"The Privilege of Love"

     Originally created in the image of God, the human race possesses potential and capacity for experience such as the Lord Himself knows.

     "Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you" (Ephesians 4:32).

     Through Christ, God actualizes the faculties for loving relationship He formed in our original forefather Adam.  Those faculties were severely damaged when Adam and Eve sinned, but the indwelling presence and working of the Holy Spirit in believers makes possible the mental, emotional, physical and relational qualities of Divine love, as revealed in human hearts and lives.  "I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them" (John 17:26).  No more important truth exists for us to know and embrace, namely, that the saving grace of the Lord Jesus equips and enables us to genuinely love God and people.  Indeed, the two great commandments, repeated in Old Testament and New, call us to this life such as our Lord Himself knows.  "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.  This is the first commandment.  And the second is like, namely this: thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  There is none other commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:30-31).

     Words cannot express the privilege of love.  Consider this primary feature of God's character, nature and way, wherein He has and will eternally exist.  To be created in the image of such a glorious One, and then to actively live as He lives ushers us to the brink of the most sublime mystery.  We exist to be loved, to be inhabited by love, and then to ourselves love so that we may know the joy of unselfish devotion to others experienced by our Lord.  How good He is to create us for such wonder, and then to redeem us through Christ when in Adam we embraced self-centeredness.  Yes, love is first and foremost a privilege of grace wherein our Lord calls us to eternally ancient glories now and forevermore realized in those who receive and then express the love of God as revealed in the Lord Jesus, and enabled by the Holy Spirit.

"The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us."
(Romans 5:5)