THE NEW COMMANDMENT OF LOVE!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

MONDAY FEBRUARY 27, 2023.

SUBJECT : THE NEW COMMANDMENT OF LOVE!

Memory verse: "A new commandment I gave to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” (John 13 vs 34.)

READ: First John 3 vs 13 - 18:

3:13: Do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates you.

3:14: We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. 3:15: Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal  life abiding in him. 

3:16: By this we know love, because He laid His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

3:17: But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?

3:18: My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

INTIMATION:

God is love, therefore, “Love” gave birth to us and we are the children of love. “Love” planned our redemption. Through Jesus Christ “Love” consummated it, gave us a new creation and then Jesus gave us the new law.

God the Father and God the Son set an example of the new commandment and how we should walk; “By this we know love, because He laid His life for us.” (First John 3 vs 16.), and then in the new birth, He gave us the ability to walk even as He walked. He does not ask us to do a thing that cannot be done. Godhead demonstrated that real love is an action, not just a feeling; it produces selfless, sacrificial giving. And the greatest act of love is giving oneself for others. 

You understand that we have the nature of God. The very substance of God has come into our spirits. We are in God's family. God is our Father, we are His very sons and daughters. God so loved the world that He gave us His Son as a propitiation, and the Son laid down His life for us. Therefore, in union with them in the new birth, we are to walk in love.; laying down our lives for others. Love is to govern our conversation; our conduct toward one another. When we step out of love into selfishness, we break fellowship with love—with God.

The passage we read today, in verses 17 and 18, gives us an example of how we can lay down our lives for others—serving others with no thought of receiving anything in return. We are to help those in need; being generous with our possessions, knowing that they are just entrusted to us by God who owns all things.

The apostle James collaborated the apostle John’s teaching in James 2 vs 14 - 17, saying, “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” But you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” No one can walk in selfishness and pray the prayer of faith.

The Scripture, in the fourteenth and fifteenth verses, of the passage we read today, says, 

"We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal  life abiding in him." This is putting the case very clearly. We have passed out of the realm of Satanic union, spiritual death, into the union of eternal life and love.

Jesus laid down His life for us. Now "Love" says, "that we ought to live for the brethren," and then He says that remarkable thing, "But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?" (First John 3 vs 17.) The world's goods are the things that we prize most highly; land, houses, money, beautiful things, valuables etc. In holding tight to those things, we have taken Satan's appraisal of their value. These world things have made us selfish. 

This new commandment of love is to break the monopoly of selfishness and establish a new order of life. The new man is no longer to live unto himself, but is to give his life for others. If he shuts up his compassion from his brother and refuses to bear his burdens, he, at once, sins against love, and God says, "How does the new kind of love abide in him," Unless we walk in love and have yielded to the lordship of love, God cannot manifest Himself through us. The ability of God is realized only in love's freedom to act. Selfishness imprisons love.

Prayer: Abba Father, You have poured out Your love in our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us. Consequently, as You are so You have empowered us to be in this world. Endue me with the spirit of selflessness that I may put, in right manner, others desires first, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!