I’ve known this truth, but yesterday I listened to a sermon online (Grace Point Community Church, Houston) that brought further light. If we are God’s (and we are), His love is within us (and it is). That means that loving is our natural, automatic, normal, usual response.
John encourages the believers TO LOVE, a verb, an action (1 John 4:7). He invites them to LET themselves be loving. He reminds them that they have a choice. Love is within us, is our default behavior but we have a choice (free will) in which we may withhold that which is natural. Love should flow from me. When it does not (and this happens more often than I would like to acknowledge) it is revealing that I am operating from my “self”, my flesh, my ego and not from my identity, fused with Christ – His life and mine, inseparable.
It is always a choice to love. We get to walk from the Spirit within in the truth of who we are, or, walk in the flesh and leave a trail of regret for being loveless. When we withhold the love that defines who we are, in those moments of lovelessness we are the hypocrite. Yup, the true me loves – the hypocrite withholds and walks in a lie of their identity. Walk free. Be who you be. Love well, love often, love naturally.
1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone
who loves is born of God and knows God.
Let us love one another
Everyone who lovesἀγαπάω, agapao: Strong’s 25 NT; loveHelps Word-studies: to prefer, to love; preferring to live through Christ by embracing God’s will (choosing His choices) and obeying them through His power.
Zodhiates: Love as a direction of the will and finding one’s joy in something.
Thayer’s Greek Lexicon: "to take pleasure in the thing, prize it above other things, be unwilling to abandon it or do without it"
Love is from God
ἀγάπη, agape: Strong’s 26, NT: Love, goodwill
Zodhiates: Benevolent love, not shown by doing what the person loved desires but what the one who loves deems as needed by the one loved. Unselfish love.
LET love
John encourages the believers TO LOVE, a verb, an action (1 John 4:7). He invites them to LET themselves be loving. He reminds them that they have a choice. Love is within us, is our default behavior but we have a choice (free will) in which we may withhold that which is natural. Love should flow from me. When it does not (and this happens more often than I would like to acknowledge) it is revealing that I am operating from my “self”, my flesh, my ego and not from my identity, fused with Christ – His life and mine, inseparable.
It is always a choice to love. We get to walk from the Spirit within in the truth of who we are, or, walk in the flesh and leave a trail of regret for being loveless. When we withhold the love that defines who we are, in those moments of lovelessness we are the hypocrite. Yup, the true me loves – the hypocrite withholds and walks in a lie of their identity. Walk free. Be who you be. Love well, love often, love naturally.
1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone
who loves is born of God and knows God.
Let us love one another
Everyone who lovesἀγαπάω, agapao: Strong’s 25 NT; loveHelps Word-studies: to prefer, to love; preferring to live through Christ by embracing God’s will (choosing His choices) and obeying them through His power.
Zodhiates: Love as a direction of the will and finding one’s joy in something.
Thayer’s Greek Lexicon: "to take pleasure in the thing, prize it above other things, be unwilling to abandon it or do without it"
Love is from God
ἀγάπη, agape: Strong’s 26, NT: Love, goodwill
Zodhiates: Benevolent love, not shown by doing what the person loved desires but what the one who loves deems as needed by the one loved. Unselfish love.
LET love
RSS Feed
