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In The Love Of The Lord Christ Jesus
(Note: this message is due to Ed Corley1.)
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God’s Agape Love Toward Us Is Much Deeper Than We Can Realize
And It Is The Sure Foundation Of Our Personal Relationship With Him
We Must Personally Experience God’s Love Before We Can Apprehend It
God’s Love Edifies, Not Constrains, Us
He Wills That We Allow Him In Us Extend His Love To Others
God’s Love Is The Total Opposite Of The World’s Form Of “Love”
God’s Love Flows From Him To Us To Others And Back To Him
And God’s Love Effects Our Inner Healings
A message to Bible-believing, born-again Christians.
Perhaps the greatest reason why so many Christians, even Spirit-filled believers,
are so spiritually weak and lack a sure sense of expectancy in God’s promises, is
that they lack an appreciation of the depth of God’s love for them.
1. God’s Agape Love Toward Us Is Much Deeper Than We Can Realize
The love of God for us has roots that run so deep they reach into the very heart of
God. His love is so profound none of us can ever fully discover it. Still, it can be
known by the simplest babe or meanest person on earth.
In Ephesians 3:16-19 Paul prays that we could sense the dimensions of that love.
The Greek word here is Agape, a word practically unknown outside the New
Testament because it named a kind of love unknown before Jesus brought it with
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From Corley, Ed, A New Commandment - A New Way of Living, A New Response To Life,
MASCHIL Series 2000 Issue 06-00, Part 6 - In The Discipline of Intercession, published by
Berean Publications, PO Box 38, Elk Park, NC 26822-0038.
Him from the Father. Paul helps us see when we embrace what it describes, it
leads to all the fulness of God:
“That He would grant you ... that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all
the saints what is the width and length and depth and height — to know the love
of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of
God.”
What Paul is saying here in essence is this: “I’m asking that you may be able to
comprehend ... the love of Christ. Because of His resurrection, we can have the
spiritual strength to comprehend His love.”
“Comprehend” in the Greek here (Katalambano) means to understand by surprise,
to overtake and seize. This love of Christ must be overtaken. It is strong. It must
be conquered with the demand that it come into our life, if we are to know its
operation in us.
It has breadth and length and depth and height beyond our natural understanding.
It passes natural knowledge. But we can know it from our personal relationship
with Christ. We cannot in this life ever fully grasp or know it, but whatever love
we have already apprehended, there is still an immeasurable amount still waiting
for us.
2. And It Is The Sure Foundation Of Our Personal Relationship With Him
“That we be rooted and grounded in that love” is also a powerful prayer. It means
that we be strengthened with roots so as to be firmly fixed. It means a process of
growth in strength and sustenance from apprehending that love. It means a
process to render one firm and unwavering on strong foundation. The rock on
which our foundation rests is that same love in which our roots are planted to
grow.
3. We Must Personally Experience God’s Love Before We Can Apprehend It
The main reason the depth of this love is so incomprehensible to us is we know
intrinsically that we are totally unworthy of it. We read, and mentally believe, the
promises of God’s love in the Bible; but our sin-nature keeps us from abandoning
ourselves in it.
Many of us don’t consciously refuse His love; we just feel we are unworthy of it.
We carry with us the weighty idea that His love must be earned and deserved.
This carries over into all of life and often goes back to one’s childhood where we
learned to think that all love is conditional. “If I’m good enough, I can be
rewarded. If I’m not good, I can only expect to suffer for my wrongness.”
Yes, we’re unworthy of it. Yes, our sin-nature stands between it and us. The fact
is no one of us is good enough to deserve God’s love, It only comes to us
unconditionally. It is only upon His initiatives, not ours, that it is available to us.
That’s why we just said we must “conquer” or “seize” it. By blind faith.
1 John 4:7 says “Love is of [or from] God”. This means that it has its origin in
Him, it emanates from Him, and cannot be fully known apart from Him. Since
this is a quality that only comes from God Himself, we cannot expect to produce it
apart from Him.
