Jesus brought a new kind of love into the world, a love that is pure, holy and divine.
The thing people have called love has been nothing more than sexual attraction. Hardly any higher than that which is seen in the animal world.
God is love and so the new birth is the impartation of this nature of the Father. We become children of love, born into a love family.
Romans 5:5 says, “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”-it is absorbed into our spirit and begins to take over, our entire being.
This love nature is the law of the New Creation.
John 13: 34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
It is the mark of the Spirit that differentiates us from the world.
Because of this kind of love Paul was able to say, “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus” (Galatians 6:17). He meant the scars and wounds that had been given to him through persecutions.
When we receive Jesus as Lord, we receive a measure this love that we need to practice, develop and cultivate, so that it controls us.
This love nature must be developed as you develop your faith life.
It must be fed by the Word of God; it must express itself in action. “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:4)
This love is a fruit of our spirit in union with God. Your spirit hunger and your spirit needs are more important than your mental or your physical needs.
Your spirit must have the privilege of meditation in the Word. You must learn to feed upon it just as Jeremiah did: “Thy words were found, and I did eat them” (Jeremiah 15:16).
We feed and exercise this new kind of love by practicing it, you have a world full of people to practice on. The harder the person, the stronger the love. This kind of exercise makes it strong just as exercise makes your body strong.
Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,” gaining the ascendancy over all your faculties.
This love life makes you gentle, Jesus-like. It makes you strong and vigorous like the Master. It makes you absolutely fearless in your walk with the Lord.
We do not want to keep this love locked up inside us in prison.
We must no longer do this. Instead of letting love have its perfect way and control, we have limited it.
We have forgotten that love is what makes a person a success in life. Love never fails.
It will lead a person out of selfishness, out of weakness and failure, and into the very strength and ability of Jesus Christ.
There is no force in the world that it cannot dominate.
It makes us needed. It makes us a blessing. It enables us to take Jesus’s place in this world.
This is our primary destiny, let us pursue it, and go beyond the limit. Roger Bannister was the first person to break the four-minute mile barrier, running it in 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds on May 6, 1954. They used to say it could not be humanly done, but we are more than human.
Some have neglected it, acting as though they did not have it; utterly ignoring its very existence, and yet they want the Father’s help in time of need.
Love must be enthroned in the heart. It must govern the life. As love takes over the kingdom of God advances in the earth.
2 Corinthians 5:14–15 becomes a living reality in our life:
“For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf”.
Paul’s friends had challenged him. They said he was beside himself, but the love of Christ had so set him on fire that he was burning up. His very being was saturated with the passion that drove Jesus to the cross.
Now you can understand 1 Corinthians 10:24: “Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth.”
When love burns so that it is no longer red hot but white, every bit of selfishness is burned up.
No longer shall selfishness usurp any part in the government of this New Creation.
Selfishness is as deadly as poison.
It is poison to our spirit.
It is poison to the body of Christ.
It causes practically all the diseases in the human body.
Why is it that we fear selfishness in others, but not in ourselves?
It is the cause of all the physical wars that have come upon the earth; all the labor strikes, the cause of strife in politics.
That thing born in the garden eastward in Eden has grown so mighty that it governs the nations of the earth, and divine love is the only thing that can destroy it.
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.
I believe it is best to let love govern my life. It is the best method of ruling a home, a business, or a government.
It is about time that love governed the church and put an end to Physical sense knowledge arguments.
Until you are perfected in love, you will always be deceived in your understanding of Christian doctrines.
If, in your heart, you believe that the way of love is the best way, then act it. Not only is it best, but it is now your way of life.
It is the way you are going to walk regardless of how anyone else walks; and when you do, you discover you are living in the love realm, the realm of God’s kingdom.
Love is your home. Whenever you step out of love, you step into darkness and unhappiness.
Living in love is living in the highest, sweetest, ultimate captivating fellowship with the Father. It is living in Him.
Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. (1 John 4:17)
God’s Love is perfect, but it must gain perfect control of us.
When love becomes the rule of my life, I grow up into it until my life is dominated, ruled, governed by it, and that gives me a quiet fearlessness in His presence.
I am thinking in terms of love. I am acting according to the rule of love. I continually tune into love in my life, so that it flows into my thinking, and feeling, and then I can speak the truth in love.
Speaking the truth in love is not telling a person what is wrong with them in the nicest possible way, It is seeing them perfect in Christ, and speaking that over them in a way which motivates them to reach for that standard.
