Love in 1 Corinthians 13 is talking about the ‘agape’ kind. The ultimate act of self-sacrifice. This makes sense when you know that God is Love (1 John 4:7-8) and the greatest expression of love is to lay your life down for your friends (John 15:13). That makes Jesus God’s greatest expression of Himself. That’s why love wins and that’s how you know who is born of God (John 13:35). Love is also how you keep God’s commands (Romans 13:8). Anyone who doesn’t love is dead (1 John 3:14).
Love wins on every level. It’s not emotionalism, it’s a huge statement rich with implications. It’s also the hardest thing to do because it’s self-sacrifice. This is why some can oppose it strongly and dismiss it as sentimental hog wash. Then, if you think about the prodigal son identifying himself with the hogs…well the Truth about love just doesn’t stop does it?
As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.- 1 Corinthians 13:8 ESV
These things are here by the Spirit, the Spirit speaking to people. But people are flawed and they do not fully understand everything, but they think, question, study and end up just having to trust that God is God and Jesus is His Son and He died for our sins so that we do not have to die in them. We can be and are forgiven. We are made holy, pure, righteous, and set right with God because of Jesus. God knows and understands us, even though we do not completely understand God. The prophecies, tongues, and knowledge that we have right now will pass away because there is more to come that we do not know. Everything we think we know is only in part.
If you think that the story of love is void of justice, then you’ve lost sight of Jesus on the cross. Wasn’t that the purpose of Jesus’ self-sacrifice? Jesus’ sacrifice has not lost it’s power.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part,… - 1 Corinthians 13:9 ESV
All of the knowledge, which is only a portion of the truth, can make people bloated with pride and end up tearing someone else down. The only thing that builds someone up is Love. In all that we think we know, we don’t know enough to tear someone else down.
…we know that ”all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something,he does not yet know as he ought to know.- 1 Corinthians 8:1-2 ESV
When Jesus returns, we will know everything. Everything we know right now, all the things we’ve tried to figure out and made determinations about, is only part of the story. If life were a movie, we’re only partially into the movie. We don’t know everything, but we know up until this point. At the end, we’ll know the whole story.
but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.- 1 Corinthians 13:10 ESV
The way you can understand this is to remember what your understanding of life was like when you were a child. Everything revolved around you, reality was filtered through your understanding. If it didn’t make sense, you would make sense of it based on what you knew up to that point. When you grew up, you learned more and what you thought you knew as a child didn’t exist anymore. For example, I thought that men gave birth to boys and women gave birth to girls. I got older and realized that women are the only ones who were able to have babies. Then, I thought that the mother had the upside down bowl of her bulging stomach cut off, set aside, the baby removed, and the upside down, deflated bowl sewn back on. I am older now and that knowledge I once was sure of has passed away. I knew part of the truth, but I didn’t know all of it. I made sense of things based on my understanding at the time. Anyone could have argued with me based on their understanding, but it all is reduced to a bunch of kids arguing with the tools of partial knowledge and the desire to be the one who is right.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.- 1 Corinthians 13:11 ESV
We don’t know everything right now. We’re still learning. When Jesus comes, we will know it all and be finished learning. God knows you completely, but you do not completely understand Him.
“Instead of claiming to know what God says, ask questions of one another, such as ‘How do we understand God in this?’ But don’t go around pretending to know it all, saying ‘God told me this…God told me that….’ I don’t want to hear it anymore…You can ask the prophets, ‘How did God answer you? What did he tell you?’ But don’t pretend that you know all the answers yourselves and talk like you know it all.” - God through Jeremiah 23:35-38
“We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist.”
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.- 1 Corinthians 13:12 ESV
So, right now, with our partial understanding and our incomplete knowledge, the only thing we can be absolutely certain of is that God is the only God. Jesus is His son, and through Him we have forgiveness, grace, mercy, love, and eternal life. Since we don’t know everything, and in order to not let pride destroy people you know nothing about, the only thing you can do to always be right is have faith in the finished work of Jesus. Let that be your hope for yourself and for others and use that faith and hope to love them. The greatest is Love.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. -1 Corinthians 13:13 ESV
Cultivate a life in common. Fight to get along, not to be right. Build each other up, don’t tear them down. We all are in this together. Do the best you can and leave your ego behind. If fear and self-rightiousness is motivating you, you’re going to be wrong. Let love be your guide. It’s the only way to get it right. Be patient. There is always doubt. Try giving the benefit instead of taking it away. Be kind to people. Love them. Stand up for them because not all the evidence is in yet.
