Man had an abundance of spiritual death. It reigned over him. It was his despotic master. All the sins and crimes and wars have grown out of that awful thing called spiritual death. It was the very nature of Satan.
Romans 5:12–21 is God’s commentary on it. It is called a law of sin and of death. (See Romans 8:2–3.) Even the Ten Commandments are called the law of sin. This law of sin wrought in the human family.
John 10:10: “I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.”
Eternal life is the nature of God, and spiritual death is the nature of Satan.
2 Peter 1:4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
There is a combat between life and death, between God’s nature and Satan’s nature in man. Just as spiritual death swallowed the human race, so now God is going to give eternal life in such an abundance that it will swallow up death.
2 Corinthians 5:4: “For indeed we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed, but that we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life.” This word “life” is zoe. Way translates it “drowned in a sea of Life,” showing the abundance of life.
There is in the world today an abundance of sickness. There is the very fullness of Satan. It is so apparent everywhere. Men are filled with the devil.
A new order is coming, however. Man is to be filled with God, filled with His nature, His life, His Being—to be like Him, swayed by Him, ruled by Him.
THE LOVE NATURE
God is love.
1 John 4:8 shows us that man is to be filled with agape, the new kind of love. It has never been taught. The church has never majored it in its teachings or creeds.
Can you conceive of a body of believers filled with the life and nature of God?
We understand Colossians 2:9–10: “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in him ye are made full [or complete], who is the head of all principality and power.”
We are made full of the nature of God, full of God. That explains John 1:16: “For of his fulness we all received, and grace for grace.”
Of His abundant nature, abundant life, have we all received. That means that we have received of His love life.
1 John 4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
We abide, live in our daily walk, in the life and nature of God. The nature of God dominates us, rules us. We live in the realm of love. The love nature dominates our lives just as Jesus in His earth walk lived in the realm of love. (See 1 John 4:17–18.)
Now, we have been “delivered…out of the power of darkness, and translated…into the kingdom of the Son of his love” (Colossians 1:13).
That love nature of God has swallowed up, dominated us so that we act like lovers, we speak like lovers, and our course of conduct is governed by this nature of God, this new nature given to men.
Can you visualize a man living in God, walking in God? Just as you walk in the early morning’s dense and heavy fog, which saturates your clothes and drips from your hat, you are walking in God until you are saturated with love, until love drips out of your words. Your entire being is love-saturated.
We can understand 1 John 4:6: “We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he who is not of God heareth us not. By this we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.”
We are love and he who knows love will listen to us. You see, “love is of God; and everyone that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God” (1 John 4:7).
The test of the new birth is the love life. How beautiful it would be if we were actually swallowed up of love. That is what it means—swallowed up of life, and life is love.
It would solve the home problem, wouldn’t it? There would be no quarreling or bitterness. What a heavenly atmosphere the children would grow up in; they would never hear an unkind word or a bitter criticism.
You can read 1 John 5:13: “These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God.” You could read it this way, “We know that we have received the nature of God, this love life. We know that we are in the love family. The abundance of His life dominates us. We are ruled by the abundance of God.”
From Hebrews 11:1–3 we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. Then God is not only a love God, but He is a faith God. We have in us this faith, God’s nature, so that faith becomes an unconscious fact in our lives, just as it was in Jesus’s life.
Jesus had no consciousness of the need or lack of faith. He had no consciousness of the need or lack of love. He lived in the realm of life. He had this life in abundance. He had love and faith in abundance.
That throws new light upon that sentences in James 1:22: “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves.”
“BE YE DOERS”
The Word is love expressed. Love has spoken, and we have a record of it.
I become a doer of the Word, then I become a doer of love. I become a doer of faith. I become a doer of this abundant life that is in me. I am living it, letting it loose in me. It lives in me and rules me.
I am not receiving myself now with mere empty profession because I assent to a creed or the doctrines of a church. This means very little to the world and to the Father. But now that Word has become a part of my very being. It is building into me the love nature of the Father.
You remember what Jesus said in Matthew 7:24: “Everyone therefore that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built his house upon the rock.”
And then He contrasts it with the foolish man in the twenty-sixth verse who didn’t do the Word and built his house upon the sand.
It is the doer of love, the doer of faith, who is the doer of the Word.
You remember 1 John 2:29. It is a staggering verse: “If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that everyone also that doeth righteousness is begotten of him.”
What is righteousness? Why, it is acting in the realm of love. It is doing love as Jesus did love. Love gives us a holy boldness as it is mentioned in 1 John 4:18: “There is no fear in love: but perfect love casteth out fear.”
LOVE MAKES US MASTERS
Love lets us into the throne room in the very presence of the Father.
