Love
Welcome aboard The Clarion Express, because we are going to talk about love. The Hebrew word for love in general is “Ahava” but the word “Hesed is a broader term to mean lovingkindness or steadfast love and even loyalty. Scripture says God is love (1 John 4:8) If God is love then love looks like God.
John 3:16 tells us this, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.”
Romans 5: 7-8 says this, “For one will hardly die for a righteous person; though perhaps for the good person someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Messiah died for us.”
It was love that caused God to create. It was love that caused God to send His only begotten Son to die for us. It was love that created you and me. So how should we love God?
John 14:15 tells us, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”
Mark 22: 37 says this, “And He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
Mark 22:39 also says, “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Luke 6:32 goes on to tell us, “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.”
Luke 6:35 says, “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for He is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.”
Love is the main fruit in which all the other fruit of the Spirit comes out of.
Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
The fruit of the Spirit is summed up in one word…Love! It is the evidence of having the Holy Spirit and the evidence of being a disciple of the Messiah. John 13:35 tells us, “By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
And John 15:9-10 tells us how we remain in God’s love, “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”
Love is more important than all things for it is the foundation of all things. Everything we do as God’s temple in the Holy Spirit must be from love.1 Corinthians 13:1-3 says, “If I speak with the tongues of mankind and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give away all my possessions to charity, and if I surrender my body so that I may glory, but do not have love, it does me no good.”
And this is what our love should look like as 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a tells us, “Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant. It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered, it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”
It’s time now to love as God loves as 1 Corinthians 13 8b-13 says. “But if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away with; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away with. For we know in part and prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away with. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
We too can show our general love, Ahava, for God, by our Hesed, our loyalty, and steadfast love as 1 Corinthians 15:58 says, “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
Tweet this!