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UNDERSTANDING
THE LOVE OF GOD SERIES
LOVE
SEEKS EXPRESSION
I Cor.13: 3 “And though I bestow all my
goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not
love, it profits me nothing.”
For anyone to give
everything he or she has would be a symbol of great sacrifice and love and
dedication. And to go to the extent of giving your own body to be burned will
have been the highest expression of love.
Yet Paul says that it is possible to do all these things without agape
love, without the love of God. And as we
understand the love of God this morning we will understand this phrase that you
can give without loving but you can’t love without giving. And Paul here is pointing to the possibility
of giving without love. That is
something that we may find hard to comprehend.
But yet the Word of God declare onto us that giving by itself is no sign
of love for a human being can give and even sacrifice for various reasons.
Lets ponder that thought for a moment. We realize that giving is essential to life
and as we grow up into adults, we realize that in life there are certain things
you can give in order to gain something back.
All the businessmen know they can invest in something. They surrender a part of their finances. They surrender a part of their assets in
order to gain something else. And this
comes to personal relationship.
Sometimes when people love one another or when people fall in love, they
would seek to give. This is more acute when only one party love but the other
doesn’t love in return. Then the person
tries to gain the love of the other by gifts or by sacrifices. In social or administrative circles,
sometimes people give in order to gain favors.
We call that bribery. So looking
at aspects of human life we see that there is sometimes some inclination in the
human nature to give or show love in order to gain something. We do not want to lose. Whenever we part with our time, we part with
our finances; we part with a part of ourselves, we want to gain something. And all human love is based on that. It is actually an exchange, an
investment. We want to exchange our
goods for something else. We want to
exchange our favors for something else.
We want to exchange our attention for something else.
And Paul says it’s possible to go right to
the limit and give everything you have and yet have no love. That would be sad. And it’s even possible to give your life and
not have love. So we have to differentiate
between these two acts or works, one born without love and the other born of
love. Yet the Bible says in John 3: 16 “For
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” At the same time on the other side it is not
possible to love without expressing it in deed.
Love demands an expression. Love
demands that something be surrendered to show it forth. I John 3: 16-18 “By this we know love,
because He laid down His life for us.
And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” See by this we know His love. Love has to be expressed. You cannot love without giving. God loves us so much that He gave His best,
His only begotten Son. He did not send
an angel. Love will give the best. That’s the difference between love and just
liking. Love will motivate you to give
the best. And God gave His only begotten Son.
Roman 8 tells us if God did not spare His Son how shall
He not give us all things. If God
has given His best what else the rest.
See we understand His love by His Son coming down and dying on the cross
for us. There is no other way you can
understand the love of God. There is no
other way you can understand the statement that God loves you. You can put a sticker behind your car that
says God loves you but people don’t understand that statement. They must understand what God did. For God so loved the world that He gave. Love needs to be expressed to be
understood. If God just sits in heaven
and says I love you, none of us would understand. It will be just like a human being talking to
an earthworm. The earthworm wouldn’t
understand anything. In fact the
earthworm thinks that you are harming it because you have taken it from its
natural habitant, the soil, the dirt and the mud where it is comfortable. Supposing you put the earthworm back down and
you want to do something and express your love to the earthworm, and you just
bend down where it is in a natural position and say earthworm I love you. The earthworm will run away. See you frightened the earthworm with your
voice. How can you express love to the
earthworm? If in some way you could
bring yourself down to the size of the earthworm and be like an earthworm and
communicate to the earthworm that will be able to express it.
God is a Spirit;
He dwells in the heaven above. From
Genesis to Malachi God has been trying to tell us He loves us. When God made the Garden of Eden God was
saying I love you. I made this garden
for you. He did not make man on the
first day; He made man on the sixth day because He wanted man to enjoy what He
made. He didn’t make man on the first
day with nothing there. He made all
these things and then He made man to enjoy His creation. He was trying to express His love. Man doesn’t understand. Through all the ages when He pulled Abraham
out, when people walk with Him, He was trying to say I love you. And through all the times when the Israelites
were disobedient, God was saying I love you through the prophet Hosea. He says though you reject Me
yet I love you. But human beings do not
understand His love, until finally through the mystery of godliness the Word
came down and live among us. And by
living among us, He went about caring for the needs of people, whenever there
is a need. Even the mother Mary understood
that this is someone special. When in a
wedding there was not enough wine, she went and tells Him because she knew that
He cares for the needs. See love
expresses and so there is the miracle of wine.
