LOVE – The Oxygen of God’s Kingdom
Scripture: John 13:34,35 1 John 4:7,8
It won’t be long and we will be traveling across February 14 on our year’s journey. It’s Valentines Day ….. a day when Love is celebrated, especially between husbands and wives, and parents and children, and sweethearts yet to be married. All true love in our world is based on the quality of love we find God providing and displaying for us. Unfortunately, as man often does in our fallen world, man finds many ways of cheapening true love. That’s why God provides a forever-sort-of benchmark for us to live in the world of reality….the way God would have us to. Just read 1 Corinthians 13 again. God created love as the oxygen of His Kingdom. Love is not one of the things of being Christian – love IS the Christian life – it is not the most important thing, it is the ONE thing. The quality of eternal life that Jesus gives is LOVE. Love is the light of the new Kingdom to which we belong. LOVE is the proof of our salvation. 1 John 4:7-8 says, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love, does not know God, for God IS LOVE. If we loved the way God wanted us to, we wouldn’t have to depend on the commands of the Bible so much. Why? Because love is the fulfillment of the law. (Rom. 13:10) When our love for God and others is complete, He places His laws in our hearts. (Jer. 31:33) When we are full of God’s Spirit, the new norm is for us to be loving. The accent God wants us to have is on the first fruit of the Spirit, which is love. This love consists of neighbor love. It does not only relate to the church, but to all in the world, for this is God’s moral law written into the fabric of mankind. It means that I must wish for my neighbor the same things I would wish for myself. And Jesus doesn’t say, love your neighborsssss. None of us have the capacity to love the whole world. He says, “Love your neighbor.” So we are to take one person, one family, start to pray for them, ask God to reveal any needs…spiritual, material, psychological…whatever they may be and be Jesus to them. He said “Let your light shine – your love.” While our good works don’t save us, they are vital evidences of our love to others and for them. But God wants us to go beyond the neighbor love to the brother-love. There’s a little phrase in that ‘new’ commandment He declares to us that says this: that we are to “love one another, as I have loved you.” In this degree of love, self disappears. This is the kind of love that Jesus wants to rule the Christian community. It is not I who lives, but Jesus. That’s what Paul said. Most of us know John 3:16, but do we KNOW 1 John 3:16? We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. If we can let the power of His love, grip US, I think the church – the body of Christ would be viewed in much different ways, because God’s love would be affecting the way we think, the way we act, the direction of our attitudes, our response to ministry, our sharing Christ with our neighbor and a host of other Kingdom necessities. Can we dare seek in 2011 how we can experience and live out God’s love, neighbor love and brother love, so He can build His Kingdom in the lives of the people for whom He died? “So be it, Lord!”