Start by believing. Then go beyond belief.
The Digital Age has produced huge amounts of information that have radically advanced human learning. The amount of knowledge available to us is mind-numbing. In fact, information is multiplying so rapidly that textbooks, how-to manuals, and even daily newspapers seem perpetually outdated. But what do we know about God? Are we advancing as rapidly in our knowledge of Him?
People have used the explosion of social media primarily to inform friends and others about themselves and their lives. Therefore, we know more about one another, but do we really know one another? There’s a big difference between the two. The same is true when it comes to our relationship with God. We can learn more and more about God by studying His Word, but we also need to know Him in order for our lives to be changed.
What do we know about God?
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Do we really know God?
Your life won't change unless you do!
That’s why this study, “Beyond Belief,” is so important. “Beyond Belief” seeks to help us increase our knowledge of God by studying His character and moral attributes. But we don’t want to just know about God; we want to know Him intimately.
We could spend a lifetime studying the character and attributes of God revealed in the Bible and still only begin to scratch the surface of understanding the sovereign God of all creation. Therefore, the lessons in this study will focus on six major attributes of God: His holiness, love, justice, forgiveness, wisdom, and faithfulness.
As we begin to understand what God is like and how He works in our lives, we will not only know God more, but we will also learn about ourselves and who we are in Christ.
Our second lesson in this series is entitled: "God is Loving"
The Bible Meets Life: For many people, love means whatever they want it to mean. They can express a deep and profound love for someone or something, but later that love has disappeared. Too often our examples of love disappoint or fail us. We see in God a whole different example of love. He is the very embodiment of love because He is love. The Bible shows us that we can know and experience that love through Jesus Christ.
Passage: 1 John 4:7-12
The Setting: The apostle John wrote this letter to encourage believers, to lead them to avoid sin and false teaching, and to help them know they have eternal life. The topic of love permeates this short book, leading us to focus on the love of God and our need to love one another. One of the evidences that we have a relationship with God is the presence and demonstration of His love in our lives.
What makes you love someone?
The American Heritage Dictionary defines love as "an intense affection for another person based on familial or personal ties". Often this "intense affection" stems from a sexual attraction for that other person. We love other people, or we say we love other people, when we are attracted to them and when they make us feel good. Notice that a key phrase in the dictionary definition of love is the phrase "based on." This phrase implies that we love conditionally; in other words, we love someone because they fulfill a condition that we require before we can love them. How many times have you heard or said, "I love you because you are cute;" or "I love you because you take good care of me;" or "I love you because you are fun to be with"? Usually what makes me love someone is conditional or based on something?
Our love is not only conditional, it is also mercurial. We love based on feelings and emotions that can change from one moment to the next. The divorce rate is extremely high in today's society because husbands and wives supposedly stop loving one another-or they "fall out of love". They may go through a rough patch in their marriage, and they no longer "feel" love for their spouse, so they call it quits. Evidently, their marriage vow of "till death do us part" means they can part at the death of their love for their spouse rather than at their physical death.
3 Types of Love: Phileo - Eros - Agape
Video: The Cinderella Man
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- Have you ever gone without something so your children wouldn’t have to?
- How is this picture of a human father’s love like a picture of God’s love?
- How do we make God’s love real to our children?
- Why do you think God gives parents such a unique love for their children?
- Is there something unique about a parent's love for their children?
Can anyone really comprehend "unconditional" love? It seems the love that parents have for their children is as close to unconditional love as we can get without the help of God's love in our lives. We continue to love our children through good times and bad, and we don't stop loving them if they don't meet the expectations we may have for them. We make a choice to love our children even when we consider them unlovable; our love doesn't stop when we don't "feel" love for them. This is similar to God's love for us, but as we shall see, God's love transcends the human definition of love to a point that is hard for us to comprehend.
There’s power behind the throne.
Great leaders in history rarely stand alone. Whether you study ancient kings or modern movers and shakers in the business world, there is often someone (or several people) standing in the background to give advice and counsel. Such people exert a power and influence that isn’t openly seen. But it is felt.
You may not be a king, but there is a power that motivates and influences your actions and behavior. For some of us, the “power behind the throne” comes from friends, a demanding employer, or a persistent spouse. We can also be influenced by the sway of the crowd or by slick marketing messages.
Thankfully, love may be the most potent “mover and shaker” in our lives. We discover in God a love that endures, a love that persists no matter what, and a love that always seeks our best. The Book of 1 John helps us discover the beauty of God’s love – a love that is poured out on us so that His love can pour through us.