Hebrews 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Love makes us masters over disease and over lack, weakness, and failure. Love makes us conquerors.
Letting love loose in me is letting God loose in me, for God is love.
Ephesians 3:19 is a thrilling Scripture in this connection: “And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.” Knowledge here is sense knowledge. This Christ love is the Father’s love. It is the abundance of God unveiled in Christ Jesus.
The Scripture says, in essence, “That we may know” this love; that is, speaking it, entering into it. We are also to be filled unto all the fullness of God. (See 2 John 3:14–21.)
That belongs to us, is our inheritance. That is one of the things that Ephesians 1:3 brings to us. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.”
How it thrills the heart! He has blessed us with the fullness of Himself. As the air is saturated with moisture, so your spirit and body are saturated with God. You have received the gift of grace, which means the unveiling of the Father’s very purpose in you in such abundance that people are affected by what you say.
You are rooted and grounded in love. Men are affected by it; selfishness shrinks and shrivels in the presence of this love life in you.
You are the living Ephesians 4:13: “Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”
This is the substance of God. This is the abundance of life. This is being rooted and grounded in the love life, the love nature of the Father Himself.
This throws light on Ephesians 4:7: “But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ.”
This abundant life has been given us according to the measure of the grace of God unveiled in Jesus.
Romans 15:1–2 now becomes intelligible to us: “We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good, unto edifying.”
Then He illustrates it, “For Christ also pleased not himself” (verse 3).
The new self that has come into us is a Jesus-self, a love-self. It is an eternal life-self, a God-ruled, God-dominated self.
We are taking over the overload of men around us. We are taking Jesus’s place in the earth. (See Ephesians 6:2.) You are bearing men’s infirmities instead of finding fault with them and criticizing them.
Jesus is thrilled by your conduct toward men, and I can hear Him whisper, “Father, aren’t we glad that we made the sacrifice? See how they are responding to your love nature and your love call.”
How wonderfully Ephesians 5:18–19 is fulfilled in this life: “And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit [be filled in your recreated spirit with this love nature]; speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord.”
Your whole being is swinging out of the orbit of self-seeking into worship and praise and adoration.
Then, verses 20–21 become a reality: “Giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.”
Now we move up into the realm into which we have been translated, the kingdom of the Son of His love. (See Colossians 1:13.) We are living in that new realm.
BRANCHES OF THE VINE
Men recognize us as branches of the Vine, and they say, “Notice the wonderful fruitage, the great clusters of ripened fruit that are in the lives of these men and women.” (See John 15:5.)
It is love fruit. It is the fruit of the abundant life. The master has gained the ascendancy now. Jesus is crowned as Lord of the heart just as we get it in 1 Peter 3:15: “But sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord.” Sanctify means to set apart. Then we read it, “But set apart Christ as Lord in your hearts.”
His Lordship is the Lordship of love.
Colossians 2:6–7 makes it even more manifest: “Therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and builded up in him, and established in your faith, even as ye were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”
Here is full growth. Here is the abundant life taking us over, crowning Jesus as the very Lord of our being so that His heart is filled with joy over us.
1 Corinthians 12:24: “But God tempered the body together, giving more abundant honor to that part which lacked.”
Here is a demonstration of love. The Father knew there would be some members of the body who would never receive any special honor and glory from men, so He glorifies them Himself, “that there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one-member suffereth, all the members suffer with it; or one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it” (verses 25–26).
This is where love has actually gained the ascendancy. First Corinthians 10:24 has become a reality: “Let no man seek his own, but each his neighbor’s good.”
In verse 33, Paul says, “Even as I also please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of the many, that they may be saved.”
“Be ye imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).
Here is love in practicable, everyday life. Here is living the Word, letting it dwell in us richly. (See Colossians 3:16.)
Until the Word does live in us richly, in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in spiritual songs and psalms and hymns, teaching and admonishing one another in the Lord, we will not glorify Him.
Now our words are love-filled. The abundance of life flows from them. Our bodies are filled with life. Disease and sickness are driven out.
The joy of the Lord fills us. This is life abundant. This is God actually being let loose in us.
HOW MUCH DO YOU REMEMBER?
- Between what two natures is there combat?
- What is God’s nature? Satan’s nature?
- In 2 Corinthians 5:4, what is the meaning of “life”?
- How do we live if we possess the life and nature of God?
- What does 1 John 4:8 show us?
- What are the meanings of Ephesians 3:19 and 4:13?
- What is meant by “abundant life”?
- What is the fruit of this life?
- When will we practice 1 Corinthians 10:24?
- When we are filled with abundant life, what happens to disease and sickness?