LOVE WITH GOD’S LOVE
LOVE WITH GOD’S LOVE
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. —I Corinthians 13:1-8
“One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” —Matthew 22:35-40 (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUy3yaSd9b0
“We love because He first loved us” and “whoever loves God must love his brother as well” (I John 4:19, 21). Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (I John 4:7-8).
First, this type of love is a godly love. It comes from God. It comes to us and through us who know Him. We would not be able to love as God wants us to unless we came to know Him. We can only love like Him “because He first loved us.” Now we are to love God with our whole being and we are to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
It is God’s Spirit that enables us to love like this. When you look at the “fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians 5:22, the first on the list is love. God’s Holy Spirit enables us to:
- Be patient
- Be kind
- Be not envious
- Be not arrogant
- Be not insisting on one’s own way
- Be not irritable
- Be not boastful
- Be not resentful
- Be not rejoicing at wrongdoing
- Be rejoicing in the truth
- Be bearing all things
- Be hoping in all things
- Be enduring in all things
In other words— we are to become more and more like Jesus. We move from being babes in Christ (I Corinthians 3:1; Hebrews 5:12-13) to becoming mature in Christ (Hebrews 14; I Peter 2:2). And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (I Corinthians 3:18).
Dear Father please help me to be more like Jesus through the power of Your Holy Spirit. May it be so!