The Point of our lesson this week is - God’s love empowers me to love.
I. GOD IS THE SOURCE OF LOVE – 1 JOHN 4:7-8
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
We were created with the capacity to love and be loved. While God has graciously given us many ways to know and experience this unconditional acceptance and affection – such as family, friends, or a spouse – our need for love is truly filled only by God Himself. God is love. And without a relationship with a loving God, we will always feel a void deep in our hearts.
It’s a great gift to discover God not only has love and gives love, but that He is love. Whereas holiness is the fundamental characteristic of God’s Person, love might be called His primary moral attribute. Love is what God is all about. God’s love empowers us to love ourselves and others. That’s why the apostle John exhorted us to love one another. Christians are to love other Christians because we are spiritual brothers and sisters in God’s family. Our genuine love for one another indicates to others that we are God’s children.
Sadly, not everyone is easy to love. Not even us! This passage teaches that our love for other believers is not something that springs out of our own natural goodness. Instead, verse 7 says we should love one another “because love is from God.” For Christians, a loving spirit is a by-product of a “new birth” in Christ.
Here’s how it works:
1. When we accept God’s love and trust Him, He imparts His Spirit into us.
2. The Spirit of God makes us new creations.
3. It is by the presence of God’s Holy Spirit that His love flows through us.
This love is not actually from us but from God Himself. And He intends for love’s transformative power to flow toward even the most despicable people – not just to those in the family of God. To make himself clear, John reiterated this truth by saying that if we don’t allow God to love others through our lives, then we don’t personally know Him.
Highlight the key themes:
- We were created to love and be loved, and our need for love can be truly fulfilled only by God Himself.
- It’s a great gift to discover that God not only has love and gives love, but that He is love.
- God intends for love’s transformative power to flow toward even the most despicable people.
How does the statement “God is love” differ from the saying “God loves?”
Love is the dominant theme of these verses. As John penned the letter we know as 1 John, he instructed his readers, let us love one another. John provided two specific reasons for commanding the faith community to love one another. First, he reminded them, love is from God. The word love is the Greek noun agape. From God identifies the source. Since God Himself is eternal and holy (see Session 1, “God Is Holy”), the love He provides for His people is eternal and holy also. God’s love is not the crude, self-serving, exploitative emotion to which many people get addicted. God’s love is self-less, others-serving, and involves far more than the emotions.
The second reason John commanded members of the faith community to love one another was because everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Love characterizes those who have been born of God. John here referred to the spiritual birth that occurs whenever someone trusts Jesus as Savior by believing on His name (John 1:12-13). Of God is exactly the same in the Greek text as from God used of love. In other words, God is both the Source of love and the Source of spiritual or second birth. Since both love and spiritual birth have a common source, namely God, love defines spiritual birth and spiritual birth demonstrates love. John’s assessment, that this type of loving person knows God, served as an assurance to faithful believers, a warning to false believers, and an invitation to non-believers.
John examined the reverse side of the issue also. Anyone who does not love does not know God. The effect of placing side-by-side the positive statement of 4:7 with its negative counterpart in 4:8 served to emphasize John’s point. Love, agape, is the defining characteristic of genuine believers.
To know God means to experience Him in a close and cherished way. Know renders a Greek verb carrying the ideas of understanding, acknowledging, and interrelating with another person. In view in this context is a genuine relationship between God and people through which God provides all that people need. People offer themselves to God in humble and obedient service. Specifically, God’s love, agape, is directed through believers to other people in the form of loving actions.
The one who allows God to channel His love through him to others does so because he knows God, and therefore trusts Him. The one who does not allow God to direct His love through him to minister to other people does not know God or even understand who He is. The final assertion of 4:8 provides the reason John’s statements are true: God is love.
What are some lasting truths from 1 John 4:7-8?
1. God is the source of love.
2. The very essence of God’s character is love.
3. Love marks one as a child of God and as one who knows God.
4:7 Everyone believes that love is important, but love is usually thought of as a feeling. In reality, love is a choice and an action, as 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 shows. God is the source of our love: He loved us enough to sacrifice His Son for us. Jesus is our example of what it means to love; everything He did in life and death was supremely loving. The Holy Spirit gives us the power to love; He lives in our hearts and makes us more and more like Christ. God’s love always involves a choice and an action, and our love should be like His. How well do you display your love for God in the choices you make and the actions you take?