The key to living a successful Christian life is finding out how God sees you in heaven, and then appropriating that in such a way, that it becomes a permanent part of your divine nature so that you respond that way on the earth in your daily life, it becomes second nature, it is the renewing of your mind.
Then you can understand that there is no fear in love. There is fear in everything else that is contrary to love.
If you notice any kind of negative fear, worry, doubt, care, concern for yourself or others it is just a pointer that you have not yet been perfected in love, we all need more divine love in our lives.
Love wins because God’s love never fails, it becomes our standard, to evaluate, every doctrine we may believe- does this teaching reflect the nature of love?
Even the wrath of God, an outburst of anger at anything that hinders the love of God from being manifested on the earth, is motivated by God’s love for us.
When you run out of love, you say and do things that are contrary to the new creation. That is not who you are, you are acting out of character.
You took a step back into a part of your soul that is not yet transformed. Stop, pause, step forward into your newborn spirit until it becomes the forefront of your consciousness.
You may still think things not of love that you wouldn’t want to become public knowledge.
Forgiveness is forgetting the wrongs done to you, when you get to heaven, all those memories will be erased.
But perfect love castes out fear ( and all it’s fruits): because fear hath torment [or punishment]. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18)
Now you can understand that if we walk the in love and the love of God controls us, we will say nothing; we will do nothing; we will resolutely refuse to think anything outside of love.
Can you not see what a fearless life that would be?
No matter what happens, you know you are walking in love.
When you speak, you know it is in love.
Ephesians 4:15 illustrates this:
But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.
Speaking not in love is speaking out of tune. It is off-key. It breaks harmony.
It irritates the ears of the men and women who walk in love.
So our whole life turns into the path of this new kind of love, this new creation life.
This is the thing that Paul gave us.
Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved. (1 Corinthians 10:33)
And then he says, “Be ye followers [imitators] of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). This is he heart-searching of God, search me “Oh God”.
Not living to profit from my brethren but living only to help them.
1 Corinthians 9: 20 and to the Jews[he had stopped being a Jew; he had become a new creation, a Christian] I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law; 21 to those who are without law, as without law (not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law; 22 to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.
You see, the gospel comes first. The lost must be reached; they must know this new life.
In Romans 15:1, there is another challenge of the believer to his brother believer: “We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.”
In the third verse, he cries, “For even Christ pleased not himself.” There is a battle line laid down for us.
That is where we must begin our fight with the reign of selfishness.
This is a love affair, and we must not live outside of it.
This is a love realm and to live outside of it is to destroy our usefulness.
The new law that was to take the place of the old Ten Commandments was given by Jesus in John 13:34. You remember, He fulfilled the old covenant and established a new covenant in His blood. And now He said, “A new commandment I give unto you [or a new law], That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”
The men and women who live in this realm, under that new law, will never commit sin.
Hear it again, verse 35: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”
Romans 13:10: “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”
There is no need of the Ten Commandments now for us who are in Christ.
We are in the love family and walk in love, and as we walk in love, we do ill to no one. That will make the most beautiful type of life. Never any more harsh, bitter, unkind words spoken by us. No cruel insinuations, nor biting sarcasm.
All our words would be soaked in love before they were uttered, literally saturated with love. Those words would need no artificial perfume. They would have the sweet fragrance of heaven itself.
What homes it would make!
What assemblies of believers where there would never be another unkind word spoken.
You know, as I studied the life of the Master, I saw that He never had suspicion.
I wondered how He could be above suspicion, surrounded He was with that crowd of godless men, but He was love. Love destroys suspicion.
Jesus never stepped out of the realm of love.
He was living the life.
He was walking in the new way. He built the new way.
You see, this is the new order for the full-grown man in Christ.
It is the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
This would create a revival of the Jesus-life among men, wouldn’t it?
It would be good for us to read daily 1 Corinthians 13, at least the first eight verses. We would then suffer long with people and be kind while we suffer.
Love would gain such control of us that there would be no envy. We would thank the Father for the success of others.
We would never be elated over our own success, for it says love “vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up” (1 Corinthians 13:4).
Our conduct before the world would be one of restraint, love’s restraint, and we would be as kind to the outcast as we would to the wealthy.
We would never behave ourselves unseemly.
No one would ever hear a harsh word from our lips, nor an unkind criticism.
The love life would govern us.
It says love “seeketh not her own” (verse 5). It is not trying to gain ascendancy over anyone. And if others need what we have, we share with them.
We would never go to law; we would never quarrel or parley even over what belongs to us.
This new kind of love makes us so big that selfishness is utterly eliminated.
You see, in the new creation we were given a new self, a love self; a self born of God, a self like Jesus’s self that He had in His earth walk.
