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