When love is the way home

When you look through the God’s Word and search for the main criteria for living this new life, the key to everything to do with faith is walking in love, not just any kind of love, but the love that only comes from a relationship with God.

This kind of love comes exclusively through the new birth. Being born again means to be born of the Spirit, born of God, and with that new birth comes the same characteristics of love found in God Himself.

The love we are talking about is called in the Greek agape, which is an unconditional love, a giving love, a completely sacrificial, open and liberating love that sees no fault in others and is totally accepting of all who come within its compass.

God displays this kind of love towards His creation following the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus, who dealt with the sin problem that kept us apart.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

John 3:16-17

By giving His Son, God gave everything to bring us back into His favour.

The Son of God gave His life willingly so that we could be set free from the one thing that separated us from this agape love–sin, which creates a division between ourselves and God, not because God has done anything, but because we have been unable to completely walk in love with Him or with our neighbour. Somewhere along the line we have broken the love command.

God is completely holy. To be in His presence we have to embrace holiness. Our version of holiness or righteousness is not good enough. It is flawed. But when we accept the love of God through faith in Jesus we recieve His holiness, and His righteousness, in exchange for our inability to achieve it without Him.

The key to holiness is this kind of love–absolute love for God and uncompromising love for everyone. This condition, of course, is no simple matter. The very thought, to the carnal mind, yields a sense of implausibility.

Radical

That is why we need a radical change. The fall of man meant that we all come into this world with a natural propensity for sin–coming short of God’s will for our lives. The sin nature we were born with keeps us from walking in love with God and people. There will always be something in our unsaved nature that causes us to step out of love in some way.

The change we need comes from accepting our shortcomings and embracing the free offer of a new life that comes directly from God. With this opportunity, should we accept it, comes the very nature of love that we need to sustain this relationship.

It’s part of the package that comes through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s by God’s love, and by the love that Jesus showed in obeying God’s assignment to give His life on behalf of ours, that we enter into this arrangement.

The sacrificial, all-encompassing, unconditional love of God that brough this high level of grace our way is the same love that will come into our lives when we accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour.

We will have been, through faith, born again, which means we are born from above, receiving the very Spirit of God into our lives, including all the attributes of the Holy Spirit, amongst which are this amazing love that changes everything, especially our perspective on the world and on others.

There is so much more that we can say on this, and will in further articles, but for now, please consider the degree of love you would like to receive into your life, and the wealth of love that could be issued from your spirit once it has been connected with God’s Spirit through faith in Him.