So don’t get ahead of the Master and jump to conclusions with your judgments before all the evidence is in. When he comes, he will bring out in the open and place in evidence all kinds of things we never even dreamed of—inner motives and purposes and prayers. Only then will any one of us get to hear the “Well done!” of God. -1 Corinthians 4:5
“…the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”- 1 Timothy 4:3-4 ESV
I don’t understand the controversy surrounding the message of grace. It’s the best news I’ve heard in my life, but my eyes were opened to it when I was depraved. Is that what you must be to see the hope of grace?
Your understanding of light is relative to your understanding of dark. The worst thing a person can do is stand in the darkness while claiming and cursing the light simultaneously. It’s especially damaging when done with the language of those who understand the light because the ignorance is obvious. It’s the man who was scheduled for surgery, but shows up with a scalpel. Instead of being cut open and rebuilt, he wants to cut someone else.
Scripture is to be used to build up the faith, not dismantle it. Faith is built on the hope of the resurrection of Jesus. Anything that you can do in and of yourself to add to that is a subtraction to the absolute dependance on the only message that saves. Those who know this do not focus on religion. Religion is for those who don’t know that righteous and holy living are the effects of grace, not the license. Yet, you must be careful of the message that dismantles because those who live under the slavery of anything but Love will claim that they are empowered by God. …claiming and cursing light simultaneously.
For there are a lot of rebels out there, full of loose, confusing, and deceiving talk. Those who were brought up religious and ought to know better are the worst. They’ve got to be shut up. - Titus 1:10-11
‘The loose, confusing, and deceiving talk’ is the message that condemns others with no hope. The message that is confusing is the one that puts the responsibility for right-living on the person while still claiming that right-living is a gift from God. They talk out of both sides of their mouth, preaching salvation through faith to one group and slanderous judgment to another. Sin uses what is good as a mask to destroy people. The ‘good’ is God’s law, the destruction is evident when you face the impossibility of obeying it (Romans 7). That’s what sin does. It uses what is good to condemn. That’s what people do, they use the scriptures to cut others to pieces.
Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God.-2 Peter 1:3
Itchy ears want to hear the message that gives them an edge in a competition they should have no part in. Itchy ears are aching to hear a message that gives them hope in themselves and elevates them above those who they think are less moral. Itchy ears want to know how to live in assurance of salvation without having to rely on grace. Grace is viewed as weak.
The whole point of what we’re urging is simply love—love uncontaminated by self-interest and counterfeit faith, a life open to God. Those who fail to keep to this point soon wander off into cul-de-sacs of gossip. They set themselves up as experts on religious issues, but haven’t the remotest idea of what they’re holding forth with such imposing eloquence. It’s true that moral guidance and counsel need to be given, but the way you say it and to whom you say it are as important as what you say.- 1 Timothy 1:5-8
The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, byswerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions. Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully… - 1 Timothy 1:5-8 ESV (Same passage, different translation.)
If you are not a slave to grace, then you are a slave to law (1 Timothy 1:9. Romans 6:14). You cannot be both. …claiming and cursing light simultaneously. Asserting religion while having no idea what they’re talking about.
Anyone who actually knows Jesus knows that righteousness comes by faith. Grace not only frees a person from their sin, but it transforms them into someone who does not want to sin. This is not something you have to do, it is something that is done. If the message of grace and love seem to be a departure from doctrine, to water it down, you must question what doctrine you are trying to hold on to. The resurrection of Jesus is the most powerful message that you can send. It’s the message that hopeless hearts and tormented spirits are dying to hear.
If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving forcontroversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.- 1 Timothy 6:3-5 ESV (emphasis mine)
People will try to dispute the motives of anyone who teaches that grace and love, the results produced by Jesus, are the only way to live. They will say that the message seems too inclusive and sets too many people free. That’s the point. The fear is that if people are free from condemnation, then there is nothing keeping them from repeating their sinful behavior. These are the people who have not experienced the transformation power of grace. They fight about terminology, cause divisions, assassinate characters, live in suspicion, and cause fights. People who thrive on debates are corrupt and stripped of Truth (see the above verse for how I came to this conclusion.)