Herein lies a secret to a breakthrough in our faith. Although our sin grieves our
Lord (and His Holy Spirit is continually working to cleanse us of it), we must
realize that He loves us unconditionally and wants us to experience His love.
There is no experiencing of God so great as that of experiencing His love and
allowing His love to move through us to touch others.
This love flows in two directions. We, as both recipients and givers, stand in
between the two. Our love to God is to be without reservation, with all our heart
(the part in us that feels and responds), with all our soul (the part in us that defines
our personality and decides who we are, what we are, and how we act and react),
with all our mind (the part in us that thinks, learns, knows, decides, and
understands), and with all our strength (the part in us that rises up, beaks down
opposition, withstands enmity and accomplishes feats). Our love for God
permeates all of this. There will be no part of life left untouched by our love for
Him.
4. God’s Love Edifies, Not Constrains, Us
This kind of love comes very close to being selflessness, the total giving of one’s
self. But it is not a defeated kind of giving. For when we truly want this love,
then its acquisition becomes possible. His Spirit will produce it in us when we
want it, for this love acts in accord with our will. It will heal a marriage, mend a
broken relationship, end a war, or bing a person to completion in knowing God.
In summary, it edifies us.
5. He Wills That We Allow Him In Us Extend His Love To Others
In John 13:34 Jesus gives us a new and provocative commandment: “A new
commandment I give unto you, That ye love [Agape] one another; as I have loved
you, that ye also love one another.” “New” here is “of a different kind that what
you know”. And as a commandment, it is a commission, not an option nor a mere
suggestion.
In the first mention of Agape love in the New Testament (the sermon on the
mount, Matthew 5:43-46), Jesus tells us to love our enemies, do good to those
who hate us, pray for those who despitefully use us and who persecute us.
That captures the essence of the new life-style by which we are to demonstrate
that His “Way of the Cross” is a far superior life-style that that which the world
knows. Again, God’s fullness has to do with love; it is when we know this love
that we become an expression on earth of Who He is.
6. God’s Love Is The Total Opposite Of The World’s Form Of “Love”
The New Testament Greek had another word for love beside Agape. That word is
Eros. Eros was a very important concept to the Greeks. It promoted the
gratification of self and the fulfillment of personal desire. This kind of love seeks
its own end and pushes down all who stand in its path.
But Eros is the very opposite of Jesus’ Agape love. Agape is the giving of one’s
self; to meet the needs of others. Eros seeks in others the fulfillment of its own
desires. In the King James translation of 1 Corinthians chapter 13, Agape is
translated “charity”, which is a giving without the expectation of a return.
7. God’s Love Flows From Him To Us To Others And Back To Him
Agape love has four channels in which it flows. We indicate them in the vugraph.
<<< VUGRAPH >>>
The first is that channel through which flows from God to us. The second
channel is internal to us, i.e, from us to us; it is that channel that moves about
inside us to release in us a pure, unprideful love for ourselves. The third is the
channel that takes this love from us to others and back to God. The fourth is the
channel through which love flows from others back to us.
If we don’t have these first two channels of love open to us, then anything that
comes from us becomes less an expression of Agape and more an expression of
Eros.
8. And God’s Love Effects Our Inner Healings
But the opening of ourselves to this love of God, receiving it as He gives it
unconditionally, will heal us internally. It becomes the secret for the restoration
of a failed marriage, the healing of a broken communion, and the breaking down
of all kinds of prison walls.
We have been created by God to flow in love-motivated servanthood. For this,
we need to know we are servants, have a means of serving, and others to receive
our servanthood. Only when those three needs are met, do we experience the
peace that passes all understanding, that we are all we have been created for. But
those three needs can only be met in us by our Lord Christ Jesus, and by Him
flowing His love into us and through us to others. God’s fullness has to do with
love. It is when we know this love that we become an expression on earth of Who
He is.
When we open ourselves to this kind of Agape love, first from God to us, then let
it become settled within us, then we find incredible inner healing. We find our
inner needs wonderfully met in God and are then free to meet the needs of other
around us with a pure and life-giving expression of selfless love.