Our new life in Christ evolves through love, both His love for us and our love for Him.
Through His love we give up our need to control: to have life go according to our plan and idea of what constitutes success; to cease expecting people to act according to what benefits, appeases, comforts and pleases us; to willingly allow vulnerability and readily admit when we are wrong—and offer an apology.
Through the love of Christ we overcome addictions, dysfunctions, mess-ups, failures and ongoing temptations.
This love I am referring to is not just Christ’s love for us, it is also our love for Christ.
Jesus does, indeed, love us.
However, many of us might initially assume that His love for us is a “magic bullet” that will now imbue us with self-control so that we don’t have to really train or develop any Biblical strength in subduing our impulses or long-established habits and conceptions.
Sometimes we might exchange what is a Biblical expectation for our emotional and behavioral transformation-in-Christ for cheap grace: that which accepts Christ’s forgiveness but not his renovation.
My high school French teacher used to say that some of us were acting as if she could just walk up to each one of us and teach French through osmosis. But of course, learning anything does not happen that way. Although she could instruct us and model the language, some proactive cooperation must also emanate from within us.
And so it is in our Christian walk.
Jesus pours His love into us (with salvation, I am quick to point out, being of faith and not works), and we, in turn, work out that salvation (Philippians 2:12) through loving Him back and following His lead (John14:15).
This love of Christ is more than just a “devotional” love.
Jesus Himself asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” (John 21:15-17).
Peter assures Him again and again that yes, he loves Jesus.
Jesus responds to Peter’s declarations with:
“Tend My lambs.”
“Shepherd My sheep.”
“Tend My sheep.”
Do we see the connection?
Jesus absolutely calls us to love Him. But the reason, I believe, is apparent from Scripture: love Me so that your love for Me will motivate you to love others, and to act towards others out of your unequivocal love for Me.
Jesus knows very well that the only pure motivator of the human heart, mind, body and soul is love for Him, which we gain after we experience and intellectually learn His love for us and His love for every person.
In 2 Corinthians 5:14, we read,
“For the love of Christ controls us…”
Other translations read:
“For Christ’s love compels us…”
“For the love of Christ urges us on…”
Our love for Christ is derived out of Christ’s love for us (1 John 4:19).
This reciprocating love controls us in the sense that it becomes the motivation that ultimately contributes to the resisting of temptations in thought, word and deed that would otherwise rule. These are the temptations that derail our personal lives and our family and community relationships.
We can look at 2 Corinthians 5:14 in further context:
“For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on our behalf” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).
Based on the above verse, this Christ-love now motivates us in every way going forward.
A relationship with God is not a one way street. God wants us to love Him for the very reason that it motivates us to live out that love for Him, which is what brings us renewal, joy and release—transformation in His likeness—which benefits those in our midst.
The love of God for us and lived out for Him is never for “self-help” and “self-actualization" (the precedence of the word “self” would prove that).
In fact, Christ’s betterment of each one of us as individuals—instilling inner peace and contentment in Him, although certainly a necessary and essential gift of His transposing process—is not meant to end there, or to persist on a solely devotional level.
Everyone wants peace on earth (or at minimum, peace within our own homes and cities), yet we sabotage the promulgation of peace when we go no further than a personal inner peace.
A peace that reverberates outward in every situation, plan and person we encounter, calls for an applied kindness and compassion grounded in Christian love through having the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16; Philippians 2:1-2;) and taking “captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
In this, as much as it is up to us, we can be at peace with everyone (Romans 12:18), including ourselves, and have a clear conscience before God.
And so it begins with Christ; “it” being love and reconciliation: as we are first loved we come to love Christ, realizing that the loving of others as ourself takes thoughtful, intentional, Biblical training and discipline.
It—this living out of Christ via a deep love for Him—is indeed, as Paul describes, a race, not to be run quickly but accurately, with precision—unwavering—consistently—until the very end.
The love of Christ compels. It urges us on…
Copyright Barb Harwood
“He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8
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