Learn to love like Christ – Part 1

There are many kinds of love. In the Greek language, we have eros. This kind of love is erotic, fleshly, immoral. We also have the natural love, the kind of love that exists between children and their parents. This love is important because we must love our children, and our children must love us too. But the kind of love we have in this chapter is agape love. It is selfless and sacrificial love, and only hearts that have been touched and transformed by God’s love can manifest it.

Christian services like prayer, preaching, teaching, visitation, singing, church administration, guidance, counseling, planning, etc., are all anchored on love. Because of the love of God, we are made citizens of the Kingdom through the new birth experience. The Lord expects that we continue in the family of God’s people by the same love. The evidence that we are true children of God is that we love one another. We cannot claim to be transformed believers, if we do not have love for the brethren. Without love, we are morally and spiritually dead. Our love must be expressed in action of affection, kindness, consideration and empathy.

“Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren”. Our love for the brethren should be pure, practical, visible and manifest like Christ’s. When He laid down His life for us, He manifested practical and pure love. As true followers of Christ, to show that our love is pure and practical, we have to lay down our will and everything that will hinder the joy, progress and upliftment of other believers.

We also have to lay down our resources for the brethren. “But whoso hath this world’s good (intelligence, wisdom, skill, material things, learning, experience and the know-how), and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?”

When you do your alms, it must not be publicised. As a Christian, give generously and cheerfully. When we have what we can supply to meet the needs of others, we should not wait to be reminded. Like Christ, everything we do should be to God’s glory. Many people give to those who are already rich, but fail to remember the widows, fatherless, poor, needy and the jobless. If believers are our friends, and they are being ejected from their rented apartment, if we have the money stacked up in the bank and we fail to rescue them, “how dwelleth the love of God in [us]?” But when we come to their aid, it is a proof that the love of God dwells in us. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”.

Further Reading (King James Version): 1 John 3:11; 4:7. 1 John 3:11,16-18; John 15:12,13. 1 John 3:12-15; Genesis 4:3-8; Hebrews 11:4; Jude 11-13. 1 John 4:17-21; Ephesians 5:25,28-33. 1 John 3:16; Philippians 2:5-8; 2 Corinthians 8:9; 5:14,15,18-20; 12:14,15; 2 Timothy 1:6,7.