Now Abides Love

Love Your Enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you (Matt. 5:44).

Love your enemies? Actively seek the well being of someone who hates you? What challenging words these are! Certainly not what the world would have us believe love is all about. The world “sees” something beautiful and “loves;” the world encounters something which “appeals to its senses” and “loves;” the world meets someone who makes it “feel good” and “loves.”

But we are not here to be “at one” with the world, to love IT and what IT loves.

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world (I John 2:15,16).

God defines love

We must look to our heavenly Father as our example, to teach us what love is. Look at what the apostle John says:

We love him, because he first loved us (I John 4:19).

The AV translation gives a slightly wrong idea; it implies that we only love God because of His love for us, for what we get out of it — a sort of cupboard love. While there is a sense in which this is true, this is not what the verse is actually saying. The RV and NIV render the verse, We love, because he first loved us.

In other words, if God hadn’t shown His love for us, we wouldn’t have known what love is! God has demonstrated what love is. God IS love. And how has God shown His love for us?

“God commendeth his love for us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:7-8) and “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son: (John 3:16).

When God first loved us, we were steeped in sin, unlovely, nothing attractive about us, nothing to commend us. And what did He do? He gave. He gave something very precious to Him, His only-begotten son, the well beloved. God’s love is self sacrificing, humanly unnatural love.

Learning from God’s love

We could go into an analysis of words here, agapeo and phileo, but I think in a short message such as this, we need to focus on the love of God in action and take the lessons to ourselves. In the Lord Jesus, we see the love of God manifest. What does Jesus say?

A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another. How? As I have loved you.

And what did Jesus do?

  • He washed his disciples’ feet! Even Judas’ feet! If you had known this man was going to sell you for 30 pieces of silver, would you have been civil to him, let alone performed such a menial task as washing his feet?
  • He gave the sop to Judas, the mark of friendship and honor. Was it a last appeal to Judas? Could you go out of your way to be especially kind to someone you knew harbored evil thoughts toward you?
  • When that band came to the Garden to arrest him and the zealous Simon Peter sliced off the servant’s ear, Jesus gently and lovingly restored and healed him. Might we have felt like saying, “Serves you right,” and left him to suffer?
  • On the cross, when they had clamoured for his death, mocked him, scourged him, had spat upon him, Jesus’ response was to say, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Putting love into practice

How can we ever live up to this example? And yet we must try. We are the beneficiaries if we do. The Proverb tells us: “Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all the wrongs” (Prov. 19:12).

The apostle Paul, who wrote those powerful words in his first letter to the Corinthians in chapter 13, tried to put them into practice and exhorted others to do the same. When he wrote to Philemon about the latter’s runaway slave, Onesimus, who was converted by Paul in Rome, Paul urges him to receive him as a beloved brother and not as a truant slave. And why? “For love’s sake” (v. 9).

In conclusion, we read again the key verses from I Corinthians 13 in a modern version:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.