love – Mt Freedom Baptist Church

In this series of messages, we have examined God’s love. We found that God is love by His very nature. God manifested His love in the world when Jesus – God the Son – was embodied in the flesh of the man Jesus of Nazareth. God’s Spirit fills the heart of every believer with His love in the hour we first believe. On the evening He was betrayed to be crucified, Jesus demonstrated the sacrificial love we are to offer people when He washed His disciples feet, then He gave them (and us) a “new” commandment, that we are to love one another just as He has loved us, saying that all people would recognize by our love that we are His disciples.

We have seen that God defines love because as the apostle John wrote, “God is love.” We also learned that Jesus embodies the love of God in human flesh. Now we look at the work of The Holy Spirit – the third person of the trinity to manifest the love of God in and through the hearts of Christian believers.

We have seen that God Himself is the very definition of love. Love is not an aspect of God’s character. Nor is love one of God’s creations. Love is the very essence of God. Logically then, since God is love, Jesus who is God in human flesh is God’s essence of love embodied. But the love of Jesus is much more than a state of being. Jesus clearly demonstrates His love through action. The apostle Paul wrote that Jesus demonstrates His love for us in giving His own life for sinful mankind. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is indeed the ultimate demonstration of God’s loving nature. But Jesus also demonstrated God’s love throughout His earthly ministry by acts of selfless service to His children. Jesus used the example of washing His disciples’ feet on the night He was betrayed – including His betrayer Judas Iscariot! Afterward He commanded them (and us) to serve those around us sacrificially just as He had demonstrated.

This message is the first in a series entitled “God Is Love.” These messages will explore the nature of God’s love and our proper response to Him.

John the apostle gave us succinct definition of God’s nature when he wrote in 1 John 4:8. “…God is love.” Love is not just an aspect of God’s character. Love is the very essence of His being. Nor is God’s love an emotion, an attraction, or a response to a loved one being “lovable” in the way people ordinarily think of love. God’s love is all encompassing, unconditional, and eternally unchanging. God revealed to Moses the characteristics of His love in Exodus 34:6 – “…“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…”

God’s love is unexplainable because our limited human capacity for love can’t truly understand God’s boundless love. People fall in and out of love, but God’s love never changes and lasts forever. We give our love to another most often based on the character and behavior of our loved one. If our feelings about them change, we stop loving them. But God loves us regardless of who we are or how we act, and He will always love us just because we are the ones He loves. God extends His love to everyone, and Jesus demonstrated His love for us by sacrificing His own life on the cross in our place. Perhaps the apostle John said it best when he wrote in 1 John 4:8 simply “…God is love.”

Paul continues in Colossians 3 encouraging us to put to death all of the old sinful remnants of our former lives, and in their place to “put on” as one would a garment all of the Christ-like characteristics with which our LORD Jesus has endowed us – particularly Christ’s love for all people, which binds all these Christ-like characteristics together in Him.

On the evening He was betrayed, Jesus gave a new commandment to His disciples – that we are to love one another, saying that all people will know that we disciples of Jesus by the love we show toward one another. Later in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed for all of those who would come to believe in His Gospel through the words of His disciples. We who are followers of Jesus have a sacred calling from our LORD to go forth and share the Good News of salvation in Him with the lost and dying world all around us who desperately need to hear. Therefore, Pastor Brian asks simple yet critical question. In response to our call from Jesus, Will you go?

On the night He was betrayed to die on the cross in our place so that we might be forgiven of our sins and restored into fellowship with God, Jesus gave His disciples “a new commandment” that we love one another, saying that people would recognize that we are His disciples through the love we exhibit for one another. But exactly how do we show this love that Jesus has commanded for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Paul tells us that our love for one another must be genuine, and gives some concise characteristics of this love in Romans 12:9-17.

It’s no secret that as we put our faith in God, we are commanded to love Him first and foremost. From there, we are to also love “one another” in the same manner as Christ loves us. But how do we do this? God’s Word is filled with practical ways which can help us understand how it’s possible to achieve something that seems impossible. Until our love inside the walls of the church rises above our emotions, above our sensitive feelings, above our petty differences, above our likes and dislikes, we will never experience the full power of God working in our lives, and we will struggle to make any impact in our community or for the Kingdom.

The world around us will know that we belong to Jesus through the way we love them. The words of Jesus found in John 13:34 are not words of impossibility but are words of encouragement to go and walk in his ways rather than our own. It is an invitation to love beyond us, and to focus on the interests of others.

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