Sunday, August 30 · Vineyard Cincinnati Church
Relationships | Week 1: Foundations
Healthy, loving relationships don't begin by finding healthy, loving people; they begin with becoming one, because people who know they are deeply loved by God can then walk in love toward others.
The passages
Be therefore imitators of God, as beloved children. Walk in love, even as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling fragrance.
Ephesians 5:1–2
…that you put away, as concerning your former way of life, the old man that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.
Ephesians 4:22–24
But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8
Beloved, let’s love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
1 John 4:7
No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God remains in us, and his love has been perfected in us.
1 John 4:12
Go deeper
What does it show about God that Christ gave himself up for us while we were still sinners?
Paul points back to the cross before he asks anyone to imitate anything. The love being copied was not earned by the people receiving it; it was given first, at cost, to people who had not yet done anything to deserve it.
But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8
Be therefore imitators of God, as beloved children. Walk in love, even as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling fragrance.
Ephesians 5:1–2
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
1 John 4:10
Why does Paul ground the command to walk in love in the prayer that the Ephesians would know the height and depth of God's love?
Before Paul tells the Ephesians anything to do, he prays they would be rooted and established in love. Matt reads the whole letter as one argument: a person cannot give away a love they have not yet received.
…that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that you may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, to the end that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strengthened to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and height and depth, and to know Christ’s love which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:16–19
Beloved, let’s love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
1 John 4:7
No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God remains in us, and his love has been perfected in us.
1 John 4:12
What does the put off and put on pattern in Ephesians 4 say about how a new identity becomes a lived one?
Matt describes people who have already been made new but still have to decide daily to live like it. The old self is gone; the new self has to be put on, like a garment laid out each morning.
…that you put away, as concerning your former way of life, the old man that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.
Ephesians 4:22–24
Be therefore imitators of God, as beloved children. Walk in love, even as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling fragrance.
Ephesians 5:1–2
Don’t lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man, who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of his Creator,…
Colossians 3:9–10