LOVE of CHRIST

The Love of Christ Compels Us:

Every day I see the Love of Christ revealed in an every expanding scope, as the universe testifies of the every expanding presence of God, I am moved further and further in Christ. Certainly God has chosen to reveal His love through Christ because Christ was the only vessel in which that Love could live and compel us perfectly as it does.

2 Corinthians 5:13-15

There are no limits to the love of Christ; whether it be in the selfless acts of sacrifice made toward the poor and suffering, or the stance of long-suffering patience we take toward our family members during those rough times we have in our relationships with them.  The love of Christ compels us to reveal Him so that the riches of His surpassing glory might be made known to all mankind.

1st John 2:5-6

Whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected.  By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.

Jesus is the love of God made manifest to all mankind and He walked perfectly in love and compassion for towards all mankind.  Every aspect of our life in Christ Jesus starts and finishes in love because that is His very nature.  From the message of repentance and forgiveness that is our gospel, the long-suffering of trial and tribulation that we endure in Christ Jesus and for one another, all the way to our brotherly compassion and charity that overflows from our faith in Jesus Christ; everything reveals the manifold testimony of God’s love in Christ Jesus to the world.

In fact, it is because the love of God is made known through Jesus Christ that it can only be perfected in those who walk in His word according to the likeness of how He walked!

1st John 2:11

But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

It is fitting, indeed, for us to love one another because of the love of Christ that has been perfected in us and now works in us and compels us because of the hope we have certain in Him.  But know this, that if anyone of us hates our brother, that one has not been perfected in the love of God and, indeed, is walking in darkness and has been blinded by the darkness.

And it is only darkness that blinds us from the love of Christ which ought to compel us in Him- it’s this darkness that causes pride to usurp His love in our hearts and move maliciously towards one another.

1st John 2:15-17

Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

1st John 4:20-21

If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one 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, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.

The love of this world, for all its money, lusts, temptations, and lures blinds us to the love of God in Christ Jesus because it shrouds us in a veil of darkness that is not removed except by the Lord.

Whenever we see divisions, we also see pride, envy, and/or malice.  Whenever we see Greed, we also see suffering, jealousy, quarrels, plotting, and pain.  If these things, which are not from God, but from the world, exist between those that we can see in the flesh (our brothers and sisters who also are from God and are born in God), then how can we say that we love God, whom we cannot see, and from whom are the very things that we ourselves are not practicing?  In other words, if God is love, and the love of God is made manifest in Christ Jesus, how can we say that we love God if we are not walking in the manner that His love (which is Jesus Christ) also walked?

1st John 5:1-4

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments.

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.