Kingdom Lesson #15

Blog – Kingdom Lesson # 15  Love.     By Jim Banks       www.jimandpatbanks.com   www.traumaprayer.com

One could not investigate the Kingdom of Heaven without at least mentioning the pillar of the entire proposition behind it, namely love. You’ve heard it said that God does not ‘have’ love, because He is love. Not only is that true, but without love not only is there no kingdom, but no glue to hold it all together. It is the foundation of everything.

John 13:34-35 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” ESV

Since I am commanded by Jesus to “Love one another” How do I love when I’ve never seen it properly modeled to me? If I never experienced it at home, how then do I export that which I do not have? I recently ministered to a young woman who was in a Holy Spirit centered drug rehab program (143 Ministries in Augusta, Georgia, which I highly recommend) whose only desire since she was a little kid, was simply to be loved. That desire to be loved got her connected to the wrong people, who led her down the wrong road nearly destroying her life.

It is said that the sincerest form of flattery is imitation. How do I imitate that which I’ve never known? Many believers have struggled to allow the Lord to love them and have consequently struggled to believe that He actually loved them because they had never felt it. So many have struggled with sexual promiscuity because it got so easily confused with love, which it is not, only because sex is the closest one can get to another human being.

“4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong doing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends.” (1Corinthians 13:4-8, ESV)

Since we are in a very performance oriented society we generally apply the above noted passage as a measuring stick on how I should love, and as an analysis of others should love us. And this is often how these verses are applied by numerous pastors in pulpits around the world. Now this Chapter has become famous for a number of reasons, the chief-est of which is that it gives us a measuring stick of our ability to love against which we can compare ourselves and our progress at learning to do so – performance criteria. Obviously, it is quite a high standard to which few of us attain. But if we are truly wanting to be loved we might want to consider looking at this verse from another perspective.

Since God is love (1John 4:8) we also should consider the passage noted in 1 Corinthians 13 as being how God loves us.

1. God’s love for us causes Him to be patient with us even when we refuse to learn our lesson and we make the same mistake again. His words says it pretty plainly; “With man not much is possible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matt 19:26), and “For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are ” (Psalms 103:14)
2. God’s love for us causes Him to always be kind to us, even in His correction of us. (Romans 2:4) it is the goodness of God that leads us to repentance.
3. God’s love is not arrogant. (Here’s a bunch of synonyms for arrogant: aloof, bossy, cavalier, cocky, haughty, pompous, pretentious, smug, vain) He’s none of those.
4. God’s love for us does not insist on its own way. He has given each of us a free will to make our own choices, for good or otherwise. This strikes me as very interesting in that He knows the end from the beginning. As a parent, I would try to interfere with things to save my kids from the damage to be caused by their impending failure.
5. God’s love for us is not irritable or resentful. He doesn’t get huffy with us even when we come to Him for help following a series of catastrophically bad decisions.
6. His love for us does not rejoice when we do something wrong, like many of our critics would. Unlike we humans, God does not rejoice when someone breaks His law(s) and something evil befalls him. It’s rather like the parental love we have for our children. We are not glad when they are harmed even when they’ve been previously warned about the consequence of doing XYZ.
7. His Love for us bears all things. Human love is generally conditional. Regardless of whether things work out for us or not, whether we’re obedient or not, whether we respect Him or not, He loves us through it all, and in it all. He’s even there helping to pick up the pieces when it blows up in our faces.
8. His love for us believes all things. It never assumes the worst. I ministered to a prostitute not long ago, and in the midst of the session I asked her to inquire of Jesus what He thought of her. His response floored her, “You’re perfect!” This is in spite everything He knows about us.
9. His love hopes all things. Several years ago I was griping to the Lord about how poorly something was working out and how it was affecting how I was able to work. The Lord graciously ignored my whining and told me, “Do you not know that when I created you I knew exactly what I as doing? And do you not know that I know exactly how to get it out of you?”
10. His love for us endures all things. Our repeated relapses into sin or destructive behaviors hurts His heart for us but it never throws in the towel on us, for He said that good work He started in us He will complete, regardless of how many times we hurt ourselves in the process.
11. His love never ends, or fails as other translations have it. In other words, it never quits, regardless of what we do, He still loves us. We are never disqualified from receiving His love. Perhaps the benefit of it, but never the love itself. People would say, Well, if He loved us He wouldn’t let these things happen to us. Not true. Failure to respect the law of gravity has consequences. His love for us never quits because we do stupid things.

The point of this is that in order to benefit from this revised perspective we are going to have to get our eyes off of ourselves and focus on the Lord. We have to remember that Jesus put it this way, “You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should permanent: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.” John 15:16

This verse implies a number of things that are important to us. First of all, you have been chosen by God because of His love for you. If you were not loved, you wouldn’t have been chosen for this assignment. Secondly, because He loves you He gave you a specific purpose, a reason for being here that has significance. The earth and its population will be better off because you were here. Or said in another fashion, because He loved the rest of the population of the planet, He chose you to fulfill the purpose He chose for you. Further, that which He chose you to contribute to would be a permanent one, able to impact multiple generations. Because of His love for you He fulfilled John 15:15 so that as His beloved friend He would answer the prayers you pray that will change the earth. This is the promise of a proud father to his favorite child whom He dearly loves.