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7.1 What is the LOVE of God?
What is the love of God?
“But eagerly desire the greater gifts. And now I will show you the most excellent way.”
“But the greatest of these is love.”
Do we have any idea of the marvellous love of God?
The world is drowned in need, torn by sin and the (works of the) powers of the darkness, the demons. Alienated from the glory of God, far from God, in the power of satan.
But God loves the world with a never-
To believe in Him? Yes, also the demons belief that God is one and they shake. They, that live in complete darkness, shake with fear for the perfect Light!
When you believe in Him, you accept everything that He promises to you! His forgiveness of guilt, his Plan with you and his Spirit, which He wants to give to you to reach his purpose with you.
God gave His all.He wants to reach men again, to meet men again, but now in His (spiritual) paradise. Paul has heard ‘unspeakable words’ there and you are allowed to eat from the Tree of Life (= to be party to the fruit of the Spirit) when you conquer/overcome! (see 2 Corinthians 12:4 and Revelation 2:7).
Those unspeakable words are undoubtedly also about the way of the realization of the Plan of God in this era. And when you have party to the fruit of the Spirit, you take up the characteristics of Jesus Christ in yourself. Through this you will become uniform with Him! This is the result of God’s Plan!
Out of his overwhelming goodness and love God looks for the possibility, for men to be able to live out of his, Gods, wealth. Again: his love is eternally great. We just can’t imagine, what eternally means! Because that is a dimension that is outside the world of our senses.
God makes way for us in love to come out of the deadlock of darkness again! To also come out of the sensorial restrictions of our earthly existence. We have become citizens of heaven! Haven’t we?
In Jesus we see the love of God getting stature and form in full-
The Father’s assignment to Jesus was to make people free and healthy, for the characteristics of his Kingdom to be fully experienced by them: peace, happiness, justice and power.
God wants to plant this love in the hearts and lives of his followers. They (we) will adopt Jesus task. We will therefore become revealed as sons of God, to whom the creation ‘looks out for with yearning’.
Fata Morgana? Illusion?
No, metamorphosis! Complete transformation!
After all, in the same way an earthly committed caterpillar changes into a butterfly, which can move freely in the air, so can we also.
Before we were living in connection with God and we had received his Spirit we had an existence that was earthly focused: study, job, to marry, to receive and raise children, hobbies, car, boat, holidays, etc. And no few on an eternal existence!
By us getting to know the Word of God more profoundly and through (allowing) to let the love and the gifts of his Spirit develop in us, we start to think differently, we start to think from the spiritual world. We start to see our eternal purpose and our eternal perspective and our eternal possibilities there indeed!
The followers of Jesus may and can live out of the fullness of God.
That is the reason why God pours out his love in them. Romans 5:5 – “And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” We now have the Godly love itself living in us!
Do we really grasp that?
Now how is this love of God central in our lives? We see that mainly in 1 Corinthians 13.
1. Let’s think about this well in advance, this part is standing between the chapters 12 and 14. Very remarkable! It is not just standing somewhere in the Bible, no, it is standing hand in hand with the chapters 12 and 14. What a wisdom of God! In 1 Corinthians 13 it is then also about the love of God in relation to the expressions of the Spirit, or about the expressions of the Spirit, intercalated (or surrounded by) in God’s love. How would Jesus’ students be able to show God’s love in this world opposite of the hate of the powers of the darkness, different than in connection with the revelations from God through the Holy Spirit? Love without the power to apply her consists out of meaningless statements and power without love is useless effort.
2. The love, described here, is not human love – love from human to human in natural sense. It is not affection or acting sweet. It is indeed: the saving and liberating, healing and sanctifying love of God. Therefore this love will also severely clash with the powers of sin and the destructive powers of the darkness. This love is on the other side full of pity and compassion for men, who has been captured in the traps of darkness and wants to be set free (= set at liberty) from this.
3. Love is not the substitute of the expressions, the gifts. Love is basic to this and the carrying capacity!
4. Concerning the expressions of the Spirit it is about wellbeing. So called truth without love is like a law: cold, harsh, and without compassion. The Truth out of the love of God creates life and makes distinction in men between light and darkness.
5. In 1 Corinthians 12:31 Paul ends with the following words: “But eagerly desire the greater gifts. And now I will show you the most excellent way.” So Paul really says: ‘And I will show you a more excellent way’. This ‘more excellent way’ is not standing opposite of ‘eagerly desiring for bigger gifts of mercy’. She is indeed the striving after these expressions out of the motivation of love (14:1). Until that time the Corinthians had mainly their own interest (the construction of their own faith, but also their own status and honour) in mind. When they are motivated by love, they will indeed eagerly desire for those gifts to serve and construct the Church (in and with love).
Paul made clear how the expressions of the Spirit stand in relation to love and how love in her turn gives meaning and significance to the expressions.
Therefore he says: “Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts” (1Corinthians 14:1).
This is indeed the ‘more excellent’ way!
This is indeed the way that leads even higher up!
So, the way that leads higher up consists of:
• the expressions, the gifts, practised in love;
• love as motive for the expressions, the gifts.
6. Be aware: the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5 and Acts 2:33).
7. There is a clear distinction between the love of God (agapè) and loving in a human way (fileoo) and the brotherly love (filadelfia).
8. At last a couple of footnotes/bottom notes with 1 Corinthians 13:
• the spiritual languages are not being disqualified, but the person, that speaks, when he does this without love! The languages of people and also those of angels will then have no effect for him! He is: hollow and empty – resounding (copper) – clanging (cymbal).
• even if I would be the number one in excelling in prophesying, in knowledge, in faith, in power, that I would even be able to move mountains (= the picture of the powers of the darkness), without love that also means ‘nothing’!
• but even so: even if I would lean over backwards in all kinds of humanitarian/philanthropic actions or sacrifice myself totally, it would be of no benefit at all, without the love of God! Clear language, isn’t it? Not the love of God instead of – but the God’s love as a foundation of!
9. Do you really want to live according to the Bible and be a serious, faithful student of Jesus?
• follow the way of love and also
• eagerly desire for the expressions, gifts of the Spirit.
Do the one action... excellent… but then also do the other action!
Together, this leads higher up!
The way of the expressions and the fruit of the Spirit, in the love of God, leads ‘up’ to all
Ephesians 3:18 and 19: “…may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
…fullness…
Or as it says in Today’s English Version: “so that you, together with all God’s people, may have the power to understand how broad and long, how high and deep, is Christ’s love. Yes, may you come to know his love – although it can never be fully known – and so be completely filled with the very nature of God.”
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