Thursday, July 17, 2014

What Kind of Love Should Abound?

Philippians 1:9-11  And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,  (10)  so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,  (11)  filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.  ESV.  

God has much to say to us about love in the Bible. The two great commandments are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as our self. (Mark 12:30-31)  It also says that "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love" (1 John 4:8)

Jesus gave His disciples the highest standard of love that could ever be given. He told them to love one another just as He had loved them. And He told that by their loving one another people would know they were His disciples.(John 13:34-34)

Although we cannot love as perfectly as Jesus, we should be so thankful for how He loved us in going to the Cross and enduring the wrath of His Father in our place that we should seek to do whatever he enables us to please Him and express love to Him and others.

Of course not everything that people call "love" is what God means by love. In the name of "love" there is adultery, fornication, and the tolerance and acceptance of many other things that offend the one true holy God. In order to love in ways that actually please God we need to see what He says in His Word.

In Paul's letter to the Philippians quoted above, he not only prayed that their love would abound more and more, but that their love would be with knowledge and discernment. Only by gaining the knowledge that God has given us in the Bible can we properly discern what expressions of love are godly and which are not.

The love that God wants us to have is not what may feel good to us. It is not necessarily what we or other people consider to be acceptable expressions of love. God's love is perfect. God's love is excellent. When He teaches and enables to love His way we can know it is excellent. Abounding more and more in loving God's way can help us be pure and blameless as we progress toward the day of Christ.

Jesus is altogether righteous. He loves purely and perfectly. We don't have to settle for loving with corrupt motives and methods. We can turn to Him and to His Word and He can fill us with the fruit of righteousness that will help our love to grow in ways that will truly be to the praise and glory of God. 




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