Growing - Love

2 Peter 1:7, “… and in your brotherly kindness (supply), love.”

As I reach the end of this series on growing I can’t help but think that love, as a Christ like quality possessed by the believer is the end all be all. After all the apostle Paul did write in 1 Corinthians 13:13, “But now faith, hope, love, abide in these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Jesus Himself summarized every commandment into two when He said, “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

But do we as a human race even begin to understand what it is to love? Does actually being a Christian create love? “As I have loved you” Jesus said. How did Christ love people? On one day He feed thousands and then the very next day sent them away. In one sentence He calls Peter a rock, and in the very next sentence says to him, “get behind me Satan.” The gospels teach us that Jesus loved Lazarus so He did not go to him when he was sick but waited and Lazarus died. The Bible teaches us that God is love, and that He loves the world and yet Jesus turned over tables at the temple, and more than once called Pharisees names. And every bit of it was love.

Would we define love on those terms? How about the love in the parable of the prodigal son. The Father in the story is God. The 2 sons are us. God love let one go, and allowed another to stay. God’s love rejoiced over the return of the “sinner”, the prodigal… and almost scolds the faithful son for his jealousy.

John 15:13 records Jesus saying, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” Do we love like this? Do we really love the sinner and hate the sin as some have so craftily said? Would you lay your life down for your spouse or children? Many would say of course. But as a reminder of how far you are from the love that brotherly kindness and faith, and moral excellence, and self-control, and perseverance, and godliness supply I would ask this. Would you lay down your life for a person of another race, for a homosexual, for a murderer even? Would you die for the murderer of one of your children just so they could have an opportunity to make heaven? That is love, and that is exactly what Christ, and Christ alone did.

Love is not a destination. If pure perfect love were possible outside of Christ’s example then we should expect all the other gifts of the spirit to cease as 1 Corinthians 13:10 says. Think about that. Do you prophecy? Then perfect love has not come to you. Do you speak in tongues? Then the perfect has not come. Get it?

Love is a quality, like the others of the first Chapter of 2 Peter that grows as its base grows. It takes godliness – that transfer into kingdom awareness and mindedness to truly love. It takes having been kind to the deserving to see the unlovebale as deserving of love too. And it takes relationship with God to see when a rebuke is as much love to one as a meal is to another.

Love is not advice. Love is not worry. Love is not a feeling. It is not the hormonal high of people desiring one another. Love is patient, kind, not jealous, not arrogant, not unbecoming. Love never desires something for itself, it is never provoked, and always forgiving. Love never rejoices at suffering or unrighteousness, but only rejoices in the truth. As Paul tells us “love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

An impossible standard demonstrated by Christ. That’s love, and it is yours and increasing for a purpose. Not to be the end all be all. Love is just one of the qualities that we must have so that we can know our Lord Jesus Christ. “True Knowledge” Peter says.

I will close with something from my dear friend Jim Spivey this morning. He’s my love coach for those of you who don’t know him. He said, “You can only truly give that which can be fully received.  True love both requires and creates perfect reciprocity, unity, and wholeness.  It always operates in completeness, never aiming to create what already exists in full.  'Attempts to love' reveals itself in its unreceivability, because it is built on a lie that insists that something is missing.  Completion and perfect love come in 'seeing' wholeness anew, not in finding and fitting in the missing pieces.  Remember, the only real and true peace and joy is buried, hidden, right ‘in the eye’ of the hurricane, not to be found outside of it, by trying to steer clear of it.”