How I Learned To Love - Part 2
By Marilynne E. Foster
Now the Bible also tells us that if we accept Christ's way, His salvation, then we are new creatures in Christ Jesus, all things are become new. Then it is no longer our way, it is God's way. It is no longer what we desire, it is what God desires. That is what repentance means –turning from our own way to walk in the way of the Lord. Now if doing our own will and going our own way is selfishness, doing God's will and going His way is love!
Love is the obedience of the will to the intelligence. The love that God requires then is not the love or affection of the emotions; not the love that feels like loving. He requires the love of the will, that loves because it should love and because it chooses to love. Our will must rule, not our emotions.
The Bible tells us that God is love. This one word "love" describes the totality of God. We said earlier that to love means to desire the highest good of someone else and to give of one's self completely for the other person. This is God!
He desires our highest good, not His own, else He would not have robbed His only Son of all the glories of heaven and sent him down to this sin-polluted earth to suffer unspeakable indignities and to die for mankind. Neither would Jesus Christ, the Son, have humbled Himself, submitting His will to the will of His Father. He was not forced to do it, for He is God. But God the Father knew that that was the only way that mankind could be brought back into fellowship with Him. God loves us enough to make that sacrifice – His only Son. And God loves us enough that still these many years later, the offer of pardon is open for all who will accept it. That is love. God's love.
Love encompasses all other virtues. The fruit of the spirit is love, period. All the other fruit - "virtues" - are only attributes of love.
Christ wants our love obedience, not because the law demands it, but because we choose, motivated by love, to obey Him.
These then are the two alternatives – selfishness or love. Disobedience to God, or obedience to God.
You say, "How can I love God?" The answer is simple – will to love Him, choose to love Him. It doesn't' matter what our emotions tell us, what we feel like doing. No, it is what we will to do, what our goal is, what we are setting out to do. If we choose to disobey God, that is selfishness. If we choose to obey God, that is love.
Only the Christian can truly love because to love means to obey God joyfully and unquestioningly. Love is the mark of the Christian.
Be the first to react on this!
