FOR US LOVE IS BY CHOICE

FOR US LOVE IS BY CHOICE

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

1John [MKJV] 4:1-11 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but try the spirits to see if they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God; 3 and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the antichrist you heard is coming, and even now is already in the world. 4 You are of God, little children, and you have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 5 They are of the world, therefore they speak of the world, and the world hears them. 6 We are of God. He who knows God hears us. The one who is not of God does not hear us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves has been born of God, and knows God. 8 The one who does not love has not known God. For God is love. 9 In this the love of God was revealed in us, because God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation concerning our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

  Some people are more loving than others. Some people are more angry than others. Which position is natural to our intrinsic Romans 3:23 sinful nature? (Also note Isa.64:6)

  We love, we are angry. Both categories are by choice, as is selecting how we act out from our personal list of options under each heading.

  Knowing I cannot be casual about love, I must work at it. If I don’t do so my loving defaults to emotional whimsy or worse. 1Corinthians 13 is favorite mine that I use in Romans 12:1-3 continuing love reeducation. Today I choose to read in NLT:

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture!  But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.

When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

  As an exercise I personalize the second paragraph: I am the only one that can decide whether to act out love through being patient, kindness, choosing not getting irritated, refusing to accumulate pride-based list of perceived or real offenses, by not ego-centrically rejoicing in failures of others . . . and by the employment of godly love regardless of whether I feel loving emotionally or not.

  Now that you and I have reviewed this matter yet again, we know our love will be especially tested this day. Let us be prepared for reality.  EBB4