4:8 John says, “God is love,” not “Love is God.” Our world, with its shallow and selfish view of love, has turned these words around and contaminated our understanding of love. The world thinks that love is what makes a person feel good and that it is all right to sacrifice moral principles and others’ rights in order to obtain such “love.” But that isn’t real love; it is the exact opposite – selfishness. And God is not that kind of love. Real love is like God, who is holy, just, and perfect. If we truly know God, we will love as He does.
Let’s move forward with verses 9-10, which contain a helpful summary of the gospel message.
II. GOD REVEALED HIS LOVE – 1 JOHN 4:9-10
9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
We know about the love of God because His love was “revealed” (v. 9). It’s interesting that God did not merely tell us about His love; He showed it. When God wanted to inform us about who He is and what He is like, He came in person. God came in a human body that was both fully divine and fully human – the God-Man Jesus Christ.
God sent Christ as the Messiah – the Savior of the world. As Messiah, Jesus offered His life, crucified, as the only possible propitiation for all our sins. Propitiation means “a holy payment that satisfies the righteous anger of God.” The death of Jesus paid for the condition of human sin. The resurrection exhibited Jesus’ power over death, with death being the very thing He endured to pay the price of sin.
When God sent His Son to become the sacrifice for our sins, He substituted Jesus’ perfect payment for sin in place of our imperfect and inadequate one. In doing so, atonement was made, making all who receive this gift of salvation “at one” with God.
What is the result of our atonement?
- Peace with God
- Freedom from sin
- The ultimate power over death: everlasting life.
Why did God do this? Was it because our love for Him merited such an unspeakable gift? Hardly. Verse 10 makes it clear that God loved us first. The emphasis is not on our love for Him, but on His love for us.
God knew we needed His help. And even when we live in conscious or ignorant rebellion of Him, He still loves us. Jesus died to eliminate the penalty and power of sin over us. So even though we sometimes fail, we are not failures. We can become whole and holy when we receive God’s love into our lives.
What do you find remarkable in verses 9-10?
Highlight verses 9-10 as an opportunity to summarize the message of the gospel:
- All people are corrupted by sin, which separates us from God.
- God sent Jesus as Messiah – the Savior of the world – to pay the price for our sin by dying on the cross.
- Jesus’ sacrifice atoned for our sin, which means those who accept the free gift of salvation are “at one” with God.
When have you sensed God’s love and power at work in your life?
Having established his point that God is love, John then declared how God demonstrated His love to humankind. God’s love was revealed among us in this way, is emphatic in Greek. In this way employs the demonstrative pronoun and is positioned first in the sentence. Revealed is the passive form of the Greek verb meaning to be manifested or to be made known. The passive voice places the emphasis on what God has done, not on what people have done. The group represented by among us is the community of believers John addressed in his letter. Accordingly, John demonstrated his theological proposition that God is love with a tangible act of God.
How did God reveal His love among us? He sent His One and Only Son into the world. John’s identification of Jesus as God’s One and Only Son is based on a Greek adjective meaning “one of a kind.” In a real sense Jesus is in a class by Himself. While we can become children of God, no one except Jesus is the Son of God. John emphasized Jesus’ uniqueness.
God sent Jesus for the purpose that we might live through Him. Jesus’ coming into the world of sinful people from God opened the possibility for all people to return to God through Him. However, purpose becomes result as we take God at His word, trust Jesus, and replicate His love in and through our lives. Just as God loved us by sending (apostellō) Jesus to us, Jesus loves the people of the world by sending (apostellō) us to them.
John’s phrase, that we might live, included ideas like having abundant life (John 10:10) and having eternal life (3:16). However, in this present context, John referred specifically to the modus operandi of the Christian life. Believers live through Him, through Christ Jesus. Apart from Christ, neither abundant nor eternal life is possible. God demonstrates His love through Jesus Christ and it is only through Him that we might live.
John further clarified the type of love he was writing about. When left to their own imaginations, people have defined love in many self-serving and debasing ways. To counter this tendency, John shifted the focus from what people do, placing it on what God has done. He began with an emphatic statement, Love consists in this. John ruled out defining love in terms of human activity by stating, not that we loved God. The type of soul-saving, life-empowering love John meant could never originate in human activity; only God Himself could provide such love. Therefore, John clearly stated, He loved us and sent His Son. The verb loved is accompanied by a second verb sent. What a beautiful reminder that love is something we do; loving others involves tangible actions like giving (John 3:16), sending (1 John 4:10), and even laying down one’s life for others (3:16).
What are some lasting truths from 1 John 4:9-10?