Run for your life from all this. Pursue a righteous life—a life of wonder, faith, love, steadiness, courtesy. Run hard and fast in the faith.-1 Timothy 6:11-12
Bend your ears toward love. Listen for the message that brings salvation, not condemnation. Decide to know nothing but Jesus and what He accomplished on the cross.
For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.- 1 Corinthians 2:2 ESV
Posted: March 10th, 2011 |
Filed under:God, life | Tags:love wins |
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“What will it take for Christians to stop putting each other down?” – A question asked on Yahoo Answers
“Christians don’t put each other down….we judge each other by our fruits….GOD’s word has been distorted by many and we have to preech the truth. obviously theirs’ gonna be ‘fights.’”-An answer provided by someone calling himself “Christian Dude”
You don’t have to look very hard to find that ‘Christian Dude’ is not alone in his sentiment. While I support the need to discern what people, preachers, or anybody else is saying about God and their use of scripture, my skin crawls when people start arguing, name calling, and completely writing someone off. What you put on the internet is there forever. Even if you delete it, there is still a cached picture of what you wrote. You are immortalizing the dirty emotional outburst. (What enemy would want the imperfection of Christians to forever stain them? Who hired the hit man?) There is no question that scripture is mishandled. However, when a blind warrior starts slinging that sword, nothing resembling unity is left in tact. Everybody loses when that happens.
There are people who feel like their spiritual calling is to find people they disagree with and relentlessly attack them. I don’t know what goes on inside their heart when they’re peeking in their neighbors windows, but I am grieved just thinking about the level of negativity that would go along with that. I can only imagine what motivates people to set aside their call to love, to cultivate a life in common, and to fight to stay together.
I have a serious concern to bring up with you, my friends, using the authority of Jesus, our Master. I’ll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common. I bring this up because some … brought a most disturbing report to my attention—that you’re fighting among yourselves! I’ll tell you exactly what I was told: You’re all picking sides… I ask you, “Has the Messiah been chopped up in little pieces so we can each have a relic all our own? -1 Corinthians 1:10-13
I can only assume that these people have been hurt by religious leaders somewhere along the line. It’s never a good idea to base your life’s purpose on resentment and anger.
I can’t even begin to relate how disturbing it is. I am so grieved at the bitterness and the level of excitement that delivers the bitterness. I was hurt by some professing Christians, too. However, I choose to counteract the hurt with Love. And, believe me, I get attacked for that, too. I just see it as an open wound that needs the healing balm of grace.
These people will talk about love and they’ll claim to believe in God’s grace, but they deliver it on a rock thrown through the window or screaming at you from a street corner.
“What am I to do with you, …? What do I make of you, …? Your declarations of love last no longer than morning mist and predawn dew.”-Hosea 6:4
The fight is against grace. People think that grace will make people think they don’t have to obey God’s commands. The fight is against the message of Love. They’re crying out for more judgement. They’re lovers of wrath. They want to see the wrath. God has wrath, but it’s not for who they think it is…
“That’s why I use prophets to shake you to attention, why my words cut you to the quick: To wake you up to my judgment blazing like light.” -Hosea 6:5
This is not a message of condemnation for those who live their lives with their eyes squinted in criticism. This is supposed to be a wake-up call. It is scripture telling the religious busy-bodies to find something else to do with their lives.
Steer clear of the barking dogs, those religious busybodies, all bark and no bite. All they’re interested in is appearances—knife-happy circumcisers, I call them. -Philippians 3:2
It’s also scripture telling you to stay away from people like that.
I used to be one of them. Some of you used to be one of them. Paul used to be one of them and that is what he’s talking about here (Please read it, it’s good!):
The real believers are the ones the Spirit of God leads to work away at this ministry, filling the air with Christ’s praise as we do it. We couldn’t carry this off by our own efforts, and we know it—even though we can list what many might think are impressive credentials. You know my pedigree: a legitimate birth, circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting the church; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law Book.