We are not seeking our own.
They cannot provoke us, and we refuse to take any account of evil.
We never rejoice in unrighteousness, we only rejoice in the truth, in the things that are real.
Verse 7 startles us. The text says that love “beareth all things,” but Robert Young translates it as “covering closely.” Joseph Henry Thayer translates it as love “covers over with silence.”
What are they talking about? Oh, it is scandal. It is something that has happened that is unseemly; something that if it were known would injure perhaps a lot of people; might cause a division in the assembly; might break up a family.
What do we do? We cover it closely with silence.
We never mention it, and the thing dies there and no one is injured. Hear this: Love “believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things” (verse 7). And then the climax: Love “never faileth” (verse 8).
We should remember this.
Agape, this new kind of love, never goes into bankruptcy. The red flag is never seen over its dwelling. Here is where love holds sway and rules, a queen upon her throne.
LOVE HAS MADE ME A VICTOR
1 John 4:4: “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.”
1 Corinthians 13:1–4 is sort of a resume of the failure of sense knowledge religion. It is a summary of the best that sense knowledge could give to the world.
If I speak with the tongue of men and of angels, that is the highest achievement of a linguist but have not love. “I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1). My linguistic ability is but noise, a jangling, unharmonious discord. Then, if I have all knowledge and know all mysteries, and have all faith so as to remove mountains, and my sense knowledge faith has made me a great business master, but have not love, I am nothing.
Or if I have knowledge so great that the universities are honored by giving me degrees, (and He says it softly and tenderly), but have not love, “I am nothing” (verse 2).
This is God’s clinic. This is the most heart-searching thing that the human ever faced.
If we became an Andrew Carnegie or a John D. Rockefeller, and I pour out millions upon millions to aid the needy, and I reach the place where I give my body in service until I wear it out, but He says, “If you haven’t love, haven’t this new kind of love that I have given to the world, all your efforts are nothing.”
I was amazed by it. I could see now that scholasticism (The method or subtilties of the schools), culture, everything that modern facilities have given us, travel, music, the arts are of no value unless divine love, this new kind of love, dominates my life.
When at the end of the list, if that is all I have, I go to my Maker empty-handed, I am a failure.
You see, the new creation is the only solution.
The new creation is created out of love. It is created in Christ Jesus. It is the workmanship of God in Christ.
God made the first man out of the dust of the earth.
The second man He makes out of Himself.
The first man is of the earth, earthy. This second man that He has made was created out of righteousness and holiness and reality, out of the very nature of the Father Himself.
You see, this is the greatest thing in the world. Why?
Because it is God’s nature imparted to us. It is God working in us.
It is God working through us.
It is God building Himself into our spirits, until our spirits dominate our physical sense knowledge reasoning faculties and bring them into harmony with His exact knowledge.
It makes us more than well-pleasing. It gives to us love’s creative genius that fills the very heart of the Father. We become so Jesus-like, that the vine and the branches illustrate our union. We become a mirror in which the Father sees Himself.
This new love has given us a new self, a love self, a Jesus-self.
The old religion of fighting self and crucifying self is medieval.
It doesn’t belong to Christianity. It belongs to the religions of the East.
We see mankind through new eyes of love. It is the new kind of love that has given to us new eyesight. We can only see the good things.
Love bears all things. It covers with silence all that is inappropriate. There is no scandal. There are no old infections to uncover.
Love can see only God in us, and God can only see Himself in us.
We see men’s and women’s excesses in order that we may bear them. We see their infirmities that we may share with them.
We see their weakness in order that we may give our strength.
We see their poverty in order that we may give them our money.
We become Jesus’ men and women.
As a battery is charged with electricity, we are charged with love.
We stay in His presence feeding on the Word until our whole being is saturated with Him.
Then as we go out and minister to the people, we are lights, little luminaries blazing a path in life where sin has no part and the misery that comes from sin can never enter.
Now we understand what it means to walk in love; what it means to be in Christ.
2 Corinthians 5:4 begins to unveil itself, where He speaks of our mortality being “swallowed up of life.”
That is the nature of the Father. We put on the very life and nature of the Father so our faces shine with the glory of our Christ, and His health and vigor and strength pour into and through us.
We are simply swallowed up of life.
All that was mortal, that which has been giving messages through the physical senses to the brain, now is absorbed, immersed, overwhelmed with the love nature of the Father.
Can you imagine what this could mean, being swallowed up in love, enveloped in love, immersed in love, until love not only swallows up my mortality, but transforms to immortality.