And all through His life, He healed the sick and helped the broken
hearted. He seeks to impart His life,
His Spirit and His love. What did they
do to Him? They took Him and turned Him
over to the Roman’s rulers. They
crucified Him. He said, Father forgive
them. What was He doing? He was saying I love you. I love you not because of what you can give
back to me. I love you and I want you as
you are. And that was His love reaching
out. Finally when He died on the cross
and He was resurrected again, the message of love goes forth throughout the
entire world, the Gospel of love telling us that God has loved us to send His
Son onto us. We have seen how that it
was not the nails that kept Him on the cross.
When they were shouting to Him and say come down from your cross if you
are the Son of God, Jesus had the power to come down. Even when they captured
Him and Peter thinking that he was very good at the sword, cut off somebody’s
ear, Jesus fixed back the ear and Jesus said, put your sword away for I could
call My Father now and He could give Me twelve legions
of angels. He got the power to set
Himself free but He allowed Himself to be rejected. He allowed Himself to be abused. He allowed Himself to suffer because He wants
us to know He loves us. See love demands
expression. In John 4 it says we know
love because He laid down His life for us.
That’s the way by which love can be known.
And we also ought to
lay down our life for the brethren in 1 John chapter 3 verse
17. “But whoever has this world’s
goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does
the love of God abide in him?” How
does the love of God abide in us? My
little children, he says in verse 18, let us not love in words or in
tongue but in deed and in truth.
Truth is the life not just theory.
If we love with God’s love, it demands that we give and impart a part of
our life. Love seeks to share. It doesn’t seek so much to gain. When Jesus went to the cross He was saying I
want to share My life with you. I want to share all My
inheritance with you. So in Romans 8 it
says we have been made heirs and joint heirs.
Love seeks to share, to impart of our life. So John tells us that if we see someone in
need and we are in a position to help, what does love do? Love seeks to share, to build, and to
give. You cannot love without
giving. Lets
take for example, if a person is in love with another, do you know that the
person will go all the way or do anything to make sure that the guy or that
girl known that someone love him/her.
Either they spend more time with each other or they give little gifts or
notes. See it wants to express. That is on the human side. But on the overall sometimes when a person is
rejected, the person feels hurt. Why
does that person feel hurt? Very often people give love expecting something in
return. Their motive in loving others is
not pure enough; they don’t love unselfishly enough – they do not love just to
give. When we love with agape love, we
cut off the other part of wanting to gain something in return. In agape love, we only seek to impart and to
give. We don’t seek to gain anything
back. See the gaining part is the thing
that renders all your giving to be impure. That will bring you back to I Cor. 13 where Paul says that I can give all these world
goods away and I give my body to be burned and have not love. Why?
Such giving was with a motive to gain something. Whether you gain fame or you gain attention
or you gain something, when you seek to love to gain something, it immediately
cancels out agape love. That’s a
fearsome thought and that’s all that the world is based on. Must gain something even
from childhood.
When we come to the Word of God, God is
saying when you love, you must cut off the thought or
motive of gaining something in return.
Cut off the part that seeks to ask, “What can I gain out of this?” So when you love with the agape love of God,
you are not seeking to gain anything, you are not seeking to even gain a
person’s heart. But on the human level
on human love, when a girl or a boy likes one another they want to express
something to gain a person’s heart. No
comparison with the love of God. The
only part that can be brought forth as an illustration is the part where a
person seeks to do something, want to express.
You have seen people who love one another; they tend to want to be
together. Shake hands and hold
longer. Look at each other longer. That is human affection. We are saying that we are to go forth to
God’s agape love. God’s agape love is
when you surrender the right to gain. When you surrender your right to have a response to your attention. You surrender that right to God. So the agape love flows forth because there
is so much in you to give. Not because
you don’t have any agape love in you and you need to do
something to gain some love in return.
