Paul echoes the language of Malachi. “Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?” (Malachi 2:10). “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him…” (1 Corinthians 8:6). “Thanks be to God, who came to show us the way to the Father and to show us the Father Himself. Our appreciation of the Fatherhood of God is deeper than it could have been before Christ came. Now Gentiles as well as Jews have come through Christ to know this one God as their Father” (F.F. Bruce). “The fatherhood of God, all embracing, all pervading, speaks of family unity and rebukes all discord” (T. Croskery). God is Father of all by creation, but in Ephesians He is God and Father of all—Jews and Gentiles—in the church. Both are reconciled “unto God in one body by the cross” (Ephesians 2:16). Our understanding of the “one God and Father” presented in Ephesians will increase our love and motivate us to endeavor “to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). First, Paul was an “apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God” (Ephesians 1:1). Second, grace and peace come from “God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:2). Third, the God we serve is “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:3, 17; 3:14; 6:23). Fourth, He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ (Ephesians

The seventeenth century poet-preacher John Dunn gave the world these widely quoted words: No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; the bell tolls for thee. Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher and mathematician, was once asked by a Greek tyrant what he was doing at the Olympic Games. The philosopher replied, Some come to try out for the prizes, some come to sell their merchandise, some come to enjoy themselves and to meet their friends. I am one of those who came just to stand on the sidelines and look on. Telling the story, many years later, Bacon observed: “But man must know that in the theatre of man’s lives and God’s world, it is reserved only for God and the angels to look on.” All of us are deeply involved in all of mankind and there is nothing that happens anywhere in the world that affects people that is not a matter of our concern. From the very beginning of time, man has been involved with his fellow man though he has not realized it. After Cain killed Abel the Lord