Progressive Baptist Church's Website
The Bible teaches us that God is love. This means God loves everyone with a love that is absolutely perfect. It also means all love comes from God. God gives the gift of love to those who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior and have surrended their lives to worship and serve Him in whatever He ask us to do. God's Spirit comes to live in us. He fills our hearts with love for Him and for our fellowman. When the Spirit fills our hearts with love, we have joy and desire to show our love to others.
Let's look at some of what God's Word has to say about love. Mark 12:30 says, "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment." Did you ever notice that this verse takes in all of man? A man or a woman is composed of a body, soul, and a spirit. Some people want to love God only spiritually. But Jesus told us to love God with our spirit, soul, and body. Then comes the second commandment: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandments greater than these. If we keep these two commandments, we won't break any of the laws of God, including the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament.
As Christians, we can love the way that God loves because His love has been shed abroad in our hearts. God's love is the best kind of love because it never fails. If we love those around us as we love ourselves, we might treat them differently than we have been. We always talk about wanting to do things for the Lord and wanting Him to do things for us; but how can God bless us if we're not doing what He has already told us to do?
The Bible doesn't say we have to love everything our neighbor does, but it does say we have to love him or her. That means loving our ungodly neighbor as well as the Godly one. Without strong love there can be no strong faith. To have strong love, sometimes we have to go against the crowd who belittles someone else. To be strong in the Lord means that we are strong in faith and love. It also means that we must be strong in power. Why should we be strong in power? Is it for us? No....We can benefit from God's power in our own lives. But the reason for that power is to go to the others with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You will find that as you go to others with that power, God's blessings will appear in your life to a greater degree than you've ever seen.
There is no question that the world we live in today needs love. I'm sure no one will disagree with that statement. Love is the one thing that would change society if people would first understand and practice it. If people loved each other, there wouldn't be any more war, crime, abuse, poverty, or starvation. You've often heard people asking, " What can we do? How can we help?" There's only one way to help, and that is to love and show love. Love is not just a word. Love is an action. When Christians reach out to those around them in need by giving time, money, food, and clothes, that is showing love. Christians also need to show love for the lost. The kind of love that can change society is God's love.
We use the word love to express different levels of affection. You might hear someone say I love my brother, mother, or wife. Someone may say I love candy or cars. In each instance the same word, love, is used. You have to look at the context of what the person is saying to understand the kind of love he is talking about.
Many people who are asked to do something for someone else want to know first, what they are going to get for doing it. But as I said before, the God kind of love gives. True love does not concern itself with "what am I going to get out of it?" It concerns itself with "what is this other person going to gain by me loving him?"
In Ephesians 5:25, Paul tells the husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church. How did Christ love the Church? He gave himself for it, and that is the way we are to love. John 3:16 is the perfect example of giving love: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." The God kind of love will love a person even if that person does not want to be loved. The God kind of love loves people regardless of their actions. With this kind of love, it doesn't matter what kind of clothes you wear or what you've done, you can still be loved by the power of God and receive Jesus as your Savior. This kind of love has won more people to God than anything else. If you put your arms out and love people and let them experience God's love, then that love will get on the inside of them. When we get God's kind of love on the inside, the outside has to change. If you have the God kind of love on the inside of you, you can love a person even if he has done you wrong.
This is the kind of love that God has demonstrated toward mankind, even toward the ungodly. Let us ask God to help us with our problems of selfish love. God wants to help us. But, Satan wants to keep us from conquering our problem. Fill yur life with Christ and when you do, He will wipe out things that are wrong and allow the Holy Spirit to help us do what is right. We were made in the image of God and since God is love, we are capable of loving ourselves and our neighbors with God's kind of love.
