by Maggie Ford
Life is hard. We are human. We get tired. We get hurt by things. We forget things. And sometimes when we watch the unfolding of lawlessness and hatred all around, we get cold like the world. We wonder if we can really make a difference, and we shrivel up a little bit, excuse our behavior, step back, and start pitying ourselves.
May God keep us off this glacier – for the sake of His Name, the advancement of the Gospel, and the sake of our own souls.
Why We Love
We are commanded to love one another and to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Not only do all the law and all the prophets hang on these two commands (Matthew 22:40), but the power to obey them was purchased through the life, death and resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ.
His perfect love was demonstrated through the Cross, and our love reflects His.
“We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).”
Love is an attribute of God’s character and is inseparable from Him. Our love is commanded in direct response to God’s revealing himself as a God “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness (Exodus 34:6)”.
What we believe about God induces our actions, and at the same time, our actions evidence what we believe about God. If we do not love God, we cannot love our brother. If we do not believe His sovereignty, we will fear the world. If we do not trust His power, we will shrivel up.
And if we do not build our lives on the sure foundation of His Word, we will forget and drift, and then be surprised one day when He “who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood (Rev. 1:5)” comes and says to us what he said to Church in Ephesus, “I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first (Rev. 2:4).” This interchange of faith and action (including love) is why, in a dark generation, the people of God are known and set apart by their love (John 13:35).
We only love if we have been loved. Our perseverance in love reflects our belief in the faithfulness of God. If we are abiding in Him – the Author and Definition of love (1 John 4:8) – then the fruit of love will be evidenced in our lives.
The Example of Love
God is not sitting helpless on throne in the sky watching events unfold. Nor is He surprised when love grows cold. Rather, God knows all things and knew them before time began. Since the rebellion of our first parents, God has displayed his love and mercy by His patient endurance, His promised redemption, and the fulfillment of it all in His Son, Jesus Christ—the same Christ described in Philippians 2: “Who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8).”
“God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). His death was our atonement. His separation from God brought in our union with Him. His grace alone coves our sin.
Fredreich Lehman was right when he wrote, “To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole, through stretched from sky to sky.”
Grasping this love – God’s unmerited, steadfast love that is ours through the work of Christ – is the basis of all our love, and the basis of all our sacrifice for and forgiveness of others.
In this world love is falsely defined on the one hand as an emotional, sentimental feeling and on the other hand, as the highest level of tolerance. But Christ’s example calls both perspectives to reality, and sheds light on the path we’re called to walk.
Love acts and sacrifices. In 1 Corinthians 13, “the love chapter”, love is described by adjectives in the English language, but it is denoted with verbs in the original Greek. Love itself is a verb and does not exist apart from visible action. For example, Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey my commands (John 14:15).” Christ demonstrated His love through actions: He came and “having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end (John 13:1)” and gave His life for them.
Our love follows His: “Be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:1-2).” So love is not a sentimental feeling; not only does it act positively in humility and sacrifice towards others, it acts negatively by doing “no wrong to a neighbor (Romans 13:10).”
For example, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10), the Samaritan does good to his neighbor. He stops and cares for him in his affliction, takes him to shelter, gives up two days wages to care for him and tells the innkeeper: “Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back (vs. 35).” In Christ are endless love, hope, and resources. When He said, “You go and do likewise” in verse 37, He was explaining what it meant to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself (vs. 27).” He was calling his hearers to love with all they had, with no regard to the merit of the one loved, leaving no backdoor of retreat.
Love believes and refuses to blaspheme. If we have heard the Gospel a thousand times, we sometimes miss it. We miss that the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17).” We miss that the Son confessed, “I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and He is the judge (John 8:50),” and we miss that the Scripture teaches, “It was the will of God to crush Him (Isaiah 53:10)” for the salvation of our souls. We miss the synchrony of God’s eternal purpose to exalt His Name and miss the salvific mission of Jesus Christ, resurrected, who loved us unto death and brought us into the Kingdom. We miss the certainty of His ingathering of the elect (Isaiah 56:8), and the promised end of all tribes and tongues assembled around the throne (Revelation 7:9).
And in our forgetfulness and self-centeredness, we think that love is the highest level of tolerance in which you “add Jesus and make your life better.” We are blind to what love actually is—a joining into God’s definition of love. Love with God at its center worships and sacrifices in view of His glory and dominion. (Col. 1:16, Psalm 23:2, Psalm 46:6, Isaiah 37:20).
If we believe a false Gospel that puts man at the center, we will never know the extent of amazing grace and never love others for the right reasons. If we shape God’s love to make us feel good about ourselves, then we have missed out on His glorious purpose for creation and relationship—the glory of His name. So biblical love believes. It believes in the Gospel of Christ. And it does not blaspheme by making a God to suit its own desires. Instead, it worships the God who makes all things new (Revelation 21:5, 1 John 4:20-21).
A Call to Love
In Revelation 2, when the Church had lost its love, Christ issued three calls: remember, repent and return. This is the path of love. It is how we, as John Piper says, “torch the glacier” of selfishness, pride, and lovelessness and again shine like stars in the midst of a “crooked and twisted” generation (Philippians 2:15).
We remember Christ who loved us and gave Himself for us, to make us a people who are His very own, eager to do what is good (Eph. 5:2, Titus 2:14).
We repent of thinking so highly of ourselves and enter the path of obedience, believing and refusing to blaspheme (Col. 2:6, Gal. 2:20).
And we return, weeping and reaping, counting our lives worth nothing except to testify to the grace that reached into our sin-stained souls, changed and lifted them in new birth, and the Savior who says, “Love one another as I have loved you (John 15:12).”
Maggie Ford is a Christian, daughter, and sister of seven. She works alternately as a medical assistant, Wilderness First Responder, Spanish translator, political activist, researcher, videographer, and writer in Montgomery, Alabama. She is passionate about maximizing every patient encounter, every group run, every friendship, every field of study, and every work opportunity for the glory of God and spread of the Gospel, in the U.S. and on the far side of the world.
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