How, then ought we to love others?

Yes God is love.  But if we don’t understand that God is Holy, then we cannot comprehend the awesome scope of God’s love.

He knows everything about us, and He still loves us with an everlasting love.

Love is of God, it is His character, and it is His nature.  He doesn’t love us for anything in us, but simply because of Who He is.

In Psalm 103 David blessed (praised) God, and enumerated some of His benefits:

 Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.   Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who

•  forgiveth all thine iniquities;
• healeth all thy diseases; 
• redeemeth thy life from destruction; 
• crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies;
• satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s. 
• executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed.
•  made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel.
•  is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.

Psa 103:9 He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever.

• He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. 
•  For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. 
•  As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. 
•  Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.
•  For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.
• As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. 
•  For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. 

 But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children;  To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them.

 

Rom 8:35-39 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,  Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 It’s possible to love and not like someone

There is a difference between liking people, and loving people.  You can love people you don’t even like.  Love is proved in our actions.  God manifest His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

God’s holiness and the justice of God was propitiated (fulfilled) in the sacrifice of His own son.

If you are still struggling to be “good enough”, Christian to go to heaven, stop now and realize, that God is satisfied.  The blood of Christ has been applied to your sins.  The wages of those sins, is death, and Jesus satisfied that sin-debt.  If Jesus’ death satisfies the sin-debt for God, how can it not be sufficient for you?  If God says you are forgiven, and saved from the penalty of sin, then you are, and who are you to say you aren’t?

Christian; God presently is saving you from the practice of sin

 Are you submitting to that work in you? Or are you resisting it, trying to retain your freedom to choose sin?  If you are saved from the penalty of sin by faith in Jesus Christ, but unwilling to be saved presently from the practice of sin, then you will be chastised.  For whom God loves he chastens, that the fruit will be righteousness.  He brings His children in line with His righteousness.

Some day He is going to deliver us from the very presence of sin.  We will escape this sin-cursed world, as well as our own sin-cursed flesh.

If He has saved you from the penalty of sin, He will continue the work He has begun in you, and will one day complete it when He removes you from the reach of sin.

Joh 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

Joh 13:35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

He loves us when we are angry, self-pitying, bitter, while we are sinning, and at our very worst.

I Jn 2:6-9 says  He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked. Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning.  Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.  He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.  

I Jn 4:7-21  Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.  He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.   In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.  Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.   Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.  No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.  Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.  And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.  Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.  And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.  Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.  There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.   We love him, because he first loved us.   If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?  And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.

How can we love each other with this perfect love? 

 First of all, perfect love can only exist in tandem with perfect truth.  It is not relative, and it is not variable, it does not “evolve” and does not bend for convenience and flattery.

Perfect love like the kind God loves us with, is sacrificial.  It is a life-changing, saving, sanctifying love, a satisfying love, a sending, giving love that lives for others.  God’s love is simple, uncomplicated, without hidden agendas.  It is unfeigned, sincere, and real. It is a suffering and patient love.  It is a love that won’t settle.  It’s a motivating love, a serving love, and a separating love.  How does our brand of love measure up to that example?

When we are saved, we are separated unto God.  When someone gets married, they expect their spouse to be now separated unto them, their heart will not pursue anyone else, that’s a separated love.

God’s love is proven by Christ’s death on Calvary, with the power to change a person and change their life.

God’s love is perfect and complete.

What will that kind of love do when it is established in us?

Perfect love will…..

• Give us boldness in the day of judgment.

When we give account of every idle word, when all our works pass through the refiners fire.  We do not have peace, if we do not have perfect love for the Father and for others, if  doing His will is not our heart’s desire.

• Casts out all fear

When we live in that perfect love, we will have no fear.  Fear and anxiety won’t plague us if we grasp His perfect love and live in it. Guilty people have dread, turmoil, but when we face the truth of our guilt, and need for a Savior, when we go to the Lord who can wipe that slate clean, we no longer have to dread the judgment that is coming.  The heart is desperately wicked.   Why, when we are living in sin, are we so defensive?  Because we know we are wrong.  There can be no peace.  Our sinful hearts tells lies to our darkened minds, we are miserable and tormented.  Because we don’t want to give up our “right” to sin in order to be redeemed by what Christ has accomplished, and prepared to face judgment with Christ as our advocate.  Christ identified with us on the Cross.  He rose from the dead and went back to the throne of heaven, and represents us there before God.  He wants us to do the same for Him in this world.  We won’t be afraid to give the gospel to someone, if that love is perfected in us.  We will not shrink from either hearing or speaking the truth, no matter if it is unpopular.

• Perfect love will bind us to the Father

We love Him because He first loved us.  We can rest in the shadow of His wings.  All others in our life can and will fail us, they will die, and we can be left alone, but the love of God is constant and everlasting. There is nothing we need to do or can do to get Him to love us, because He already does. Therefore nothing we do can make him stop loving us.

• Perfect love will be a blessing to others

Now that’s a hard one. We all like the prospect of a fear-free existence, to be bold on the day of judgment, and live close to our Father, but to love everyone? To love our fellow-Christian, and our neighbor, is a tall order.  If we say we love God, but do not love one another, we are a liar.  That’s what the Bible says.  Liars will not inherit the kingdom.  All liars will have their part in the lake of fire.  We may disagree, but love deals only in truth.  It is honest, therefore it can’t just go along with any and every thing, but we are not supposed to hate.  We can hate the actions, the attitudes, but if the perfect love of God is in us, we cannot hate others, and if we do, and claim to be a Christian, we are liars.

Perfect love does not fear being labeled a “hater” for standing by the truth of Scripture. We live in the days when man calls good “bad” and calls bad “good”.  Perfect love does not put on a false face and pretend it is something it is not. Perfect love is not found in human flesh, but only in the indwelling Holy Spirit of one who is born again of that Spirit.

Perfect love is not easy, but it is simple.  Whether you are born again or not, God loves you with that perfect love, but that will not stop your descent into hell when you die, unless you have believed God, and received the redemption from your sins, which was purchased by Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross.  Because the one sin God cannot and will not pardon, is your rejection of that salvation purchased for you at so great a price as the blood of His only begotten beloved son.  He loved you enough to give up His son to death, and rejecting that gift is the limit of God’s grace and mercy.

That is also why we desire to give the life-saving truth of the gospel to others. Anything less is to take that sacrifice for granted ourselves. Who are we not to pass it on to others for whom Christ also died? I am merely a sinner who believes God. The thief on the cross who recognizes Christ as the promised Messiah and Savior. We are all guilty, He was not, He already took your punishment, are you going to take it too, needlessly?  Eternally? Trading your soul for the momentary pleasures of this life?

It’s your choice. By not deciding to receive it, you are deciding by default to reject it.  I am nobody and have nothing to give, but that which has been given to me.  No matter who you are or what you have done, you and I are the same in our sinfulness, but I have no fear of death or judgment, nor of the opinions of men, or what mere man can do to me, and believe me, I am very aware of the evils humans are capable of.  You may read this in Yemen, in North Korea, even as a person enslaved in human trafficking right here in America.  I am not better than you, and God’s love extends to where you are.  Even you in prison who perpetrated such a crime.  That thing in you that is capable of such evil, is the same thing that is in all of us, that needs to be crucified in Christ, that you may become a new creature, dead to sin, given a new life, a new heart within you. Call upon Him today.  Jesus is the only means of reconciliation with your Creator, and it is the very love of Christ in me, which constrains me to tell you so.  I pray you receive Christ, allowing Him to make you acceptable before God, that you may stand boldly on judgment day knowing your sins have been  atoned.