Tuesday, February 12, 2019

PT-2 "Loves Abundance" (Eph. 3:17b-19a)


SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/12/2019 10:19 AM



My Worship Time                                                                       Focus:  PT-2 “Loves Abundance”



Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Eph. 3:17b-19a



            Message of the verses:  and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19  and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,”



            We ended our last SD talking about agape love, and I want to add that agape love is a matter of the will and it is not a matter of feeling or emotion, though deep feelings and emotions almost always accompany love.  I suppose that John 3:16 is the classic text on God loving the world, and this was not just a matter of feeling; however it did result in God sending His Son to redeem the world.  John 15:13 says “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”  It does not say “Greater love has no one than to have warm feelings for his friends,” and there is a huge difference there.



            Jesus Christ obeyed the will of His Father by coming to earth to die for all those who would turn to Him and trust Him for their salvation.  This was action and this action is described by Paul in his letter to the Philippians.  Phil. 2:5-8 says “5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  This describes the action that Christ took in dying for us.



            This kind of love does not come natural to believers as it has to be given to us by the Spirit of God as He works in our life to accomplish it in us.  John MacArthur writes “We can only love as Christ loves when He has free reign in our hearts.  ‘By this,’ John says, ‘the love of God was manifested in us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him  In this 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 also ought to love one another.  No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us…We love, because He first loved us’ (1 John 4:9-12, 19).



            “When the Spirit empowers our lives and Christ is obeyed as the Lord of our hearts, our sins and weaknesses are dealt with and we find ourselves wanting to serve others, wanting to sacrifice for them and serve them—because Christ’s loving nature has truly become our own.  Loving is the supernatural attitude of the Christian, because love is the nature of Christ.  When a Christian does not love he has to do so intentionally and with effort—just as he must do to hold his breath.  To become habitually unloving he must habitually resist Christ as the Lord of his heart.  To continue the analogy to breathing, when Christ has his proper place in our hearts, we do not have to be told to love—just as we do not have to be told to breathe.  Eventually it must happen, because loving is as natural to the spiritual person as breathing is to the natural person.”



            One may think that this kind of love does not always happen in the life of the believer, especially when it comes to relationships in the home between a husband and a wife.  Husbands are commanded to love (agape) their wives, which is different than the romantic kind of love that husbands and wives have for each other.  Paul talks about this later on in this letter to the Ephesians, 5:25, 28. 



            This kind of love applies to everyone with whom the believer has contact, especially his fellow Christians.  Loving other is an act of obedience, and not loving them is an act of disobedience. 



            John MacArthur writes that “The absence of love is the presence of sin.  The absence of love has nothing at all to do with what is happening to us, but everything to do with what is happening in us.  Sin and love are enemies, because sin and God are enemies.  They cannot coexist.  Where one is, the other is not. The loveless life is the ungodly life; and the godly life is the serving, caring, tenderhearted, affectionate, self-giving, self-sacrificing life of Christ’s love working through the believer.”



            The following quote comes from “Love in Action” by David Jeremiah, the same little book that I quoted from yesterday.  “Believers are to follow the way of love, to do everything in love, to serve on another in love, to live a life of love, to speak the truth in love, to put on love, to pursue love, to spur one another on to love, and to love not only in words but in actions and truth.”



            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  Loving does not come natural to believers because of still having the old nature, and so loving one another has to come from the Lord as His Spirit fills us.



My Steps of Faith for Today:  Trust that the Lord will continue to work in my heart the truths of Romans 12:3.



Scripture verse from yesterday’s quote:  “He who answer a matter before he hears it, it is a folly and a shame to him (Proverbs 18:13).”



2/12/2019 10:55 AM

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