For This Reason [Part 6]

2 Pet. 1:5-7

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.

Of course, when I think of love, I think of 1 Cor. 13. Love never fails. Without love as the motivation behind actions, those actions are nothing. The best that can be hoped for is sounding like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. The love described in this chapter is not the love found in the world, but in truth, is the love received only when the soul is right with God. Once the divine nature has been implanted, then love has the potential to be kind, patient, never arrogant or rude, never insisting on its own way, never irritable or resentful, never rejoicing in the wrong, but rejoicing in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things.  How is love like this even possible? It is impossible apart from Jesus Christ. But in Christ, I can love like He did. 

Another key passage reveals the command to love: And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." In the life the vertical is first before love flows out in the horizontal. Loving God and responding to His love given in Jesus are essential before we can love others. But this love goes far beyond loving those whom we choose or even those who love us. "But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, Just as Christ loved the world and sacrificed His life for it, so we must love the world.

John reinforces this command, but at the same time enlarges on the command.  A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Love is to be the mark of identification for the believers. It is supposed to be our reputation to the world. But instead the world knows the church as a bunch of hypocrites not a bunch of loving people. We, the body of Christ, have a great distance to go to alter that perception. 

If we love God [and all believers must], then we are to obey. Obey what? If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Love is the motivation behind our obedience to the Word of God. God reached out His love to us by offering the life of His Son, we respond to God in love by obeying His word, by turning from self-love to love of others, and by sharing the love of God with those who know him not. Coupled with this idea, is the idea of dwelling. But Jesus answered him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home with him. The love of the Father and a home! What amazing love is this! As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 

And to top all that off.  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? No in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him  who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels or rulers, nor things present or nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Why? Because Jesus Christ indwells. He has found a home in our hearts,and because the God of the universe, the maker and planner of all things, has declared it so. What better reason to love? So finally, Let love be genuine. Love sincerely and in all truth.

Father,

Your love and the love described here seems impossible to me, I am so very flawed and selfish. But I know that I am Yours and that Your Spirit can grow Your love in my heart. Grow me in Your love. 

In Jesus name,

Amen