I hope you’ve managed to read yesterday’s posting after I had so much difficulty to get it posted. If you haven’t, maybe you should read it before continuing here.
Today we’re going to have a closer look at love as an action. I Corinthians 13:13 mentions faith, hope and love as life’s essentials. James deems both faith and works a requirement for justification in James 2:17-26. Jesus considers the doing of His commandments essential as evidence of our love for Him (John 14:21). If we therefore hope to be in right standing with God, we need to do love. Whenever we don’t do it, it’s not love.
“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 (covers) all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8).”
There is no such thing as love once and for ever. If I tell my wife I love her and am impatient with her; at that moment I don’t love her. If we say we have love and we never do anything kind to anybody, we are mislead - being unkind is being loveless. Every time we envy a person, we don’t grant her the privilege to have what she has and therefore don’t love her. Boasting and arrogance puts the focus and attention on ourselves and belittle the hearers, and so does rudeness hurt others. Irritability and resentfulness also focus on self and exalt ourselves above others. Love puts others first and every time we act selfishly, we resent others because they interfere with what we want for ourselves and therefore we don’t love them.
The statement that love does not rejoice with wrongdoing and rejoices with the truth is interesting. How often do we just sit by when somebody else gets humiliated or gossiped about and do nothing? How often do we say nothing when God is mocked and His name used in vain? How often do we see our brother sinning and we don’t correct him? Aren’t these examples of rejoicing in wrongdoing, i.e. approving it? If we love the Lord and our neighbour we’d like to see truth prevail and righteousness be done, won’t we? William Wilberforce gave his life fighting for the abolishment of the slave trade. He proved his love for the Lord for His righteousness and for the slaves.
And then, if we look through the eyes of love at a sinner, our obstinate children, the drug addicts, tramps, the other races that we dislike so much, our horrible boss, our enemies and all those of whom Jesus has said: “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they do (Luke 23:34)”... Do we bear with them, i.e. cover their weaknesses, do we believe the best of them - looking for the good in them, do we have hope for them and do we endure with them until we see the change we’re praying and working for?
Satan is active and stirs people up against one another. People don’t know what they’re doing when they’re acting in their carnal nature. We need to choose to act in love – we will not feel it and it will not come by itself, but walking in the Holy Spirit, who is love and who resides in us, will make it possible.
Lord, I need to hear when you prompt me towards love and then do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment