To God’s Beloved At Cloverdale Baptist Church:
The most important thing about you is your view of God (Tozer). The more biblical your view of God, the more the Spirit fills you, the more you will love Him.
How does this love show?
You will obey Him, knowing that His will is always best, and so your delight will be in His Word and your humble Spirit-filled obedience of that.
Jesus goes on in His interaction with His people to also include in this love of Him a love for others. In fact, He defines this as the second greatest commandment that is like the first. A love for God will always show in a love for others.
This is hard for fallen humans because we naturally have a love for ourselves that overflows rather than an experience of God’s love, so this takes being filled with the love of God and making selfless, Christ-like choices to be His kind of people (John 13:35).
If you are an authentic Christian, it is most important that you love God…and essential that you understand that the overflow of that love will be a love for others…so I want us to glance at what this will look like and how we can pursue a love like this (Ephesians 5:1-2).
There are two ways to picture this kind of love that we are called to live out in our lives. The first is the Good Samaritan parable, and the second is the Good Shepherd.
When Jesus was asked to picture this love, He chose a story…and this story was about a man who needed help, and to help this man would be risky and take personal cost. The religious and the righteous walked by this robbery victim, but the Samaritan stopped and engaged self-sacrificially to see that his needs were met.
When the New Testament pictures love, especially in 1 John, we are driven to the cross and the humility and self-sacrifice that Jesus love displays (Romans 5:8). Jesus chose to love and serve others who did not deserve it but who desperately needed it, even when the sacrifice was the greatest in history.
So we are called to self-sacrificially love others even at risk and great cost, because this is the command of God and the best way we display His attribute of love (glorify Him).
So, how do we do this?
This may be the second most important question you could ask yourself, and if you want to be authentic and rich in your relationship with Jesus, essential! I believe there are four essential steps to obedience to this command, and although there might be a lot more to this, if you follow these steps, you will be well on your way to obeying the Great Commandment!
Four words…that carry the grace of our LORD forward in the lives of His followers and help us to live lives of love.
Word #1: Loved
You are loved by God, and this forms the foundation for you to love Him with all you are and all you have, and the overflow of this is ALWAYS love for others.
So if you struggle with self-centredness, if you lack compassion, if you are walking by the robbery victim on the other side of the road so you remain “clean”, then start here and seek to experience the love and grace of God richly!
Pray Ephesians 3:14-21 for yourself and meditate on what Jesus has done for you on the cross, for only as you experience His love will you be able to love His way.
Self-centredness can only be defeated by the love of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, so we must know we are God’s beloved as we take this first step to being who God wants us to be in loving others! If we don’t take this step, we will long to be loved by others rather than being joyful, beloved, empowered, obedient, and lovers of our neighbours.
Word #2: Humble
Humans think they are relatively good, and always are self-centred before they know Jesus and experience His grace.
Following Jesus after a rich experience of His grace will always involve a denial of self (Luke 9:23) and a grasp of the reality of being crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20).
Sanctification is a process that will include growing in grace and knowledge of Jesus, and an awareness of our own sin and God’s grace, when experienced, will allow followers of Jesus to have the humility it takes to truly love.
Almost every church division comes from self-centredness and an inability to see life from God’s perspective or from a deep love for others. Almost all division could be solved if, in radical God-centredness and an experience of His love, all chose the pathway of humility.
Humility, as C.S. Lewis has defined it, is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking about yourself less. To obey this second greatest commandment takes a deep humility and a passionate choice to die to self and live for God and His glory. Oh, that we would see the greatness of God’s holiness and the wonder of His grace, and in deep humility experience what it means to be found IN CHRIST!
Word #3: Kind
This is an action word, and for how I would like to use it means that loving someone else is practical. For the good Samaritan, it meant taking the time to stop, fix, and pay for the healing of the robbed. For us, it will always involve taking steps to meet needs that are practically seen.
The deepest need of everyone is for living water, for the Gospel of Jesus, so we will pursue that in love for others and seek to take them to Jesus and the Gospel…and as we do that, we will joyfully give to meet their practical needs in God’s grace and generosity. True love will be Gospel sharing and Christ-oriented.
We do this well as a church and as individuals, and I am thankful to belong to a church family like ours…and there is always room for a deeper walk with God that will produce this selfless kindness in greater magnitude.
Obeying this commandment is a repeated choice that places others' needs ahead of our own, and becomes the focus of our thoughts as we die to self and imitate our God.
Word #4: Gospel
If you try to obey this commandment without a biblical understanding of grace, you will not have the motivation to continue when you are not loved back, nor the power to continue when you are needing to be loved.
The Gospel is where the goodness and love of God are on display most powerfully (Romans 8:32), and experiencing this kind of love will make us those who can capably and selflessly love others. The Gospel changes us from being complainers to being causers. From hating that we are not loved more to being hasty to love those in our sphere of influence.
If we try to obey without a Gospel orientation, we will quickly become self-centred or give up because we are so far from being perfect. Knowing and experiencing God’s grace is THE KEY to living a life of passionate obedience to Him.
In your pursuit of authentic biblical love like this, never lose sight of the Gospel…and allow God’s love to define and motivate your display of this love in your life.
What now?
Thank you for asking that question. It is so important to not only know what the Great Commandment is, but to choose to pursue obedience to it. So, read the Great Commandment again, and review in your mind what it means. Pray that you would experience God’s grace and love so richly that it would transform you from selfishness to radical Christ-centredness, and choose to live a life of love in His grace.
For many, the temptation will be to look over these four words and wish that someone would love them in this kind of way. If that is your temptation, please stop…and choose to be that for others. If your experience of God’s love is deep, your passion to love others will be energized and a delight to you and for them!
So, ask yourself the following questions:
- Have I experienced God’s love deeply? Ephesians 3:14-21
- How can I love others as an overflow of my first love relationship with Him? Ephesians 5:1-2
- Who has God placed in my life this week that I can display selfless love to? Ephesians 2:10
As we seek to obey these commands, we will glorify God and grow in our ability to become the kind of church He desires us to be.
I think we do these well, and I believe that we have a long way to grow!
A fellow beloved child of God, seeking to obey His first and second greatest commandments,
Pastor Rob