1. God took the initiative to reveal His unconditional love.
2. God revealed His love by sending His Son.
3. God’s Son came to give us life and to atone for our sins.
4:9 Jesus is God’s only Son. While all believers are sons and daughters of God, only Jesus lives in this special unique relationship (see John 1:18; 3:16).
4:9,10 Love explains:
1. Why God creates – because He loves, He creates people to love.
2. Why God cares – because He loves them, He cares for sinful people.
3. Why we are free to choose – God wants a loving response from us.
4. Why Christ died – His love for us caused Him to seek a solution to the problem of sin.
5. Why we receive eternal life – God’s love expresses itself to us forever.
4:10 Nothing sinful or evil can exists in God’s presence. He is absolute goodness. He cannot overlook, condone, or excuse sin as though it never happened. He loves us, but His love does not make Him morally lax. If we trust in Christ, however, we will not have to bear the penalty for our sins (1 Peter 2:24). We will be acquitted (Romans 5:18) by His atoning sacrifice.
Now that we’ve seen the power of God’s love, let’s explore how we should respond to that love in our own lives.
III. GOD EXPECTS US TO LOVE – 1 JOHN 4:11-12
11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us.
What is the greatest force in the universe? Scientist may point to gravity, electromagnetism, or super massive black holes – but I believe a force exists that is even greater than those – God’s love.
The power of God’s love gives us the ability to love the unlovely and the unlovable. Through God’s love, we find the grace to unconditionally accept people whose actions are unacceptable. Of course, our unconditional love for others is no indication that we agree with their behavior, just as God’s love for us is not an endorsement of the way we have sinned against Him.
This is one of the greatest truths of the Bible: God loves us. Let that truth sink in. Our lives are in trouble if our relationship with God rests primarily on us. God knows we are prone to wander. We do nothing to make God love us; He just loves us. Our response is to love Him and love those He loves. That’s what verse 11 means when the apostle John gently appealed to believers as friends. He used a conditional statement: “If God loved us in this way, (then) we also must love one another.” As recipients of God’s love, we are obligated to love others. Because God has loved us at our worst, He has the moral authority to command us to do likewise.
God’s desire is for us to live in His love and to share that same love with others. Although God Himself is invisible, He is clearly seen in our lives as we demonstrate His great love to others. The bold witness of unconditional love will draw others into an everlasting relationship with God through Christ.
Highlight the meaning of the word “perfected” in the Key Words section.
- Perfected – The biblical meaning refers to something being completed, accomplished, or finished. As we walk with God, we reach His goal of loving others.
Point everyone to these radical statements from the third paragraph of the PSG.
- “This is one of the greatest truths of the Bible: God loves us. Let that truth sink in. Our lives are in trouble if our relationship with God rests primarily on us. God knows we are prone to wander. We do nothing to make God love us; He just loves us. Our response is to love Him and love those He loves.”
How will being loved by God shape the way you live?
Thus far we have seen that God is love (4:7-8) and that God demonstrates His love through Jesus Christ (vv. 9-10). John then led his readers to the next logical step. If God is love, and if He demonstrates love through Jesus Christ, then those who believe in Jesus can love others because of God’s love for them and in them. Believers become more like God as they lovingly serve others. God’s love empowers believers to love others.
To reinforce his point John once again addressed his readers as Dear friends. He refocused attention from what God had done in demonstrating His love by sending Jesus to what believers should be doing as a result. He began with a conditional statement: if God loved us. The word, if, does not question that God loved us, but rather means since God loved us.
God’s love precedes and produces human response. The only appropriate response is for believers to love one another. At this point, John used the infinitive form of the verb agapaō, prescribing love as a constant characteristic of Christian relationships. To underscore his point, John employed a verb meaning to owe, to be indebted, or to be obligated, and translated as must. Thus, John’s statement, we also must love one another, carried a heavy sense of obligation. From John’s perspective, the most legitimate human response to God’s indisputable love was an unfeigned love for others.
As he had done in his Gospel, John asserted, No one has ever seen God (John 1:18). Belief in the unseen God is a matter of faith. Yet, what gives such faith expression or tangibility? John answered the question for his readers by telling them, If we love one another, God remains in us. The verb remains renders the Greek word meaning to stay or to dwell. Thus, when one believer loves another believer, the unseen God is present in a tangible way. The unseen God is experienced in real ways as believers love one another.