The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.-Philippians 3:3-9 (emphasis mine)
There are those who will discredit a point because they didn’t like the Bible translation. Speaking only for myself, I study in four different translations and read arguments from both sides of what I glean from my study. I look for where I could be wrong, continue to research the subject and then I write. I quote The Message because of its conversational style. It flows well. Anyone who wants can look up the scriptures and research for themselves. I don’t mind it because if they actually research, they’ll find all the other supporting evidence that I didn’t have room for. It’s a win-win. (No longer speaking only for myself:) However, people will spit on the whole thing and refuse to consider that their discomfort is actually God applying pressure to their chest to get them to see Him.
So, what does God want?
“I’m after love that lasts, not more religion. I want you to know God, not go to more prayer meetings.” -Hosea 6:6
I use harsh language when it comes to people who think they are pleasing God by tearing down other Christians. Especially Christians who have messed up. That is something I will fight for. However, God speaks much harsher than I.
You broke the covenant—just like Adam! You broke faith with me—ungrateful wretches! -Hosea 6:7
What is the covenant? The rainbow is a covenant. God’s promise of salvation is the covenant. Peace is the covenant.
Grace is the covenant.
“The covenant . . . is an act of grace on God’s part for reconciling man to himself, but man’s response should not be overlooked” -Smith’s Bible Dictionary (emphasis mine)
Don’t worry, God’s commands come in there, too. Anyone who, as Paul says, knows Jesus ‘firsthand’ knows this already. It’s not about keeping a list of rules. They just end up making you feel better as you check them off. A false sense of righteousness. It’s much more selfless than that.
When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along.-Romans 13:8
We are imperfect human beings. Even though we desperately want to get it right, we will still mess up. We will fail. Just don’t turn your back on the covenant and lose your faith in what Jesus did. There are so many ways to get this wrong, but one way to get it right.
You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.-Romans 13:10
Posted: February 27th, 2011 |
Filed under:life | Tags:love wins |
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Are Sunday’s hard for you? Do you stay home and ache or do you go and let them act like they don’t know you? If you sit by your kids, do you taint them? Are people nice to them when you’re not around?
Of all the places on earth for the broken and damaged, you would think that church would be the safe haven. But it doesn’t feel that way. A bar stool is better, nobody judges you there.
How long until they treat you like a person again?
Will somebody please post the steps on the wall so that they can start healing their relationships, healing their spirits, and get back to being that person who loves and is loved?
Grace makes it almost impossible for others to see you and say, “She’s working on it.” because grace is immediate. If there were steps to grace, you could have that to prove your value. When the mean people question you, you can say, “I’m almost done with step number one!” And they’ll curtly say, ‘Well, that’s good news.” If someone brings up your past sin, someone else can say, “Hey, now! She’s on step three. We need to start letting her sin go and work her back into our lives.” When it’s all said and done, you’ve earned your certificate and everything is back to life again, and someone tries to bring up your past, you can point to the certificate on the wall and say, “My sin is irrelevant. I completed all of the steps.” And they won’t be able to hold anything against you. The debt was paid, what more is there to say?
There aren’t steps, though. There is nothing posted on the wall except, maybe a symbol of Jesus on the Cross. ….
You can either deal with people and jump through their hoops, or you can trust God. Trust God in the face of animosity and the big horrible nothing. The big horrible nothing is when everyone acts like they don’t know you or see you. Your name is not mentioned, your letters are not answered, your words are not heard, and your eyes are not met.
Storm Battered,
I’m promising now no more anger, no more dressing you down. For even if the mountains walk away and the hills fall to pieces, my love won’t walk away from you.-Isaiah 54:9-10
Get up, do what you have to do and know that He is with you. Continue with life. Listen to Him, not them. Forget about everybody else, this is the Father’s house, not theirs.
If you are easily offended, then please don’t watch this video. Pain makes people go to some dark, dark places and if you like butterflies and rainbows 24/7, then you will not like this video. I have been to those dark places and am not afraid of them. I bring them into the light because seeing them in the light takes some of the power away from it.
Sin is self-realization. When Adam and Eve chose to disobey God for the first time, their response was to cover themselves. They were aware of themselves for the first time and felt over exposed.
God called to the Man: “Where are you?”
He said, “I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. And I hid.”
God said, “Who told you you were naked? Did you eat from that tree I told you not to eat from?”-Genesis 3:9-11
Self-awareness is evidence of sin. You can be self-aware by following a set of rules for moral living and you can be self-aware by disregarding morality to get what you want. They both set the person up for personal gain.