See the difference? In other
types of human love, people begin by not having any love from others. A boy or a girl doesn’t have a boy friend or
girl friend and they seek to have one.
Somebody who does not have attention wants to have attention. A child wants to have attention from the
parents and they seek to do something to win their parent’s favor. See all the time is because we don’t have
human love we use psychological tactics to win or gain to fill up what we don’t
have. All our human attention and love
is based on an initial lack of love from others. We don’t have something. We lack attention so we cry or we make a
nuisance of ourselves just to get that attention. We get rejected and we get hurt and we want
the world to pay attention to us. So we
do something drastic and the world gives us the attention. See all the actions that’s comes forth is
because of a lack. There is a need. Some of us are even in need of love. We do not know the love of the father. We have not been filled with the love of
God. And so psychologically we come into
the Christian life and we do things to gain love. We do things to receive love. We do things to gain attention. We do things to get people to love us. This is not agape love that God wants us to
have. But the agape love of God reaches
a point where you are so full of God’s love, you can’t
help giving it away.
Look at I John, it
tells you the basis of love. I John 3:
14 “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the
brethren. He who does not love his
brother abides in death.” What is
he talking about passing from death to life?
We look back to verse 10 “In this the children of God and the
children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is
not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.” So he talks about the love for brethren and
all those things that have been mentioned in these verses where it tells you
here that you have passed from death to life if you love. Then it tells you here when you love you are practicing righteousness.
Then verse nine is the
spring board, “Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed
remains in Him, and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.” God is love; we have been born of love. That’s the whole basis for the Christian love, that it has been given to us. Love has been imparted to us. Love is a substance that has been
imparted. So love is not just an
attribute but love is a substance, the substance of God. See all the other type of human attention and
human love and affection is an attribute, an inclination to gain
something. But the love of God is His
substance that fills you. God is love;
you are born out of the same Spirit of love.
Roman 5: 5 “Now
hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our
hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Love is a substance that can be poured
forth. It is not just an attribute in
life. The love of God is a substance
that God placed into our hearts and life when we were justified, when we were
born again. The Old King James said that
the love of God has been shed but the Greek word is poured. You know the difference between shed
and poured. Shed could be
a trickle but poured talks about a waterfall, pouring into our
hearts. When did that
took place? Romans 5:
1 when we were justified by faith.
And then he came to verse 5 where he says that the love of God has been
poured out into our hearts. Now look at
the context, it says love in our hearts will cause us not to be disappointed. It says hope does not disappoint because the
love of God is in us. Do you know some
human beings get disappointed when they seek to love one another? It is because
their type of love is a love hoping to gain something in return. So when there is no gain, they get
disappointed.
Look at the things Paul talks about. Tribulations. What is the thing that he is talking about,
going through difficulties, all these seeking to bless will not disappoint
you. In Christ there is no
disappointment, there is no discouragement because being in Christ is being in
the love of God. God never got
disappointed. Jesus never got
discouraged. But hope does not disappoint
because the love of God, the substance of love has been poured into our
hearts. So that now you love because of
this substance moving in you.
God is a Spirit. Love is a Spirit
too. II Timothy 1: 7 “For God has not
given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” See God has put the Spirit of love into our
hearts. And love not to gain. We love because of the Spirit of love. We love not to receive. We love because we are moved by the Spirit of
love. We love not because we have a
need. We love because we have been filled.
The love of God, the substance has been poured into our hearts. Every single one of you whether you have been
loving or you have not been loving, you sit
potentially in the love of God. And what
God is saying the love is a Spirit, love is a substance. It has been placed in your spirit. If you try to love in the flesh or you try to
love in the mind, you will be limited.
You will not find love in the body.
You will not find love in the mind.
Love resides in your spirit. Love
flows from your spirit. That is why when
you have the love of God, you do not just love one or two. See the difference. Human affection will just love one or two and
usually those whom we can gain something.
But God’s love seeks to be the same to all. We all know that God is no respecter of
persons, that He loves you and me the same way.
He shows not respect as to status.
As to whatever level of human achievement a person has, He shows the
same attention and love to all. What
causes God to be no respecter of person?
His love.
Do you know that human being respect people but that is not the nature
of God? That is a nature of original
sin. When you get born again all those
old things are supposed to be passed away. Being a respecter of person, all these things
are what II Cor. 5: 17 says “behold, all things
have become new.” The old has
passed away. These are the things that
should have passed away. It’s human
affection that causes us to be a respecter of person. We are exalted in the Bible to have no
respect for person but to respect all equally and to love all equally. How do we do that? The agape love of God that
flows out. Whether you can gain
something out of the person or not, whether the person has to do with your work
or your family or not, you would still let the love of God flows to that
person. That’s the agape love of God.
James tells us in chapter 2: 15-18 “If a brother or sister is naked and
destitute of daily food and one of you says to them, depart in peace, be warmed
and filled, but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body,
what does it profit? Thus also faith by
itself, if it does not have work, is dead.
But someone will say, you have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith without your works, and I
will show you my faith by my works.”
See how James emphasizes on the practical aspect of a Christian
life. The action part is the proof of
your Christianity. In chapter 5 of James
in verse one onwards “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries
that are coming upon you. Your riches
are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their
corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last
days. Indeed the wages of the laborers
who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of
the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. You have lived on the earth in pleasure and
luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have murdered the
just, he does not resist you.” Here is an aspect where God speaks about the
life principle of the rich. It may not
be for you. If you are the Christian
rich, you can be rich in Christ. But
don’t take the life principle. What do
we mean by life principle? A life
principle is something that you live by.
It is a principle that guides your whole life. But for some people their life principle is,
“I live for pleasure.” That is what
James is saying. Some people’s life
principle is this, “I live for power and that principle directs every decision
in their life. And Jesus Christ when He
was in the wilderness was tempted by the devil.
The devil said turn this stone into bread. What was the devil saying? Live for food and pleasure. Jesus says man shall not live by bread alone
but by every word that proceed from the mouth of God. And the devil showed Him all the riches of
the kingdom of this world. The devil was
saying live for the things of this world.
Live for power. Jesus says He
will live for God. See a life principle
guides a person. And James was doing
some correction in the church. In James
chapter 2: 2-4 He says “For if there should come into your assembly a man
with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in
filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and
say to him, you sit here in a good place, and say to the poor man, you stand
there, or, sit here at my footstool, have you not shown partially among
yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?” What is James saying here? Any sign of being a respecter of one above
the other is not a part of God’s love.
Some of the things that II Cor. said in chapter 5: 17 that have passed away. I supposed to be the human quality of being a
respecter of person. Do you know that is
ingrained in all human nature? But you
are not human. You are spirit
being. So that nature should have died, the nature of respecting one above the other. We are not saying that we don’t respect
anybody but we are saying respect all equally.
Give attention to all equally.
That nature of being a respecter of person is born of original sin, not
born of agape love. In fact one of the
things when people say about Jesus when He was on this earth was you are no respecter of person.
John 3 Nicodemus said that to Jesus.
In John 3 when he came to Jesus, this was his first word that impresses
his life. It shows the impression that
Jesus has made upon his life. In verse 2
“This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, ‘Rabbi, we know that You
are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless
God is with him.” What is Nicodemus
saying here? That he recognized Jesus as
a teacher. And he gives a sense of Jesus
having no respect to anyone great or small.
Jesus answered him; Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born
again, he cannot see the
John 2 in the
beginning part it says in verse 24-25 “But Jesus did not commit Himself to
them, because He knew all men.”
What was Jesus doing? Jesus loved
everyone equally. For God so loved the
world that He gave. Do you know what God
is seeking to do? God is seeking to give
His life. He was seeking to impart His
life into each one of us. If God is
love, He is love and the substance of His life is love. It comes from the same mould. God seeks to impart His life into us and He
imparts His love into us when we are born again. I have the love of God. The moment I was born again, I have eternal
life. I have everlasting life. I have the love of God. I have the life of God. In Christ I can love all. Now you began to see that you love because
you have received love. You love not
because you need others to love you. You
love not because you want to gain. For
love is a spirit. Love is the substance
and that substance is imparted by the Spirit of God in our hearts. Sometimes your body does not feel the love
because love is not a feeling in the body.
