Day 21 ~ The Purpose Driven Life ~ Protecting Your Church
The all-encompassing law of Christ is love.
There is one great command in the Bible, and it is displayed from Genesis to Revelation. We are to love. The common world thinks of love as a warm fuzzy feeling. The love in the Bible has consequences and it calls you to action. If your love for God, the complete Trinity, and the love for those around you is not displayed in action beyond your eco-testicle requirements then you are not bearing the fruit called for by Christ. You have to have luvacta!
You are the body of Christ. When we adorn ourselves with Jesus Christ we are going to change. This is the consequence of your Christ-likeness. The promised internal change of heart has to be lived out to the world surrounding you. If your compatriots and family cannot see the workings of Christ in you then there is still a lot of realignment that needs to take place.
It is so easy to declare love, it is so hard to display love. Sometimes love calls us to do things that are uncomfortable and difficult. The new Testament is mainly silent on Jesus’s discomfort from his point of view. Next time you read John 4, think about the walk in the hot desert sun for 40 miles from Judea to Sychar. Jesus must have been hurting, tired dirty and thirsty when he sat down at the well. Yet none of this is recorded, his focus then centres not on his own well-being but on the Samaritan woman who he engages in a spiritual conversation.
“Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness. When He saw the crowds, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.…” Matthew 9:35 (BSB)
Not a word about how tired he was after all this healing and travelling but we are focused on his compassion.
Nowhere in the new Testament do the critics of Christ talk about him resting. On the contrary, they criticise him and his disciples for working on the day of rest. See Mark 2:22-24.
“So the Pharisees said to Him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”…” Mark 2:24
It is when we get to Gethsemane when Jesus was about to face the wrath of God for all of us that we hear the suffering within his soul.
“Then they came to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus told His disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”
He took with Him Peter, James, and John, and began to be deeply troubled and distressed. And He told them, “My soul is consumed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch.”
Going a little farther, He fell to the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour would pass from Him. “Abba, Father,” He said, “all things are possible for You. Take this cup from Me. Yet not what I will, but what You will.”
Then Jesus returned and found them sleeping. “Simon, are you asleep?” He asked, “Were you not able to keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not enter into temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” Mark 14: 32 – 38 (BSB)
The lamentation of Christ is visioned by David through the very eyes of Jesus as he hangs on the cross in Psalm 22.
We can never understand fully, or in our wildest dreams contemplate what Christ was about to do for our salvation and righteousness.
Father God was about to crush him : “But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,…” Isaiah 53:10a (NASB) (more .. Isaiah 53)
Jesus was crushed body and soul for you and I. He, complained nought.
The unity of the body of Christ is reflected and achieved in our ability to live out the love demanded of us by Christ. That love cannot come fully into fruition without a Spiritual internalisation by Christ.
The love of 1 Corinthians 13 should be your guiding light. Not as in the KJV but in a modern more accurate bible that is not based on the temple model:
Love
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a ringing gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and exult in the surrender of my body, but have not love, I gain nothing.
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 account of wrongs. Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be restrained; where there is knowledge, it will be dismissed. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial passes away.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways. Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13 (BSB)
Get loving and display it with luvacta!
Further reading; http://purposedriven.com/day21/
References on the commands to Love.
John 13:34 – A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have
John 17:23 – I in them and you in me–so that they may be brought
John 15:12 – My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you
John 13:34-35 – A new command I give you: Love one