"Love, For Us, To Us, In Us"

"Love, For Us, To Us, In Us"

      

       

   Through the Holy Spirit, God's love dwells within the new and redeemed hearts of born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to enable our fulfillment of the two great commands of Scripture.

   "And 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).

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

    The love that rescued us also resurrected us unto "newness of life" and the nature of love that characterizes our Creator and Redeemer (Romans 6:4).  We still possess fleshly faculties and members that can "lust against the spirit" when tempted by the world, the flesh, and the devil (Galatians 5:17).  However, such self-centeredness no longer characterizes who we most deeply are in Christ.  "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you" (Romans 8:9).  We are swans who can doubtless still act as ugly ducklings.  Still, nothing changes the truth of our Christ-inhabited spiritual being wherein the Holy Spirit dwells to enable a life of self sacrificial devotion to God and people.  This is who we are, as birthed through the grace of the Lord Jesus who died for us, and now lives in us.  

    The Apostle Paul prayed for his fellow believer Philemon that he would "acknowledge every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus" (Philemon 1:4-6).  The very heart of "every good thing" is the very heart of the God who "is love" (I John 4:8).  We do well to pray for each other and encourage each other to remember the lavishly bestowed love of God that dwells within us.  "Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:11).  Thereby we progressively grow in the devotion to God and others the honors the Lord Jesus, blesses people, and fills our own hearts with the peace of God's own nature of altruism.  We were made and redeemed for such grace, and for the Love for us that came to us, and now dwells in us.

"And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus."

(I Timothy 1:14)

Weekly Memory Verse

   Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor: for we are members one of another.

(Ephesians 4:25)