Though we seek being loved, we by nature do not truly know how to love. Our ideas on love generally are some feeling that makes us feel good and makes us feel better about ourselves; yet, are we willing to lay aside our interests in order to love another? Do selfish, self-exalting hearts really ever love another, forgetting about our own feelings? Or do we by nature seek our own glory and our own desires rather than that of others? Paul wrote an entire chapter in I Corinthians to help us see the difference and to help us understand what love really looks like. I want to do this series to help us all understand the difference.
I Corinthians 13: (AMP) 1If I [can] speak in the tongues of men and [even] of angels, but have not love (that reasoning, intentional, spiritual devotion such [a]as is inspired by God’s love for and in us), I am only a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.2 And if I have prophetic powers ([b]the gift of interpreting the divine will and purpose), and understand all the secret truths and mysteries and possess all knowledge, and if I have [sufficient] faith so that I can remove mountains, but have not love (God’s love in me) I am nothing (a useless nobody).3 Even if I dole out all that I have [to the poor in providing] food, and if I surrender my body to be burned or [c]in order that I may glory, but have not love (God’s love in me), I gain nothing.
So often we might want to say that we have done great things to or even sacrificed to demonstrate our own ability to love; yet, if we do those things in order to gain our own glory, then we do not understand love at all. If our own comfort and praise are the reason for doing these things then we have remained merely self-centered and self exalting and do not understand the principles of God’s love. Love requires that we die to our own self, our own desires so that we might place the comfort and desires of another as more important than our own. God’s love for us is a sacrificial love which was willing to suffer and die so that we might be able to receive His love. He loved us even in our most unlovable state and was willing to pay the price so that through His love He could transform the ugly into something beautiful. Look even at Adam and Eve. Once they had sinned by placing their desire for self exaltation above their relationship to God, they began to make excuses and even accuse the other as well as God for their malady. (Genesis 3:12 12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.) Without God’s love within us to transform our selfish heart, we are unable to ever truly show love to another. It is not within our nature to love another completely unless we learn to die to self and the power to do that can only come from God. There is no perfect love outside of God.
John 12: 23 And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.
24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
25 He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
26 If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.
Let me close today with these 4 quotes from CS Lewis.
Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal….
God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense….
Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness….
God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love (from The Problem with Pain)
Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained. from Questions on Christianity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcsCxC8JGX0
Amplified Bible (AMP)
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