In this way, His love is perfected in us. What does perfected love mean? The Greek term means to reach the goal or to be fulfilled. God’s goal in loving us is that we will love Him. By extension, we express our love for God by loving others. This reciprocating love was necessary for the preservation and health of the covenant community. In this regard, New Testament love (agape) parallels the Old Testament love (chesed), which put a heavy emphasis on covenant loyalty.
John encouraged his readers to love God and to love others. He spoke of love as a noun (agape; 4:7,8,9,10,12), as a finite verb (agapaō; 4:7,10,11,12), as an infinitive (agapan; 4:11) and as a participle (agapōn; 4:8). In other words, John wrote about and prescribed love in every way available to him.
What are some lasting truths from 1 John 4:11-12?
1. God expects His love to be expressed.
2. In our love towards others we indicate that God abides in us.
3. God’s love is shown to be real to believers when they give it appropriate and practical expression in their relationships with one another.
4:12 If no one has ever seen God, how can we ever know Him? John in his Gospel said, “God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known” (John 1:18). Jesus is the complete expression of God in human form and He has revealed God to us. When we love one another, the invisible God reveals Himself to others through us, and His love is made complete.
4:12 Some people enjoy being with others. They make friends with strangers easily and always are surrounded by many friends. Other people are shy or reserved. They have a few friends, but they are uncomfortable talking with people they don’t know or mingle in crowds. Shy people don’t need to become extroverts in order to love others. John isn’t telling us how many people to love, but how much to love the people we already know. Our job is to love faithfully the people God has given us to love, whether there are two or two hundred of them. If God sees that we are ready to love others, He will bring them to us. No matter how shy we are, we don’t need to be afraid of the love commandment. God provides us the strength to do what He asks.
God’s love empowers me to love.
Live it Out
Consider the following responses to God’s love:
- Embrace God’s love. Pray specifically for God to help you understand, believe, and receive His love for you today.
- Reflect God’s love. Before the day is over, make an effort to express love to someone in a way that mirrors God’s love for you.
- Seek reconciliation. Identify a relationship that’s been strained or broken in recent years. Let God’s empowering love be the catalyst for you to request or offer forgiveness in that relationship as a step toward reconciliation.
In the light of eternity, we are all beginners in the task of learning to love God. It is the most significant challenge faced by the Christian. When asked what is the greatest commandment, Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” It is a measure of our spiritual weakness that we see this challenge as somehow less critical than the challenge to live morally.
How can I love someone I have never seen? We may experience a form of “love” for a character we read about in a book or see in a movie, but is that anything like the love we feel for someone we actually know? Is our love for God just a form of admiration that we might feel for a hero in a novel or the long-deceased subject of a biography? God is not the long-dead subject of a book. He is a living, breathing Person. How then can we learn to love Him as a real person?
I am convinced that the way we learn how to love God is to think of our relationship with Him in the same way we do with people we can physically see. God wants us to be His friends and to enjoy loving the One who is the most worthy of our love. We grow in our love for God in the same way we grow in our love for anyone else. In this article I will show you ways in which we build our relationships with other people and then apply them to how we can learn to love God Himself.
1. Love Goes Beyond Mere Feelings: The first thing to consider is, what does love actually mean? Many people think that love is simply an emotional feeling — like the way you feel when your knees go weak when you meet that someone of the opposite sex for the first time. Too often songs and sermons tell Christians to relate to God as if He were their heavenly boyfriend. Not surprisingly, that picture is frequently not very appealing to men. As Mark Driscoll says, “It’s hard to worship someone you can beat up.” We must learn to love the real Jesus—not a weak imitation.
The contemporary concept of love is far from the biblical one. It is dangerous to think of love in merely emotional terms: Love is a “doing word,” a word full of action. It requires choices—hard choices sometimes. Love is about sacrifice, about faithfulness. It requires commitment. It doesn’t always feel so good, and sometimes may even be very painful. As Daniel Bedingfield sings, “Nothing hurts like love, nothing causes your heart so much pain.” Loving God is no different. It, too, will at times be painful.
The first step toward learning to love God is to respond to His love for us. We do this because of what He has done for us: “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Like any other covenant relationship, we decide to love irrespective of how we feel or, indeed, how it appears to us another person is treating us. The extent of true love for someone else is not measured by how we feel about him when everything is going well. Satan’s words could as easily have read, “Does Job love God for nothing?” (Job 1). Our challenge is to love even when we feel things are not going well — to love from the core of ourselves even when we feel despair attempting to take hold.
