This morning I noticed something from when Paul told the
church his intention, “to let you know
the abundant love that I have for you.”[1]
He did NOT say, “to
let you know the abundant love that God has for you”. There is no doubt
that this is true, but it is not what he said. He wanted the people who were thoroughly
beloved of God to know this over-riding motive in his ministry, that he had an
abundant love for them.
When we consider this through Jesus’ imagery of the vine and
the branches,[2]
we see what it looks like when the sap of God’s love flows through a man. The
man is not an impersonal conduit through which God’s love flows to others.
The man is a branch. This means that the man must absorb the
sap of God’s love for himself, feeling the power of that love overtaking every
part of his being. In this experience, something happens to the man’s love: it
is awakened and activated.
What we have now is the sap of Jesus’ love flowing through
the man’s heart, and we have the man’s love coming alive to express itself in
likeness to his Savior. As this life now branches out into the lives of others,
there is both the extension of the sap of love that is in Christ, but expressed
in the abundant love the man has for those in his care.
The only way to have a life in which we live this wonderful
mix of the love of Christ expressed in our abundant love for others is, “I am the vine; you are the branches.
Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart
from me you can do nothing.”[3]
When I find myself “trying” to love others with abundant
love, I’m looking in the wrong direction. If we have to “try” to love others,
we are lacking something in our experience of Jesus’ love. He doesn’t try to love
us; he does love us.
So, we turn from all the people we care about, in all the
varying degrees of responsibility, and longing, and felt-need, and we put all
our focus on abiding in Jesus as a branch abides in the vine. The more we focus
on knowing his love that surpasses knowledge,[4]
the more love-capacity we experience. The more that Jesus fills us with his
love, the more our own love comes alive to love like him.
This makes so much sense of why God’s injunction to, “love one another,” is based on, “just as I have loved you, you also are to
love one another.”[5]
This is not telling us to have such a profound understanding of the doctrine of
God’s love so we can go and teach the doctrine of God’s love to others.
No, this is about having such a profound experience of Jesus’
love for us that we go and love others the same way (and at the same time, I
may add).
How beautiful that Brother Paul would put it like this: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved
children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a
fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”[6]
Do you notice that? God’s expectation is not that we would copy
his love as good scholars who understand the doctrine of love. Rather he wants
us to imitate the very love that has made us feel like “beloved children”. We “walk
in love, AS Christ loved us”.
So much more to say, and consider, and experience, but the
calling is clear: we must so hunger and thirst for the abundant love of God to
fill every part of our being that we will be so satisfied in the love of God by
grace through faith that we become the merciful people who keep showing
abundant love to those God brings into our lives.[7]
God’s grace is doing this to his children. Let us join this work by faith, and
watch God bless us with much fruit to the Father’s glory.
PS: As I went to pray about all this, I suddenly saw the
connection between Paul’s declaration:
“I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you,”[8]
And the unnamed mother who came to Jesus crying out,
“Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.”[9]
The lesson is clear: in my quest to experience and express “abundant love”, I must welcome the
affliction, and anguish, and tears, that come from knowing such love.
© 2016 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)
[1]
II Corinthians 2:4
[2]
John 15:1-11
[3]
John 15:5
[4]
Ephesians 3:19
[5]
John 13:34
[6]
Ephesians 5:1-2
[7]
In God’s expression of the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-12, he promises to satisfy
our hunger and thirst for righteousness in such a way that we become “the
merciful”. As we hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God’s love, our
satisfaction in that love causes us to show it to others; branches doing what
the vine is doing.
[8]
II Corinthians 2:4
[9]
Matthew 15:22
No comments:
Post a Comment