Matchless love of God

I’m preoccupied with the love of God since yesterday when He reminded me of F.B., a man who overflows the love of Christ, and a few others that do the same. These are people that I want to emulate, yet I know that this love is from God and tied to their love for God. They deeply know how much He loves them.

In other words, if I want to love people as I should, my focus must be on how much God loves me. I cannot do that if I am pridefully trying to earn His favor, or if I think I am already good enough. This is difficult to describe even though I know my failures when they happen.

Tozer writes that the problem with the Pharisees was that they had correct doctrine but without love. They did their religious duties in pride. They were ‘God’s chosen people’ but without realizing the great love of God or their own unworthiness. They thought their ritual ‘righteousness’ made them worthy. I know that I cannot think that way. That attitude in others irritates me. I cannot imagine the way it affects the heart of God.

Instead, God tells me He loves me, shows me He loves me. He sent His Son to die for me. By His grace, He gives me forgiveness and eternal life. Because of that great love, I’m to be filled with it and overflow, passing it on to others . . .

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.” (1 John 3:16–22)

This love is not mere sentiment. It is sacrificial and visible. People know that God loves them when the people of God love them — without strings attached, without needing to earn it, without judgment and finger-pointing. I can never say, “You must live this way before I will care about your or your needs.”

Tozer says it was religion that put Christ on the cross, religion without the indwelling Spirit. Yes, that is true. But it was also the pagan idol worship, the ignorant and stubborn refusal to acknowledge the Creator, the prideful determination that God is not needed, and a host of other anti-God and anti-Christ attitudes. It was certainly my self-centeredness and neglect to obey Him as well.

Tozer stresses the necessity of having “the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” and calls this not a luxury, not something added now and again to produce a deluxe type of Christian once in a generation, but He is a vital necessity for every child of God.

I agree. I cannot love God apart from knowing His love for me and I certainly cannot love others without the security of being totally loved, without any love needs of my own. In writing this, I realize why there are so few Christian people who exude the love of Christ. They are unaware or have been duped. Satan’s first lie suggested that God does not really love us, and that has been his chief strategy ever since. Love-needy people do not have the freedom of an overflow, the delight of being conduits for God’s love.

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Lord Jesus, this is important and I know my own heart needs to give it attention. The need for Your love is everywhere. Most people doubt or deny it because they measure it by the pain in their lives and in our world rather than measuring it by what You have done. Oh Lord, this world needs to know, to see, to experience the love that transforms lives. So do I.

Love is not merely a feeling . . .

Years of experience have changed my concept of love. As a young girl, it was a fluttery emotion that included how I felt for other people, but also how I loved my horses and a good pizza. Later, it became a term for commitment exemplified in getting up to feed a crying baby without having any fluttery emotions at all. It also became a choice, such as doing the right thing whether I felt like it or not, even refraining from doing the wrong thing when the wrong thing was totally tempting because ‘it felt so good.’

Now I understand love more like how God loves me. It is not like those descriptions. Not only that, His love helps me understand how I am to love others.

How can I describe God’s love? It is almost beyond description, but part of 1 Corinthians 13 gives this much:

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:4–7)

These verses are normally intended to describe how I am to love others. They talk about actions and attitudes, not feelings. However, another passage says that if I am going to love others like this, I must first know that God loves me . . .

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have 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 also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” (1 John 4:7–21)

“We love because he first loved us” is vital. I’ve learned that if I am not secure in that understanding, then instead of loving others, I will be continually seeking love from them. That is not how God describes love.

Knowing the love of God sets me free to love, yet this is not as simple as it sounds. For one thing, Satan’s lie to Eve went something like this: Oh, God does not really love you or want the best for you.

It is an old line, but his most effective one. It works because I so easily measure whether or not I am loved by my performance. If I do not live up to a certain standard, how can God love me? That lie of Satan goes both ways; he catches me with it when God does not do what I expect, and I wonder how can He love me?

The fact of the matter is that God loves because that is His nature: God is love! He proved it by sending Jesus into the world that I might live through Him.

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  . . . . For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present 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.” (Romans 8:31–39)

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Jesus, You are the proof that God loves me. When I abide in Your love, then I am secure. Not only that, I am free — I can graciously love others without concern for my own need to be loved. Yet again, this is not as easy as writing the words. The enemy lies. My own life falls short. Much of the time I’ve no idea why God is not answering prayer. Yet because of You, I know that I am loved, and because of You, I can love others, even if I don’t feel like it.

Actions can transform attitudes

When a friend first said it, I was skeptical, but now am convinced --- “Sometimes you have to act right before you can think right.”

I’ve struggled with thinking right, particularly with keeping idolatrous thoughts out of my head. (Idolatry = trusting anything other than God.) So far, all efforts to change that have been mostly cerebral. However, God shows me that a change in the order of things may be the answer. In this study called “No other gods” today’s emphasis is on replacing attention on thinking right with  deliberate action of putting my attention on others. Notice the steps in these two verses . . .

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1–2)

These verses say to first present my body in worship (which boils down to honoring God with obedience) and then be transformed by a renewal of the mind. This is not to say that the mind and body are separate entities, but that the way I act will affect the way I think. If my life becomes so engrossed in trying to change me, then I will not be changed. God works transformation when I consider others and make their needs more significant than my own.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. . . . so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:3-4, 10–11)

There is a progression here too. The Lord Jesus Christ is honored when His people are humbly caring for one another. We are supposed to “Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:10) which echoes the Old Testament commandment . . .

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

A good place to focus on honoring one another is in how I speak to them and about them. I have a friend who somehow manages to say good things about people, no matter what they are doing. He elevates rather than puts them down. This makes others feel their value in the sight of God. His actions have an effect on my attitude too. God nudges me to ‘tear a page out of his book’ and be more like that in the way I talk to others.

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? (James 4:10–12)

It isn’t that I have been pointedly mean or unkind. I’m just too silent. This example shows the importance of greater effort to verbally honor others. From the above verses, honoring others will honor Christ. It will also have an impact on the need in my heart to think right and topple those persistent idols that I’ve not been able to get rid of any other way.