Read: Ephesians 5:21-6:9
Before we look at how we relate to others in a new way because of Jesus, we might need a refocus on the priority of relating to others.
It is interesting that Paul, in speaking of the ways in which the Spirit is at work making personally present the boundless riches of Christ (ch 3:8), lands up speaking about the most immediate and the most ordinary of places where we experience such lives – at home and in the workplace.
In so doing, Paul marries the sacred with the secular; the most profound with the most basic; the big and great with the small and simple.
To systematise our thoughts and actions into a hierarchy from a base of home chores to the pinnacle of crucial kingdom work where real Christians operate is erroneous.
There is a temptation to gravitate towards the magnetic and virtually irresistible pull of big ideas and great opportunities for making an impact in the name of Jesus at the expense of seriously engaging with the unglamorous ordinary. Jesus himself taught that the greatest in the kingdom are those who humble themselves like a child and become the servant of all.
To opt out of the secular, to indulge in the sacred is to sign up for arrested development and to forever remain an adolescent who requires those we live with and those we work with to bear the brunt of our immaturity and live their life sentence picking up the tab for our "sacred" living.
Too many powerful, influential and publically acclaimed figures in sport, drama, politics, business, music and religion are infamously infantile and disappointing in their most intimate relationships at home and at work.
No area of living is done outside of the presence and life of God. Paul does well in this letter to show that the good news message of God in human flesh appearing is to be worked into the very fabric of our bodily existence starting with those at home and at work.
Pray: Father start your work of me relating in new ways to those closest to me.
(From Northfield's daily devotions)
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