Love For All The Saints

By Oscar M. Baker

The following is excerpted from a taped lesson by 0. M. Baker, May 3, 1983, T.F.T. Short Studies Series "All Saints" (1of 6 studies on this tape).

"We must have love for All Saints, all believers. Now if love is the sphere of God's actions toward us, in other words, if He does things because He loves us, then we should learn that great lesson of having love one to another, in the Lord.

And so the Ephesian epistle instructs us to be rooted and grounded in love, and that is fundamental. Now what we mean by fundamental is that it's foundational. And we are to forebear one another in love.

And the building up in love of this body, a temple, the increase of every part, is in love. There can't be anything in this building in which God is to dwell by our new nature. There can't be anything in that, that offends, that isn't love.

In our Lord dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Now His body, the church, is filled to the full with His fulness, and that means filled to the full with the fulness of God. But it's too bad a lot of us do not seem to know much about that yet. I suppose for one thing it can't be comprehended because it is just too good to be true, but I think that is not really the reason. The real reason is the lack of our own love to all the saints. I see that as the real reason.

Now if we have love to all the saints, that will result in us praying for all saints as Paul says in Eph. 6: 18. If people don't pray for each other, they don't love each other. And so the reverse would be true; if they don't have love to all the saints, they aren't going to be praying for them. And there is something else, too. Supposing you do have someone who is a little difficult to love, they may kind of repel you, you maybe just don't understand them. Well, try praying for them, it works! We find a lot of folk that may repel us at our first acquaintance with them, we get to know them and our ideas can change entirely.

And you know the apostle ended the Ephesian letter by including himself. He wanted them to pray for him, and I am pretty sure those folks prayed for him, for he was given utterance and boldness to speak, and in spite of his surroundings and they they weren't too good. Paul had really nothing to encourage him as far as his message was concerned, yet he gave us the greatest message that the world has ever heard. I think then it might be a good idea if we would be like him, and have love for...."ALL THE SAINTS".

( Note: The Truth For Today Tape Ministry was started the summer of 1976. The beginning of it was prompted by a member of Mr. Baker's Tuesday night Bible Class. This lady brought her recorder to class. Not long after that, however, Mr. Baker decided he would record his lessons for her, and others as well. He then designated someone in the class to handle the distribution. (Ed.-the first was Mrs. Janet McWilliams and she is back at today) The first notice about the availability of these tapes appeared in TFT, Vol. 29, #1, 9-1-96.) To get in touch with the tape ministry, visit our Tape Ministry page.