“I am bankrupt without love,” The Message translation states in 1 Corinthians 13. “If I do not have love, I gain nothing,” the ESV says. But what will love profit me if I obey God’s directive to “follow after charity” (KJV) or “eagerly pursue and seek to acquire [this] love [make it (my) aim, (my) great quest]?” (AMPC)

Today I inquired of THE textbook on love, the Holy Bible, seeking increase to my life in God in the way of walking out agape love, the fruit that comes from remaining vitally united to the Vine, the Lord. As I have been drawing closer to Yeshua’s heart, I am ever experiencing a deeper connection to Him and revelatory insights into Holy Writ.

Let me share some verses on love in Matthew 5 from the JB Phillips translation. First, though, let’s read from 1 Corinthians 13:1-3:

If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal. If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all. If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing. 

Clearly, allowing God’s agape love to flow from within our hearts out to others is of paramount importance to God. Clearly, love is the sine qua non for us.

Matthew 5:43-45 takes us much higher than the Old Testament does. We are not to exhibit merely “love your neighbor” and “hate your enemy.” We are to have God’s very heart for all humans. God loves the whole world. He came to buy back everyone from slavery to sin, as John 3:16-17 makes plain.

For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life. For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge (to reject, to condemn, to pass sentence on) the world, but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him.

It’s essential to have the truth of God’s love for every image-bearer on earth established in our breasts, as embracing the reality of His present love and being moved by His demonstration of it on the cross leads to a “yes” in us as far as becoming living expressions of the life of Christ the Messiah who indwells us at the new birth. (See John 3.) When our minds are renewed to the love of God for the world, we are positioned as vessels of God, containers of Christ, who will pour ourselves out like drink offerings as Paul puts it in Phil. 2:17. Paul’s secret was that he was able to love by way of “the affections of Jesus.” (Phil. 1:8)

Another rich passage pertaining to God’s love is Eph. 2:4-5:

But God-so rich is He in His mercy! Because of and in order to satisfy the great and wonderful and intense love with which He loved us, Even when we were dead (slain) by [our own] shortcomings and trespasses, He made us alive together in fellowship and in union with Christ; [He gave us the very life of Christ Himself, the same new life with which He quickened Him, for] it is by grace (His favor and mercy which you did not deserve) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ’s salvation).

Re: love, Yeshua teaches, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons of your Heavenly Father. For He makes the sun rise upon evil men as well as good, and He sends the rain upon honest and dishonest men alike.” Here in Matthew 5, the Lord is speaking about operating as new creation humans—humans who walk after the Pattern Son and not after Adam—men who function as offspring of God.

Yeshua adds in Matthew 5:46-48, “For if you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even tax collectors do that! And if you exchange greetings only with your own circle, are you doing anything exceptional? Even pagans do that much. No, you are to be perfect, like your Heavenly Father.” We see that loving like God loves is a key to fulfilling one’s destiny as a son and the key to recreation in the image of God or perfection. How often, though, do we read Yeshua’s words but fail to realize the union to the Vine that makes loving like God loves doable? It really is true, in our own soul strength, we can do nothing. Our failure to love as God loves is a failure to let the Lord live through us.

Love for enemies and love for those outside our circle takes a radical dependence on the Holy Spirit. Every negative thought must be taken captive and replaced with the Word. Said another way, we must so ingest the Word that our souls become one with it. Sons are those led by the Spirit Romans 8:14 reveals. And inheritance or gain of the riches of Christ comes to sons. The gaining of Christ is the prize to be possessed.

The Lord as the Son of God always walked out not His will, but the Father’s will all the way to the cross. Ongoing, the three-Person Godhead functions as one. The Lord is grace in us to let go of living for self and “bow the knee to the Father.” (Eph. 3:14) With minds stayed on Yeshua, we can go forward completely submitted to what the Father is saying and doing in the same way Yeshua walked fully submitted to the Father. We must stay in dependence as branches to our source Vine. And, we must recover the truth that we have a cross before us, too. By revelation, we know we were placed in a union with Yeshua’s death and resurrection; we were baptized into His death and raised to new life. This real but mystical co-death on the cross in Christ is revealed in Romans; we have continual access by faith to the instrument of the cross for our victory over sin and self. This is called dying to live. [See the little gem of a book by Jessie Penn Lewis titled Dying to Live.]

Grace enables us to deny our selves and take up the cross or deny the reign of our soul lives (the independent life of our minds, wills, and emotions vs. the yielded life of our souls to the Lord within, thereby expressing Christ out through us) having rule over us so we can walk by our regenerated spirit in oneness with the Indwelling Christ. (See 1 Cor. 6:17.) Ours is to be a life lived subject to the cross—a life lived with our souls submitted to our spirits so as to release the pleasureful, delicious, fulfilling Spirit. Again, Yeshua is the Pattern Son, and Paul is our model. The cross gains us deliverance from selfish unlove which is the antithesis of life. As we die to self via the cross and the co-crucifixion revealed to Paul, we know union with the risen Lord and experience the resurrection life side of the cross. We flow in supernatural, new creation life.

May we ever hold before us that God is love. The source of love is our fellowship of union with God. But it’s also as we die to self as noted and act in love that we fully gain Christ. And what great gain that we can enter into knowing Him in ever greater intimacy as we flow in His love. And the ultimate gain or profit is to know Him. We note 1 John 4:8: “He who does not love has not become acquainted with God [does not and never did know Him], for God is love.” 

Postscript

Remember, it’s the Lord within us who loves through us as we yield to His teachings in the Gospels and the Letters and the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Again, let’s take in the words that define agape love from 1 Corinthians 13:

This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience—it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance. Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen. (JB PHILLIPS)

Walking out love, i.e. expressing the very nature of God, never fails.

Recommended Reading

The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee

Dying to Live by Jessie Penn Lewis

The Cross of Calvary by Jessie Penn Lewis

Abiding in Love: Experiencing the Heart of God study notes IHOPKC; Available through emailing me at katherinefbell@me.com. 

Abide in Christ by Andrew Murray

Learning to Love by David Alsobrook

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Blessings in return—