What is the justification a person would have to allow them to alter their life and their heart for a Being they’ve never seen and a Sacrifice they never witnessed? What is so convincing?? Fear, pressure, religion, guilt, appearance, reward,self righteousness love. All of these reasons? Some of them? One of them? None of them? You know. There’s only one powerful and persuasive reason. His Love. A love that is incomparable and immeasurable since it was willing to give itself up for it’s haters. Love’s hope was that it could break through willing hearts and move them to join with Him. It worked. Many people made that transformation as their own heart responded to His. So, I wonder, if at first I followed Him because of His Love, why are there moments that I am moved more by those first 7 reasons? His Love and the power that it displayed when it irreversibly changed me. “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.” 1 John 4:6
It sort of gives me comfort that I am not alone in being occasionally sidetracked by false motivation. Even the Corinthians needed to remember that as a new person, we are not defined by the past or by the world. Therefore, I am not obligated to be or do anything according to the standards of this world or the religious world. My life is fueled by His Love, and it does not matter how anyone else perceives me. I must act, speak, pray, dream, think, in accordance with the measure of love He has given me. Since it is limitless, and undeserved, it is capable of prompting me to live a life that is like His.
His Love is completely able to produce in me the desire to be Him while I am here on earth and that includes speaking the truth in love about-
Obedience: “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.” John 14:23
Sin: “For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander.” Matt 15:19
Love: “No one shows greater love than when he lays down his life for his friends.” John 15:13
Righteousness: “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ–the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.” Phill 3:9
His Love is meant to be the exclusive driver of my life, not anything or anyone else.
Love Always???