[Luke 10:25∼37]
God is love. God's love lasts ever; it is sincere forever.
Love is the whole being of what He has for us; love is the very heart of God; love is just the very nature of God.
For all the creations He created God uses the power of His own to grow them, performs the love of His own to take care of them: everything in heaven and on earth can live only by the love of God. God made things and man beings to be loved by Him.
His love for us is first for the eternal spirit.
This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.(1John 4:9-10)
In this way He sent His One and Only Son in order to save our spirit from death so that we may live forever; how could we then find whatever else love in the world that dares to be compared with His love
The love of God is secondly for our flesh that He created with His own hands.
During His public life in this world Jesus Christ healed numerous people who were sick, diseased for He really wanted our body to be healthy and cured.
The love of God the Father is thirdly for what we have to live on in the world.
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich. (2Corinthian 8:9)
God intends to let us find His wonderful grace through what He has given us for our bodily life on earth; we are to find that fact through what Jesus Christ did for people, the signs and miracles; we really are to believe in Jesus Christ who is just the God.
People however dismissed from their mind God's intention to love them in spirit, but actually are indulged in the satisfaction of their body. The purpose of God's love and that of man to be loved differ from each other; man misunderstood the love of God to the point that he turned it into his bodily desire, being fallen down from His true love.
Jesus said, Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.(Matthew 6:19-20)
But people are confined in the bodily life that needs only worldly things; they regrettably misunderstood the purpose of life falling down into absolute corruption. (Acts 5:3-4)
God loved man and gave him everything for the spiritual purpose that the Lord wants man to share in the time of soul, but man smisunderstanding made him loose this spiritual value intended for him.
While man is locked up in his sin, God really could not leave him under destruction so that He sent His One and Only Son to go through the bloody death on the cross; this is really from His love for man, the climax of His mercy on the spirit of man simply destined to the eternal destruction without the death of His own Son.
If we commit another misunderstanding of God's love, we are really likely to take His love for from the bodily form of humanism or some kind of charity.
God's love should not be limited in only a single man; He really wants the salvation of every soul; He wants us who received His love to preach the same love to our neighbors, to join His work of seeking His lost children.
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.(1John 4:7-8)
This is the way to do God's will. Whoever wants to love but is not able to love does not really have God's love in him. So God wants to come into us in Spirit to form within us His nature that enables His love in our soul.
Whoever love one another, love his neighbor is keeping God's law of love.
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.(John 15:12-14)
This kind of love belongs to God.
No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.
This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother. This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.(1John 3:9-10)
The true love that does God's will is to love God above and to love your neighbor down as yourself.
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, What must I do to inherit eternal life?
What is written in the Law??He replied. How do you read it??
He answered: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbor as yourself.
You have answered correctly, Jesus replied. Do this and you will live.(Luke 10:26-28)
Many people of God in church hope to be able to live in accordance with God's will. This is just God's will for us: Do love your neighbor as yourself.
Love is effective and rewards when it is done but not unless it is accompanied by action. (James 2:14-17)
That Jesus Christ built up churches is just aimed at the fulfillment of His love; so we Christians are to live our own lives for the practice of this love as the Lord did.
Love is in truth to produce, to revive eternal inheritance from God.
As it is said that church is the body of Jesus, the church shall make the best of His love with the same miracles and signs and with the same power like Jesus showed in His life.
The devil that holds the power of hell destroys love and the ties between God and man and between men.
Jesus instead does destroy the work of the devil but builds the work of love. (1John 3:8)
Love really brings the most harmonized relationship between God and man, among people.
With every source we have obtained from the Lord, let us do love our neighbor.
Let us use up all our life for loving as Jesus Christ gave His own life to do love sinners.
(Amen)
위 글은 교회신문 <53호> 기사입니다.