As a human being, it’s impossible to not be aware of yourself. Even if you’re a people pleaser you do it to get acceptance and approval from others. We inherited our awareness from Adam and with that knowledge comes the inclination to behave selfishly.
The point is, we are all incapable of avoiding sin. Especially when you consider that the act of trying to avoid sin is sin.
What one man did changed everything, what another man did changed it back. What Jesus did cancelled what Adam did.
Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it.-Romans 5:18
Being ‘set free from sin’ means exactly that. It doesn’t mean that you won’t sin, it means that you are no longer under it’s command, tyranny or rule.
Sin is in command when you’re either trying to avoid it or when you’re giving in to it. It demands your attention either way. If you understand that sin has been taken care of, then you don’t need to be afraid of it anymore.
You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did. That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives.-Romans 11:12
Sin tyrannizes us with fear. It’s a fear that something besides God has the power to decide your fate. God does not contradict Himself. If the law requires penance, then the penance must be paid. He doesn’t let people off the hook without suffering a loss Himself. He suffered the end-all of losses and now the law is complete. The law is no longer out for blood. It’s satisfied.
We wouldn’t have sin without having the law. You wouldn’t know you were doing something wrong if you didn’t know what ‘right’ was. Sin depends on the law for power. If the law no longer has loose ends and ‘what if’s', then the sin is powerless, too. Since neither have the ability to be ‘gods’, then you choose either for what you can get out of it. You choose ‘self.’
The law and sin are no longer the rulers. They are the old regime. They’re the ‘old way.’
Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God. -Romans 6:14
Since you no longer have to be afraid of messing up, then you can focus all of your time on getting in on what God is doing. You are free to forget about getting it right. If you use your new found freedom to serve your own agenda then you’re choosing yourself again. When you choose selfishness, you lose your freedom.
It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows.-Galatians 5:13
You are Christ’s body—that’s who you are! You must never forget this.-1 Corinthians 12:27
It’s the little things that get me. The subtle hints of God peeking through the eyes of humanity. The faint whisper of God using someone else’s face to show you His smile.
At first glance, God is entirely spiritual and humans are both spiritual and physical. But God does have a physical body. Us.
I read a story about someone who was sitting in an airport waiting out her layover when a flight attendant wheeled a shaggy old man into the waiting area. The sight of him got the attention of several people. He was disheveled, unshaven and sat with his ratty hair shielding his face as he stared at his shoes.
The woman got the tug in her heart and tried to dismiss it, but couldn’t. She knew that God wanted her to brush his hair.
Under the curious eyes of everyone around, she walked over to him and asked if she could brush his hair. He looked up at her and nodded. As she was brushing, she could hear that he was crying and leaned down to ask him if he was okay. He nodded and explained that he and his wife had been sick. They were in separate facilities and he was on his way to see her for the first time in two months. He knew he looked terrible because he hadn’t been able to take care of himself like he usually did. He was sitting there feeling embarrassed by his appearance and heartbroken that he couldn’t look better for his bride. He was sitting in the waiting room wishing that he could just brush his hair.
When God says He wants you to give your life to him, it doesn’t stop at your focus and it doesn’t aim for your happiness. ‘You’ have to be taken out of the equation entirely. How else is He going to smile at someone, look in someone’s eyes, or brush His child’s hair?
I think sometimes the Body of Christ can be so focused on practicing their version of religion that they forget that the most important thing the physical body of Christ did was after he lived a life of loving the unloveable, hanging out with sinners and earning a shady reputation within the religious community, he gave his body up for the sake of everyone else. We should be, as the Body of Christ now, what the body of Christ was when only one man ran it.
Posted: July 14th, 2009 |
Filed under:God, life | Tags:love wins |
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As Christians, we have developed this sense of entitlement. We think that if God had His way, we would have an easier time of things.
God’s goal is to get you to a place where you know Him. He wants to be seen. What if the only way for you to know Him is in your discomfort? It’s possible that we are denying the process by avoiding the pain.
Instead, we should enter it and be cleansed from any sense of entitlement. We tell Him that He can do anything He wants with us, but do you realize that He can do anything He wants with us? When it hurts do you talk back? Do you rebuke it?
What life are you trying to hold on to here? Your ‘here and now’ life or your spiritual life?
