This is Amazing Grace, This is Unfailing Love.
The love of God surpasses understanding. It’s better to be loving than to be right. When we meditate on the love of God, we understand that there is no fear in love… Perfect love casteth out fear for fear has torment… he that feareth is not made perfect in love.
The love of this world is a conditional love… it is reciprocal and requires love in return. Real love is unconditional. This is the Love that God had for us… in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for the ungodly. The twelve apostles were called to witness up close and personally the greatest life ever lived. Jesus’ disciples were “disciplined followers” trained to follow in their Master’s footsteps. As their role model, Jesus gave them a new commandment that ushered in a new way of life… The new commandment Jesus gave them was this: “love one another even as I have loved you.”
Religion honors God with its lips, but not with its heart. In Matthew 15:17 Jesus said, “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” Religion is devoid of the love of God. However, Love is full of grace, it begets love unconditionally… Love is patient, love is kind. It is never envious, never boastful or proud, never promotes itself, is never haughty or rude. It never demands its own way. It is never unreasonable or touchy and sensitive about what others say. Love is the opposite of pride. Love has no pride… it seeks only to live for the object of love. It never notices when others go wrong. Love thinks no evil… it only thinks the best of others. Love forgives and sets the prisoner free… only to find that the prisoner was me.
According to 2 Timothy 3, those who are lovers of their own selves rather than lovers of God will accuse you falsely so that they look right to others while making you look wrong. They are traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God… Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof… ever learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth… from such turn away.
If you’re only friendly to your friends, you’re no different from the rest of the world. Even evil men are good to them who treat them well. However, true followers of Christ love when others treat them unjustly and despitefully use them. Love does not recompense evil for evil, but recompenses evil with good.
Therefore let this mind be in you which was also in Christ… who humbled himself and took upon himself the form of a servant and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. This is the ultimate act of love. Even though Christ’s love is unconditional, our initial response to his love is reciprocal… We love him because he first loved us. To learn to follow Jesus Christ unconditionally we must acknowledge that our righteous justification is not in our own flesh, but in his strength alone. For he who knew no sin, became the perfect sinless sacrifice for sin on our behalf, that we who were dead in trespasses and sin, may become the righteousness of God in him.
Humility is the prerequisite for love. We must come to God with a broken and a contrite spirit, so that he can reconcile us back to him… Humility is the key to receiving the love of God. We as Men of God must be humbled. Only then can we love our enemies, bless them that persecute us, and pray for them that despitefully use us, knowing that our reward is not of this world, but great is our reward in heaven.
1 John 4:7-11
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.
In the immortal words of the poem “The Love of God” penned in 1050 by Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai:
Could we with ink the oceans fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
and every man a scribe by trade,
To write the Love of God above,
Would drain the oceans dry,
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky…
Beloved of God, May God richly bless you, Your brother in Christ, Michael