The Love of God
Everything we have talked about this year: identity, prayer and worship, righteousness, faith, grace, relationships, and the kindling of revival, are branches of one truth. Love! You cannot walk in faith without love, walk in righteousness without love, pray and worship without love. Love is central to everything Gospel. If you want to understand the Bible, you must understand love.
Why is love so significant? 1 John 4:7-9, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” God is love! He does not have love, He is Love. Understanding that statement will help you understand why God behaves the way He does.
“He who does not love does not know God…” This is such a profound statement. If you do not love, you do not know God. We sing about wanting to know God, we pray about wanting to know God, and we even fast with the desire of wanting to God, and here is the answer.
In 1 John3, the Lord is even more direct. 1 John 3:11-15, “For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother’s righteous. Do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”
If you do not love your brother, you are a murderer!! Wow! Those are some strong statements. Loving your brother or sister does not mean you have to be a doormat to them. I sometimes think because we ‘love’ someone we are afraid to share the truth with them because we might hurt them. We sometimes are afraid to disagree with someone because we ‘love’ them. When it comes to loving your brother or sister, they have a say in the relationship too. All you can do is love them, if they choose to not respond in like manner, then there is nothing you can do about it.
Romans 12:18, “18 If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.”
If it is possible, live peaceably. Sometimes it is not, and that’s ok. There are some people you cannot live peaceably with and that is ok. When it comes to walking in love, the main thing you should be focusing on is how do you respond. How do you respond when someone is being rude? How do you respond when someone is blatantly disrespecting you? How do you respond when someone does not value you? The reason verse 14 of 1 John 3 states that he who does not love his brother abides in death, is because we all have the love of God in our hearts. We have the capacity to respond in love, in all our trials.
Romans 5:5, “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
The Holy Spirit has poured the love of God in our hearts. We have the capacity to love like God does. The only problem that we struggle with is the flesh which will fight us every step of the way. That is why it is important for us to crucify this flesh, so that we can walk in love.
Another way to look at this verse is like this. We have already established that God is love; and we are born of God. So, we are born of love. This revelation changed how I looked at 1 Corinthians 13. I started declaring this truth in my life every night before I went to bed. I replace the word love with myself because I have been born of love.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8: I suffer long. I am kind. I do not envy. I do not parade. I am not puffed up. I do not behave rudely. I do not seek my own. I am not provoked. I think no evil. I do not rejoice in iniquity, but I rejoice in the truth. I bear all things, I believe all things, I hope all things, and I endure all things. I never fail. When I started walking in this truth, everything changed in my life.
