ICS Daily Devotions
How to Be Perfected in Love?
1 John 2:4-5 (NKJV) He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him.
The Apostle John says the love of God can be perfected in us, which means keeping the commandment to love and exercising God’s kind of love. The more we choose to use Agape love to love others, the better we get at it. Loving someone unconditionally means our love for them isn’t affected by their words and actions towards us—we love them no matter what. When we let go of the expectation of reciprocation, we won’t be disappointed or disillusioned about people and love.
God’s kind of love is already in us, and it is available to us through the fruit of the Holy Spirt, the first of which being love. When we know that God is love and He loves us unconditionally, we will be able to exercise the love that has been made available to us.
Church splits can be prevented if everyone walks in unconditional love. Without building the foundation of unconditional love and acceptance towards one another, church members may attack pastors seeing them as employees rather than men and women called by God to head the ministry of the local church, while pastors may also be defensive about the accusations and launch counter attacks instead of humbly accepting the feedbacks and continuing to love the sheep unconditionally and minister to them.
As we maintain our personal relationship with God, that love grows as we feed it with the Word of God concerning love and practise living in love. We need to learn how to let this love dominate us.
John 15:5 (NKJV) “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
Left to our own devices, we will always operate in Phileo love, because we will want to yield to the flesh and live independent of God. However, if we want to allow God’s love to grow in our lives, we need to choose to abide in Him, and let the fruit of the Holy Spirit continue to bear the fruit of Agape love in us. We can do nothing, and certainly not bear the fruit of the Agape love, apart from Christ.
We have the ability to exercise unconditional love through the new creation, the empowerment of the Holy Spirt and having God’s nature in us. When we allow the unconditional love that is shed abroad by the Holy Spirit in our heart to flow to the people around us, we are exercising the muscle of love.
Sermon Series: How to love? (Part 2)