Sometimes your mind does not choose and want to love because love does
not dwell in the soul or in the mind.
Love dwells in the spirit. And if
you want to know what the love is like and have it flowed out from you, you
look into the spirit. And in your spirit
you will find nothing but love, love, and love.
That is why in Galatians 5 says that the fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, etc. Give forth your love,
release your love and if love is a substance and love is a spirit that means it
can be increased. We can grow in
measures of love.
Jude verse 20 the
reservoir and resources of your love are in your spirit, “but you beloved,
building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit,
keeping yourself in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus
Christ unto eternal life.” Keep
yourselves in the borders of God’s love.
Keep yourselves within the limits of the love of God. How, praying in the Holy Spirit, tapping into
the resources of love in your heart. All
of you, the moment you are born again, you have the potential to love. It is against your nature not to love or to
have hatred, jealousy or strife. In fact
the moment you do that you lose your peace that tells you something is
lost. When you get back into the love of
God, you live in God’s love. With all
these we go back to I John and we see the understanding there. I John 3: 14 “We know that we have passed
from death to life.” Now is that a
future tense or a past tense? You find
that is a past perfect tense. We have
passed. That is why it says in John 3
that you already have eternal life and everlasting life now. It does not happen when you die. Right now you have passed from death to
life. Right now eternal life is
working. Right now the life of God is
working. And if the life of God is
working, John says the love of God is also working. Love and life are the same. Because we love the brethren, he who does not
love his brother abides in death. That means
if a person is not walking in love, he/she is walking in death. If you walk in love, you will not walk in the
flesh. That is why last week we talk
about how love is important to discern the gifts of the Spirit.
How do I know whether someone is moving in
the flesh or moving in the Spirit? By
love, if you move in the Spirit love is proceeded and quicken the people’s
life. If you move in the flesh it turns
people off. There is something that
causes love not to be manifested. See
love resides in your spirit. Love is a
substance. Love is a spirit. I have received a Spirit of love. I have not received a spirit of fear. But I have received a Spirit of love, the
Spirit of power, the Spirit of a sound mind.
Which confirm with I John 4: 18 there is no fear in love. How can the spirit of fear and the Spirit of
love be in the same place? The Spirit of
love abides in your spirit and it causes you to flow. If somebody rejects you, you are not
disappointed because you are not dependant on the external. You are dependant on the internal. So whenever you get disappointed, whenever
you get discouraged, whenever you are rejected and you feel it, it is your soul
or your flesh. It has nothing to do with
the spirit. The purpose of love is just
to give. We never ever consider the
anguish of rejection because it pours forth from you. You are like a fountain, a fountain of love
that flows forth onto others. There is
no fear. When love comes, fear
leaves. Fear and love cannot exist in
the same body. There is no fear in
love. Perfect love casts out all
fear. If there is fear that means there
is imperfect love for perfect love cast out fear. Imperfect love partly removes fear. When love is perfected in your life, all you
want to do is to love, because God loves.
You love people because God loves them and you look at everyone with the
eyes of love irrespective of who they are, irrespective of what they are,
irrespective of what they do. Even your
enemy, Jesus said love your enemy.
Now you began to
understand why this love is so different from human affection. See there is nothing you can gain from your
enemy. Jesus says love your enemy
because He has placed His love in your heart.
Examine why you love somebody. Is
it because you need to gain something?
If it is, you need to correct yourself today. You need to cut off the motive of self-gain
and say I will love not because I want to gain.
In many Christians’ lives that are not taught the Word of God or love,
their love is only based on self-gain, on human affection. When you are renewed by God’s Word to understand
His love, the quality of His love, the standard of His love, the substance of
His love, the spirit of His love, the life that is in you by praying in the
Spirit drawing from your spirit. Keep
yourself in the love of God all the time for God lives in the atmosphere of
love. Heaven is an atmosphere of
love. To be in the
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