Igniting Your Christtian Life: Founded in Love

When you became a Christian, the most natural thing in the world was this. The love of God is shed abroad in your heart. It should permeate you, it should exude from you, it should touch everybody around you, it should be a way of life. But some people are holding their breath, and your own self-will holds your breath, resisting the love of God in selfish pride. Love is the most normal thing for a Christian to do. The Spirit of God comes into your life. He fills your life with love. He begins to rule your life.

You yield to him. Christ settles down. He’s at home. His love permeates. And as it permeates your life, you should be characterized, thirdly, by incomprehensible love. And it should start by being the very root and the very foundation of your life, the very basis of your life. Then he goes on to a second element of it. Not only is it the foundation, but if you’ll notice in verse 18, he says, you may be able to comprehend this love. Now, in the Greek, the verb comprehend is a compound verb. There is a Greek word, lambano, which means to receive something.

And then there is katalambano, which is an intense verb, meaning to seize or to grasp for your own. Or it’s like you, if somebody was really possessive, you say they’re grasping, or they’re possessive of something. That’s the verb. And that’s what’s used here. You not only have a life that is built on love, but you have a life that possesses love as a personal possession. You literally seize love. You make it your own as a way of living. And so it is then that we not only have a foundation of love when Christ fills our life, but we seize love, grasping every opportunity to love as a personal treasure, a personal possession.

It is the most desired thing, something you want to seize, something you want to grasp, something you want to cling to. Further, he says at the end of this little section, the beginning of verse 19, that we can know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. So it is the foundation of our life. It is that which we seize for every moment in our life. And it is that which we experience, the knowledge here being the knowledge of experience, to live a life built on love, to live a life that grasps every possibility of love in every situation, to live a life that comprehends love is only possible when you’re filled with the fullness of the Spirit of God who causes Christ to be at home and exude into every dimension of your life, the fullness of his own love.

Listen, if you claim to be a Christian but you don’t have love as the root and the ground of your life, if you don’t in every situation seize love as the expression for that situation. And if you don’t understand and comprehend and know love experientially, then the problem is not that the people around you are giving you trouble. The problem is clear back in verse 16. You have never yet yielded the control of your life to the Holy Spirit because he will produce, as a beginning fruit, love, Galatians 5 22. And then Christ will be at home and his love will permeate.

Listen, if your home and your relationship at home, husband and wife, is not a relationship of love, it isn’t the fact that you can’t get along because you have personality conflict. It isn’t a problem of of personality at all. Listen, in the Bible you are commanded to love every believer equally. Now if you can’t get that kind of love at least for your wife, it’s not a problem of incompatibility, it’s a problem of iniquity, selfishness. People say well I just don’t love him anymore. Well then you’re in an act of disobedience. And by the way, if you just loved each other just with agape love, just Bible love, you’d love everybody like God loves you.

And believe me, you could get along fine if you loved like that. You don’t even need much romance, believe me, you start loving the way God loves and you’ll find romance. See, we miss the point. The absence of love is the presence of sin. The absence of love is the presence of iniquity. The absence of love means you’re not walking in the spirit or the partner’s not walking in the spirit. You say well boy, I’ll tell you one thing, I’ve loved so long and look at the way I’ve been treated. Yeah well so did God and look at the way he’s been treated.

Has it affected his love? Oh you would bring that up. You know, I’m just trying to show you. You know, there’s only one way to live and that’s to live with love. There’s only one way to live. To live filled with love. To be a forgiving, kind, tender-hearted, loving, gracious, merciful, gentle person. It’s the only way to live. It’s the only way to have happiness. The only way to have that is to have Christ permeating your life with his lordship and his love because the spirit is in control. The only way to live is to have that ground and that root of love and then to live every situation, seizing love in that situation, experiencing love.

And if you don’t have it, you’ve missed the point. You’ve missed it. Right at the basis you’ve missed it. This is the bottom line of the Christian life. We are to be creatures of love. Jesus’ great message to his apostles, the first thing he said the night in which he met with them before he was betrayed. The first thing he said is, I want you to love each other. Remember that? As I have loved you. And then in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians he said, let me tell you something. You could speak with the tongues of men and angels.

And if you don’t have love, you’re sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Then he said, I don’t care if you have the gift of prophecy. I don’t care if you have the gift of faith and you can remove mountains. If you don’t have love, he says, you are. What? You’re nothing. Listen, something minus love equals nothing. I’ll tell you something else. Everything minus love equals nothing. I’ll add something else to that. You minus love equal what? Nothing. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And do you want to know that all of the all there is in the Bible and everything that’s in the Bible, in terms of what God wants of us, can be summed up in one thing.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and your what? Neighbor as yourself. That’s the whole law right there. You, that’s the whole law. Romans 13, the apostle Paul says in verse eight of Romans 13, oh, no man anything but to love one another, for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. The law says thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet. But all of that can be summed up in thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Isn’t that true? I mean, if you love your neighbor, you’re not going to kill them. If you love your neighbor, you’re not going to covet what he’s got. If you love your neighbor, you’re not going to bear a lie against him, false witness. If you love your neighbor, you’re not going to steal what he has. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of igniting your Christian life, founded in love. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com.

Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].