How Sweet, How Hight, How Rich is Your Love?

How Sweet, How High, How Rich is Your Love?

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8Love never fails.

               When we look over God’s definition of Love, how much of us do we see there?  It is not to condemn us, but to show us the way up is the way down.  The way down is in humility and the esteeming of others above ourselves.  How many of us justify our actions and responses to others based on their behavior towards us?  True love of God is not a response; it is an action to respond unselfishly and unconditionally to another.  It truly must be God’s love in us and through us that brings some into the Kingdom.  Even ones we have loved and cared about may have brought us such heartache, disappointment and hurt, that in the natural, it is impossible for us to love them anymore.  We want to wash our hands and be done with them.  Yet in the back of our spirit arises that scripture from Romans 5:8 that tells us, “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  If our God were not a God of tremendous and intense love then surely there would be no human race left.  God would have given up on us long ago and gone with a different plan.  How can a God love us so much that He would be willing to sacrifice His own Son to redeem us from our sin and willful disobedience so that we might return and have fellowship again with Him?  Who can comprehend such a love?  He doesn’t want us just to comprehend it, but to put it into practice in our own lives.  The love of God, that “agape” love, is not an attribute of the natural man, but it is the fruit of His Sprit that He longs to see produced in us.  What is flowing out of our lives today, mercy or judgement, longsuffering or impatience, hope and perseverance or giving up?  Sometimes you have to put some people away from you to avoid being injured or destroyed yourself, but never stop loving them, praying for them, forgiving them and believing for them.  It is that love of Christ in you that covers them with mercy and grace, and extends God’s love to them even though they may fully reject Him. 

               God is wanting to work a greater measure of His love in us than most of us have ever known before, but the exchange for that love happens at the cross.  In order to love with His love we must die His death.  It is a laying down of our life for others, not because they deserve it, but because we are the extension of God’s love toward them and for them.  Jesus tells us in John 15:13, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”  After the death and resurrection of Christ, His disciples laid hold of this revelation and their mission became the same as the Master’s, to lay down their lives so that others may know Him, whatever the cost. 

               Do we have that love in us that goes beyond our prejudices that we so often deny, that extends past our comforts and pleasures, that goes even deeper than our limitations can take us?  Only Christ in us can produce that depth and measure of love, but He is taking us deeper than we ever wanted to go and yet at the same time we are going higher than we have ever been before.  The way up is the way down and the highest heaven is often reached through the lowest hell.  Only the love of God in us can take us and preserve us through the extremes of His love. It will never be found in the comforts of our complacency, it can only be found as we get caught up in the radical love of God.  His love will sound our depths, but it will also expand our borders to be what we never thought we could be capable of being.  How deep is the Love of God in us today?  How deep, how wide and how high are you willing to go?

               “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what [is] the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.” (Ephesians 3:17-19)

Blessings,

#kent