Don’t be so shortsighted that you are one of those who thinks they’ve got it all figured out, but are so clueless to the real agenda of God. Those people reject His movement within them as they try to maintain control of all the pretty aspects of their ‘here and now’ existence.
Learn to think like Jesus.
Think of your sufferings as a weaning from that old sinful habit of always expecting to get your own way. Then you’ll be able to live out your days free to pursue what God wants instead of being tyrannized by what you want. 1 Peter 4:2
We can want pure and noble things for our lives, but what if your physical comfort is a detriment to your spiritual growth? What would you prefer?
I’ve prayed for broken things to get fixed, but as I pray I am very aware that maybe it’s broken because it needs to be broken. Who says I should never be the owner of something broken?
We think of those people who experience a miracle in their lives and think that if we had that level of faith, we’d have a miracle, too. The miracle is whatever illuminates God for us. Maybe those people don’t feel entitled and so God showed His presence by giving them something tangible. It’s personal, you let go and you find your needs met. You hold on and you sacrifice your spiritual life.
If we think that God only wants peace for us, then we will be tyrants of war trying to maintain peace. What if God wants you to be free of looking after yourself?
He tells us to love as if our lives depended on it. Well, what if our lives actually depended on it? Are we losing our lives because we’re trying to protect it?
It depends on what you call your ‘life’.
God knows that life is your spirit. When He gives life, it’s not through the birth pains of your mother. It’s through the birth pains of His Son. What ‘life’ is your real life? We get them tangled up, we use our physical eyes and our physical awareness to breath life into an existence we’re repeatedly told to die to.
We see life, in our finite minds, as our finite lives. We’re never supposed to give the time of day to our mortal existence because it’s destined for death. We all die, we all leave things behind. Money, flowers, lovers, children…. If you agree with that, then it’s easy to see that what we take with us beyond death is the only thing we’re supposed to breath life into.
When a body dies, we have a responsibility to take care of that body and give it a proper burial. This takes time and there is a procedure to be followed. Our physical lives are to be addressed. We have responsibilities to give our physical lives the same attention that we do a body to be prepared for burial. You assume responsibility, but you don’t rely on it for life giving information. It just speaks a dead language and smells of death. Dress it properly, but know that the clothing will rot under the watchful eye of no one.
If you set up your life to maintain control, then you lose your spiritual life.
If the Bible is true, then there are many things we don’t understand. There is a perspective that we don’t quite have. So when the Bible says to do something as if your life depended on it, it’s probably best to just do it. And we now know, that the ‘life’ it’s talking about is not the one that will be buried one day.
Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. – 1 Peter 4:8
Forgiveness is such a mysterious thing. I don’t know how to tell you the way to do it and make it stick. I can tell you what it does, but I can’t tell you how to make it real.
We are weak. We fall in our own traps and we hold on to pain like it has the power to heal. If we let go of the pain, how do we know it won’t come back and tear us apart? If we forgive, are we saying that everything is okay? Are we saying that we don’t hurt anymore?
When I ask Jesus for forgiveness, He does it immediately. Humanity is different. Flesh scars and it’s so much harder for us to see the burn marks and not hold the arsonist responsible.
The truth is, whether you forgive or not, the fuel was still spilled and the match was still lit. Your body is still scarred and the evidence is still there. The only thing that can change is the one who is scarred and the one who has the smell of sulfur on his fingers.
You are justified in holding the sinner responsible for their actions. You are understood when you are angry. But what if you defy human nature and put the scriptures to the test? What if you take the hit? What if you offer more than what was stolen?
The Bible says that love covers a multitude of sins, but how does that play out in real life? Love has the power to transform. Love tells the sinner that his spirit is unblemished. With that security, he is able to get the matters of his flesh in order simply because he has hope. Love gives birth to hope and hope enables change. Change is the goal, after all.
The Bible says that God is Love. In the previous paragraph, replace the word ‘love’ with the word ‘God’ and try to understand the power of love with that direct parallel.
God covers a multitude of sins. God has the power to transform. God tells the sinner that his spirit is unblemished. God breathes hope.
Hope makes you push forward.
Pushing forward helps you break through.
The man has a breakthrough and, with the lessons he learned in his pocket, he gets back to life under the freedom of grace that love provided. The freedom of a fresh start that Jesus made possible.
