How I Learned To Love - Part 1
By Marilynne E. Foster
What is the mark of a Christian?
Before Christ died, He wanted to prepare the disciples for His death and what was to follow. He wanted them to realize what the distinguishing feature or mark of every Christian would be. John 13:34 -35 tells us: "A new commandment I give unto you. That ye love one another; as I have loved you … By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." Love was to be the distinguishing mark of a Christian.
Now why did God make love the mark of a Christian? Why did not God say, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye live holy lives; are generous; wear somber, drab clothing; wear a cross?
In the beginning God faced two possibilities. One was to make people robots, programmed to do, say, and think as He dictated. But God wanted obedience, not out of necessity, but out of love. So He created humans as free moral agents, implying that all have three characteristics: emotions, intelligence, and will. Any one of these can control others. The intelligence can control the emotions, the emotions can control the intelligence, and of course the will can control either of these. However, the emotions or the intelligence cannot control the will without its agreement. The will always has the power to resist the force of either the intelligence or the emotions. It is not compelled to obey them. The entire tone of our lives is determined by whichever factor we allow to be in control.
Wanting our own way is called selfishness. In other words, selfishness is obedience to what we feel like doing, to what our emotions tell us to do. It is the obedience of the will to the emotions. The selfish person does what he feels like doing, thinking only of the benefits of the action to himself and not to others.
Disobedience to God is selfishness because we are choosing our own way and not God's Selfishness is the obedience of the will to the emotions. If to disobey God is selfishness, then to obey God is love. For love is the opposite of selfishness. Love is giving all of one's self for the highest good of another or to others.
What then is love? Love is the obedience of the will to the intelligence. Love is obedience to what we know to be right and true.
Christ died to reconcile to God those that He had made in the first place for fellowship with Him and who had, through selfishness, through wanting their own way, gone away from Him and turned their back on His way to follow their own way. These are scriptural facts and our intelligence is aware of them.
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