GOD IS LOVE

PART TWO
GOD’S HOLY LOVE

“GOD is Love”
1 JOHN 4:8, 16

The scriptural statement “God is Love” conveys to us the verity of one powerful conclusion…LOVE is the very nature and essence of all that HE IS. The enormity of what this means is staggering and glorious. Were we to actually reconsider our understanding of the scriptures, and the import of such a wonder, the ramifications of it would revolutionize the very operandi of the Body of Christ. For if that glorious God who IS LOVE is seen only through the lens of a pure heart (Matthew 5:8), and by the apprehension of HIS HOLINESS (Hebrews 12:10, 14), then we must reconsider the pale notions of what religious men pass off as “love”.

Paul in writing to the Church at Ephesus prays in Chapter 3…

“…that He may give you, according to the riches of His glory,
by His power to become mighty in the inward man through His Spirit,
that through faith Christ may dwell in your hearts,
having been rooted and founded in love,
that you may be given strength to grasp*, with all the saints,
what is the breadth and length and depth and height,
and to know the surpassing knowledge and love of Christ,
that you may be filled to all the fullness of God”
EPHESIANS 3:16-19
(Green’s Literal Translation)

Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, prays that they may be given strength to grasp (lay hold of, appropriate and make one’s own) the surpassing knowledge and the love of Christ. The love presented today requires nothing; it is casually discussed and preached. The LOVE that Paul speaks of requires a ministration of the strength of God to enable us to see and pursue its depth and power. Such is the contrast of our day. The presentation of a love based upon human strength and concepts (in HIS name) results in a lukewarm and ineffectual presentation of the Gospel. A love that removes accountability, that leaves men in apathy or hopelessness, is NOT the fruit of God’s love. A Gospel that says you are loved of God, without imparting the corresponding power and the resources to walk in victory, is a total misrepresentation of the very purpose of God in Christ. This LOVE that initiated God to send His only begotten Son to fully deal with SIN in the earth has come to abide in our hearts by faith to make this so. To put this all into perspective Paul ends the prayer mentioned above with …

“Now to Him being able to do
exceedingly above all that we ask or think,
according to the power working in us”
EPHESIANS 3:20
(Green’s Literal Translation)

Do we believe this? HIS ABILITY to do in our lives is in proportion to the power that is at work in us. We read in 1 Corinthians 13 that “LOVE BELIEVES ALL THINGS”! True love does not stagger at the promises of God. True love pursues those promises. True love pursues holiness. It pursues with the intent to lay hold of (Philippians, Chapter 3). We talk about love as if it were comfortable with unbelief, stagnancy, compromise with sin and a “tolerance” with the status quo of the day! The LOVE of God in the Son PRODUCED the zeal that caused the Son to go into the temple that day and cleanse it from the horror of the deeds of men in God’s name. The same LOVE that came to the aid of the woman caught in the very act of adultery (and silenced the same men who were content with the money changers) also spoke to the woman “go and sin no more”. Somehow in our well-meaning “love” this aspect is always left out of the story. A love that is able to forgive sin must by its very nature impart the power to free us from that sin. To leave a soul in the misery of the wages of sin is not love. To be free from a thing is freedom; that is why His name is Jesus.

“…and thou shall call HIS NAME JESUS
for HE shall save HIS people
FROM their sins”
MATTHEW 1:21

Love is the very fuel and fire of faith (Galatians 5:6). Faith expresses the fire of the love that fuels it. A tepid religious love is the antithesis of God’s love. The strange fire that was offered by the “priesthood” in Exodus was judged by the same God as Ananias and Sapphira in the Book of Acts.

His power motivated by HIS LOVE is the reason we can be more than conquerors through Christ.

“Now to Him being able to keep you without stumbling,
and to set you before His glory without blemish, with unspeakable joy;
to the only wise God, our Savior,
be glory and majesty and might and authority,
even now and forever. Amen.”
JUDE 1:24-25
(Green’s Literal Translation)

*NOTE: G2638. καταλαμβάνω katalambanō; fut. katalēpsomai, from kata (G2596), an intens., and lambanō (G2983), to take. To apprehend, attain, obtain, find. (I) To lay hold of, seize, with eagerness, suddenness (John 8:3, 4). Of an evil spirit which seizes, takes possession of a person (Mark 9:18). Figuratively of darkness or evil, to come suddenly upon someone (John 12:35; 1 Thess. 5:4; Sept.: Gen. 19:19; 31:23; 1 Kings 18:44). (II) In allusion to the public games, to obtain the prize with the idea of eager and strenuous exertion, to grasp, seize upon (Rom. 9:30; 1 Cor. 9:24; Phil. 3:12, 13, “for which very end I also have been taken hold of by Christ” [a.t.], v. 12).
“The Complete Word Study Dictionary of the New Testament”

Brian Troxel