In Love

By Oscar M. Baker

"...in love may grow up unto Him, the all things Which is the Head, even Christ." Now, we've taken the liberty here of moving a comma. And why? Well, it does not interfere with the sentence structure in the Greek, and it does parallel the expression in the doctrinal section in Eph. 3:17 and 18, "...that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend..." So the growth is dependent on being rooted in love. And so in love we should grow up unto Him. All too often man wants to substitute fear for love. But here it is, NO LOVE - NO GROWTH! Our Lord, when he was here on the earth, made it plain that discipleship was based on love; more love for Christ than for any other thing in all the creation. He said that they should love Him more than father or mother, and brother and sister, but that they were to love Christ more. The Ten Commandments are all founded on love. The first half being the love to God, and the latter half being on love to neighbor. And then we find later on that our Lord gave a new commandment to His disciples, and that commandment was that they should love one another! He also said that it was by their loving one another that the world would know that they were His disciples. That was the badge that they should wear. It was by that sign that the world would know they belonged to Him, and that was in that they love one another.

You see there are a lot of people in the world today who do not know what love is. I don't know whether you have thought of that or not, but a great portion of the world today has no idea of what love is. Many people have never been exposed to it. Now God instituted the family in the garden of Eden - parents and then children, so that some day man would understand the love of God as that of a loving father. And so when the Son came in the flesh, and came to earth, and lived and tablenacled among men, it was to show forth the Father and His love. And we have the revelation of that love in John 3:16. There is the love of God demonstrated. God gave a demonstration of His love for the world by giving His only begotten Son. This is a concrete example. He doesn't need to tell us, we can see His love in His actions.

Now we are not separate from Christ, and then have to grow into Him. This is not what the Scripture is saying here at all......in love may grow up unto Him......that is, in all this fullness we've been talking about in former lessons, "...unto the measure of the statureof the fullness of Christ." There can be no growth apart from the Head, and this carrying on the gist of Eph. 4:13. It is the growing up unto the stature of the fullness of Christ, it is growing according to pattern. It is growing up unto a Christ-like-ness. But don't get the wrong idea, there is no imitation of Christ that can fulfill the requirements of the growing up here, IN LOVE. This is not an imitation, it is something that grows from on the inside. It's an inward growth, like being rooted and grounded in love. It has no outward show, and it is not something you can put on. Christ is everything, the all things, to those who are growing up in love.

(Excerpts from T.F.T. Ephesians radio tape, lesson #85.)