What is love? Love is a deep-seated orientation of your life towards someone else. It involves your whole being. It usually involves deciding to put the needs of another person before your own. Just ask any parent. Our relationship with God is no different, except that He doesn’t have any needs—we are needy. We come to God determined to centre our lives around Him, and to put ourselves in the position of needy recipients of His grace. He calls us to serve Him and worship Him, but it is not because He is deficient in any way. We come to God as receivers, not givers. We love God as little children love their parents, and serve Him in the same way a good mother will ask her child to help her in the kitchen so the child will learn and so they can be together.
2. Love Requires Spending Time Together: There are no shortcuts to loving someone. Love demands interaction and communication, and these require an investment of time. Imagine a friend who comes to you complaining about his girlfriend. He explains that their relationship just doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. You ask him how long they have been going out, and what their conversations are like. Your friend replies, “Oh, we don’t actually go out and talk with each other!” Many Christians spend little or no time with God and then wonder why they are not growing in their relationship with Him.
What does spending time with God look like? Clearly one of the most important ways we spend time with God is in prayer. But how do we pray in such a way that we actually feel that we are in the presence of God — that we are in a real conversation with Him? Prayer must not be merely reciting a shopping list to God. Instead of rushing to ask Him to do things for us, we start by praising Him for who He is and thanking Him for what He has done for us. As we do this and experience clear answers to prayer, just as in any relationship, more of a sense of a shared history with God will emerge and love will deepen. The longer we know Him and the more we remember how He has helped us and answered our prayers, the more we will love Him. But prayer is not only about setting aside special periods of time to be with God. It’s that sense of continually communing with Him in our daily routine. It is critical that we also spend time with God in repentance and receiving forgiveness. Jesus said that those who are forgiven much will love much (Luke 7:49).
3. Love Requires a Deep Knowledge and Understanding of the Other Person: There is no substitute for getting to know and understand God by reading the Bible. We must grow in the biblical knowledge of who God is and what He is like. Many Christians have only a vague idea of the character of God and are unable to identify where the Bible teaches what we assume about Him. To grow in our love for God, the Bible must shape our beliefs about God. I believe it is important that we know why we believe what we do, and that we do not merely parrot theories taught by others.
4. The Spirit Helps Us to Love God: It is sad that the arguments over charismatic gifts of the last century have led so many of us to forget that for hundreds of years many Christians understood that our birthright is an experience of God mediated by the Holy Spirit.
Christian leaders of the past spoke of a pouring out of the Holy Spirit that would help us to experience God’s love. That is rarely spoken about today—even charismatic Christians sometimes have a tendency to over-emphasize the gifts instead of the Holy Spirit’s work in promoting the intimate knowledge of God that we are intended to have. The Bible describes the Spirit as follows: “For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10-11). Clearly it is not an option to ignore the Third Person of the Trinity if we want to grow in our love for God.
Jesus is very clear about how we demonstrate our love for Him, and what the results are. He links obedience with love, and then He promises that those who obey Him will know the presence of God by way of the Spirit’s presence in the world: “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him . . . my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:21).
The Apostle Paul describes it this way: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5) He also writes, “Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!” (Galatians 4:6). If we need help in loving God, we should ask His Spirit to aid us in our weakness and teach us how to love Him.
Jesus says an incredible thing: “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). I am increasingly provoked that few Christians would say that their experience of the Spirit was preferable to Jesus’ living in the world bodily. But Christians should seek a deeper experience of God’s Spirit — not for experience’s sake, but that we might love God more.
5. We Learn to Love Others by Spending Time With Their Friends: How often do Christians effectively say to Jesus,, “I love you, but I don’t really like your bride,” by their indifference and their lack of commitment to a local expression of the Church? For all of us who are beginners at loving God, playing active roles in local congregations will help us learn to love God in all of the way I have mentioned so far. But more than that, by giving and receiving love from other members of the family of God, we will be exposed to the many facets reflecting the glory of God. The church is intended to demonstrate the multicolored wisdom and glory of God (Ephesians 3:10). We cannot love God properly without loving His Church. As we learn to give ourselves sacrificially in love to our spiritual family in the same way we love our natural family, our love for God increases. This is of such vital importance that Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
I believe God has put the Church on earth to love God, to love each other, and to love the world. I pray that God will give us the desire and ability to do each of these better.
Prayer of Commitment
God of love, so fill my heart with Your love that it overflows and empowers me to love my brothers, sisters, and any whom I meet, so that they may see You in me and come to know Your great love as their own. Amen.
Hope to see everyone this Sunday!
In His Love,
David & Susan
