Bible reading for 40.Day 2025 | Ephesians 3:10

I want to talk to you today about being All In for the Church. That means for you and me to ask God to help us to love and serve His people the way that His Son Jesus does.

The church father Augustine urged us to treasure the Church when he said “Let us honour her, because she is the bride of so great a Lord.”

What a great God we have! Let us love what He loves.

The church’s marriage

Indeed, in Ephesians 5, Paul tells us that earthly marriage is only a picture of the true reality of marriage, which all are invited into. What is this true marriage? It is Christ’s marriage to the Church.

Jesus is All In for His Church! God intends to spend eternity in wedded bliss to His people. This means that your local church is dearly loved by God, more than we can fathom.

But that’s not all Paul tells us about the church in Ephesians. In chapter 3, he says that God shows His manifold wisdom through the Church as we wait for Jesus’ return.

Our local churches have the privilege of broadcasting God’s upside-down, counter-cultural ways until He comes back. The way we love one another, the way we prioritise our time, the way we serve those around us shows God’s glory.

When church isn’t easy

Now I recognise that not every Christian’s relationship to the Church on Earth is altogether positive. This side of eternity, the Church is not yet pure. We know this because the Church is made up of people like us, who still wrestle with sin.

This lack of purity in the Church manifests in a variety of ways. Churches can hurt people through sin, through negligence, and through incompetence. The result might be that those who have served passionately over the years may have now become weary.

Some live with great disappointment with the Church and manage that by withdrawing from church. Some are still present at church, but have withdrawn from loving God’s people with their whole hearts. Some wish church life was more exciting and devote their energies to other ministries.

How do we be All In for the Church when the Church is so imperfect, and we might be tempted to feel these things?

In that same quote of Augustine’s, he went on to say that God’s attitude towards His imperfect people is one of tremendous love and kind generosity. He says: “Great and unheard of is the bridegroom’s gracious generosity; he found the church [unfaithful], he made her a virgin.”

Indeed as Paul says in Ephesians 5:25-27 –

“Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that He might present the church Himself in splendour… ”

This passage tells us that God literally loves His bride into beauty. He serves her into splendour. And He calls you and I to love His imperfect people in the same way.

As we love and serve His people, we become like Jesus ourselves, and we build up and make His Church more holy too.

I mentioned earlier that God intends to show His manifold wisdom through the Church. One of the ways He does so is when people like you and I love God’s imperfect people. When we lay down our lives for the ungrateful, when we give our time to minister to the hurting, when we are patient with sinners, when we love the unlovely – we display God’s upside-down Kingdom wisdom to a watching world. And we can do this because this is exactly how Christ has loved you and I.

How shall we respond to this today? Three ways to pray:

1. Pray that God would help all of His people in our nation to see the Church with Jesus’ eyes.
2. Pray for your love for your own church. Pray that God would put more of His love for His people into your heart for your church.
3. Pray the Lord will reveal who you can encourage in your church today. Send someone a note, whether a leader or someone working through a difficult circumstance.

If you are a Christian, God has put the Spirit of His Son in you. He has put this impulse in you to love as He loves. Draw near to Him, ask Him to fan into flame that love for His people, and join Jesus in His love for His Church.

Let’s pray.

Our gracious Father, we come before you today, and we ask that You would be pleased to pour Your spirits into our hearts. So that we may love Your people, the way that Your Son has loved Your people. We pray that You would give us a deep love and affection for them, and that that love would lead to action where we serve and build up Your Body, We pray and ask these things, in the name of Jesus, Amen.

Reflect: 

1. What barriers are you facing that make it difficult for you to love others and serve them?

2. We can only give others love out of the overflow of love that we receive from God Himself. What will you do to be constantly filled with the love of God?

3. Where, how and whom can you serve? Ask the Lord to show you what to do to build up those He has called you to serve.

Pray:

1. Pray that God would help all of His people in our nation to see the Church with Jesus’ eyes.

2. Pray for your love for your own church. Pray that God would put more of His love for His people into your heart for your church.

3. Pray the Lord will reveal who you can encourage in your church today. Send someone a note, whether a leader or someone working through a difficult circumstance.

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