Sometimes folks like to debate the oddest things. Take "love". The very nature of the word "love" begs Christians bear in mind that "love does not insist upon its own way, rights".
Doesn't arguing over the finer points of love rather defeat the purpose of simply loving?
"Love is kind...is patient...is not rude...is not vain-glorious."
Love is consistent with the heart of God. Love is the essence of God. Love leaves His imprint wherever it goes.
Any loving I do, apart from Jesus Christ living within me, is hay and stubble. For in and of myself, I can do nothing. It takes faith..."for it is impossible to please God without faith."
"Faith in what," we might ask. In Jesus, I conclude. For in Him and by Him all things were created and made possible. Where do we get that faith? In Jesus, through Jesus, with Jesus. Faith is all wadded up, wrapped inside, and fused into the Christ of the ages. Faith in Him is counted unto righteousness. Why? I submit it is because faith is Jesus, just as God is love.
It's kinda like grama's biscuits. You can take grama's biscuit recipe and follow each and every instruction, and put all the ingredients into the bowl, knead them all together, lay them out on a pan, and bake them in the oven. You can take them out and butter them, add jam, apple-butter, or stuff a piece of smoked ham inside. You can dip them in honey or cover them in white gravy. It still doesn't make them grama's biscuits unless grama made them. They are simply biscuits you make that grama showed you how to make. Grama's biscuits just need grama. And Christian love needs Jesus to be God's love.
God is love. Love is God. Without Him, or apart from Him, our love is as clanging cymbals. I can have the smoothest way of describing love in the world. It can drip off my tongue like honey. But without Jesus, the best of all I say is annoying chatter, banter, buzzing, clanging noise. So to rudely try and insist upon one's view of love being the all-encompassing view to adhere to, rely upon, and comprehend, reduces one's efforts to hay beneath the manger of Jesus Christ.
I understand love because once I had no love--then Jesus came into my life and began to love through me. And I sat in absolute wonder. Where in the world did that come from? Why, all of a sudden, do I have a burning desire for others to know Jesus, too?
I've never cared that much for my own blood, why all of a sudden do I care about a complete stranger? Love. Jesus Christ is the catalyst. Certainly not me. I already know that any righteousness I have is unrighteous and as "filthy rags". Jesus is my righteousness. I am the salt resting inside the shaker--Jesus, the Christ. He has fused His being into the grains of my life, holds me inside of His sheltering hand, and turns somersaults of love all over the land as I go about the day. Most often we have no idea how much salt from the Shaker has spilled out and flavored another's life.
No where is that more clearly seen than at the funeral of a saint of God. I cannot begin to count how many funerals I've attended and watched as the bereaved sit or stand and hear complete strangers come to them and share specific acts of love a deceased has shown. I have repeatedly seen a deceased relative come to Jesus because of the testimony of love they see and hear about their beloved. I'd be willing to bet that the readers who come by here have multiple stories of their own.
Jesus is love. My love is not of myself, but of Him. Love does not insist upon its own way; it persists in His way. Anytime I find myself looking back at myself for all the good I have done, I see a flawed righteousness. Jesus is my righteousness, my portion, my gift, my ability, my all in all. Love is seen in others as sacrificial, as generous, as forgiving--it does not keep record of wrongs. God is love.
"Love never fails [never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end]. As for prophecy (the gift of interpreting the divine will and purpose), it will be fulfilled and pass away; as for tongues, they will be destroyed and cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away [it will lose its value and be superseded by truth]. For our knowledge is fragmentary (incomplete and imperfect), and our prophecy (our teaching) is fragmentary (incomplete and imperfect). But when the complete and perfect (total) comes, the incomplete and imperfect will vanish away (become antiquated, void, and superseded)." 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 Amplified
Fragmentary is our love. Incomplete is our teaching, our knowledge. Love endures. Jesus is all there is really left standing before a holy God. The rest is burned away.
I've been sitting like a fly on a wall and reading folks on a website go back and forth about love--it's doctrine, it's a feeling, it's action. How the lack, thereof, equates to faithlessness, without Jesus. For they will know you are my disciples by the love you show one another. Amid the truths of their words are snipes and put-downs, the questioning of one another's true love. I can't help but wonder as I read, what of this will endure? What of this will stand the test of fire? "...the incomplete and imperfect will vanish"; what will endure?
"For now we are looking in a mirror that gives only a dim (blurred) reflection [of reality as in a riddle or enigma], but then [when perfection comes] we shall see in reality and face to face! Now I know in part (imperfectly), but then I shall know and understand fully and clearly, even in the same manner as I have been fully and clearly known and understood [by God]. And so faith, hope, love abide [faith--conviction and belief respecting man's relation to God and divine things; hope--joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation; love--true affection for God and man, growing out of God's love for and in us], these three; but the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 Amplified.
Do we see others as God sees? Do we see love through our own lenses, or through God's? Are we just talking past one another? It may be because we are looking at a dim reflection of His all-encompassing, unimaginable, unexplainable, un-debatable love. selahV
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