The Gospel Truth Results in Love (Col. 1:4b)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/19/2016 10:24 PM

My Worship Time                                                          Focus:  The Gospel Truth Results in Love

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Colossians 1:4b

            Message of the verses:  “and the love which you have for all the saints;”

            We continue to look at the opening verses in Paul’s letter to the Colossians which tells us things about the Gospel.  We have been looking at faith and not we look at love, and next we look at hope so we will be looking at how Paul concludes the 13^th chapter of 1 Corinthians, the love chapter, which says “But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.”  I am sure that this is no coincidence in the way that Paul begins this letter as he begins other letters with these three virtues.

            When I first became a believer I knew nothing about who the Jewish people were, and since God used prophecy as a tool to led me to saving faith I began to learn much about the Jewish people and also began to love them.  This happened because God changed my heart when He saved me.  Now the apostle John has much to say about love and we will look at some of the verses in his first letter.

            “9 The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now. 10 The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. 11 But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes (1 John 2:9-11).”

            “10 By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother (1 John 3:10).”

            “14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him (1 John 3:14-15).”

            “20 If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen (1 John 4:10).”

            Now as believers we are to love our brothers in the Lord as faith in Jesus Christ purges us of our selfishness and affinity for sinners and gives us a new attraction to the people who are also believers.  Jesus said that we love Him because He first loved us and now that this has happened we will love other believers in the Lord.  As we look at this half verse we are dealing with this evening we find out that Christ’s love not only drew the Colossians to Himself, but it also caused them to love one another.

            Now we have to understand that this love that we are talking about is not the kind of emotional love we had when we first realized that we were in love with our wife or husband when we first realized that this was the one for us.  MacArthur writes “True biblical love is so much more than an emotion; it is a sacrificial service to others because they have need.  We show godly love to someone when we sacrifice ourselves to meet that person’s need.”

            Now we have been studying the gospel of John for a bit more than a year and a few weeks ago looked at John chapter thirteen and we read in the first verse of that chapter “Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”  He then goes on to give us an example of biblical love by washing the disciples’ feet as seen in verses 4-5.  We are not to feel sentimental toward other believers all of the time but He does expect us to serve one another as Paul writes in Galatians 5:13.

            MacArthur concludes “There are two sides to the Christian life, both of which are crucial:  faith and love.  Genuine belief in the truth and experiential love for other believers characterizes every true believer.  We are saved by faith; we are saved to love.  True saving faith is more than a conviction of the mind.  It transforms the heart to love.”

12/19/2016 10:49 PM