CHRIST-DAILY
DEVOTIONS
 January 1st

LOVE

"And we have known and believed the love that God has for us.  God is love and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him" (I John 4:16).

Love is the supreme core value of the Christian.  Love is the foundation core value upon which all other core values hinge and are built.  Faith works by and through love (Gal. 5:6).  Our heavenly Father wanted to have a love relationship and fellowship with sons. He spoke His word in the beginning of beginnings, and His Word became His Son (John 1:1-2).  The Son Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible Father (Col. 1:15).  Christ is "ever being the radiance of glory, and the express image of His essence, and ever supporting all things by the word of His power" (Hebr. 1:3a, Expanded Greek text).  Christ is tangible manifestation of the love of our Father.  When the Holy Spirit rebirthed us as his sons, the Son of His love was placed in us as an incorruptible seed (I Cor. 12:13; Col. 1:13; I Pet. 1:23).  The Holy Spirit continues to reveal this truth and fact, so that we will make decisions and choices to allow Christ to be expressed in us, and so that Christ in us will be fully functional through the transformed and renewed mind of the Spirit (I Cor. 2:10-16; Gal. 2:20; Rom. 8:5-11).

Eros love is a physical or romantic love.  Eros love is sometimes a self-for-self love which moves all the way to lust and often based on feelings.  Phileo love is a 60% brotherly love that often has some conditions that the love is based upon.  Agape love is the God-kind of love.  Agape love is an unconditional, self-sacrificing love.  Agape love is a self-for-others love.  God so loved us that He sent His Son (John 3:16).  We love God because He first loved us (I John 4:19).  We were Spirit birthed as His sons and left here on this earth, so that we could have fellowship with our Father, through the love of His Son in us.  Our Father also desired that we choose to let the self-for-others love Spirit flow through us to one another in this world (I John 4:7-17).  We are to agape love our brothers and sisters (I Jn. 4:17); our husbands and our wives (Eph. 5:22-25); our neighbors (Matt. 5:43); and even our enemies (Matt. 5:44).  Why? The Father is more interested in seeing Christ flow through you to all men by His Spirit, than you walking in the flesh doing and being something aside from Christ not in or by His Spirit.  Concerning agape love, Paul declared, "Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up" (I Cor. 13:4).  Love "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails" (I Cor. 13:7-8a).

Paul proclaims that Christ will be dwelling in our hearts through faith, and that we should be "rooted and grounded in love" (Eph. 3:17).  May the Holy Spirit reveal to us the width and length and depth and height – of the love of Christ which passeth knowledge (Eph. 3:18-19a).  You let Christ live in and through you as you (Gal. 2:20).  Let Christ  live and let His love flow be fully expressed to others through you.  Then, you will be filled with all the love fullness of God.  Christ will be able to do exceedingly abundant  above all that we ask or think, according to the love power that works in us! (Eph. 3:19b-20). V

Written by Dwight Davis
Christ-Ministries
 

                                               

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