Love

"[Love] is a grace which all people profess to admire. It seems a plain practical thing which everybody can understand. It is none of 'those troublesome doctrinal points' about which Christians disagree. Thousands, I suspect, would not be ashamed to tell you that they know nothing about justification, or regeneration, or about the work of Christ, or of the Holy Spirit. But nobody, I believe, would like to say that he knows nothing about love! If men possess nothing else in religion, they always flatter themselves that they possess 'love'" (J C Ryle).

And, yet, how many of us know the meaning of biblical love? More importantly, how many of us practice the greatest of the graces.

I will be the first to confess my weakness in this area. It is so easy to consider myself greater than the children I work with daily -- so easy to feed on their frustration, so easy to lose my temper, so easy to vomit up words I will immediately regret.

And, yet, I have graciously had my heart of stone replaced with a heart of Love. Certainly this was not my own doing. I experience this sick, pleasurable self-righteousness when I set my mouth free to race down the path of destruction. I revel in laying my foot down, in establishing my territory, my authority. But all of this, naturally, is of my flesh.

"The natural heart knows nothing of true love.

The love of the Bible will never be found except in a heart prepared by the Holy Spirit. It is a tender plant, and will never grow except in one soil. You may as well expect grapes on thorns, or figs on thistles, as look for love when the heart is not right.

 

The heart in which love grows is a heart changed, renewed, and transformed by the Holy Spirit. The image and likeness of God, which Adam lost at the fall, has been restored to it, however feeble and imperfect the restoration may appear. It is to 'participate in the Divine nature' by union with Christ and Sonship to God; and one of the first features of that nature is love. (2 Peter 1:4)

Such a heart is deeply convinced of sin, hates it, flees from it, and fights with it from day to day. And one of the prime elements of sin which it daily labors to overcome, is selfishness and lack of love.

Such a heart is deeply aware of its mighty debt to our Lord Jesus Christ. It feels continually that it owes to Him who died for us on the cross, all its present comfort, hope, and peace. How can it show forth its gratitude? What can it render to its Redeemer? If it can do nothing else, it strives to be like Him, to walk in His footsteps, and, like Him, to be full of love. The fact that, 'God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit' is the surest fountain of Christian love. Love will produce love" (J C Ryle).

And, so, by grace, I will continue to labor in love -- in loving others so all may see and know and taste the love of Christ -- because without love I am nothing.