Basic HTML Version
Love For Others, January 16
Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as
Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a
sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.
Ephesians 5:1, 2
.
You are to follow God as dear children, to be obedient to all His requirements,
walking in love as Christ also hath loved us.... Love was the element in which
Christ moved and walked and worked. He came to embrace the world in the arms
of His love...
We are to follow the example set by Christ, and make Him our pattern, until
we shall have the same love for others as He has manifested for us. He seeks to
impress us with this profound lesson of love.... If your hearts have been given
to selfishness, let Christ imbue you with His love. He desires that we shall love
Him fully, and encourages, yes, even commands, that we shall love others as He
has given us an example. He has made love the badge of our discipleship.... This
is the measurement to which you are to reach,—“Love one another; as I have
loved you.” What height, what depth and breadth of love! This love is not simply
to embrace a few favorites, it is to reach to the lowliest and humblest of God’s
creatures. Jesus says, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these
my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” ...
The love and sympathy which Jesus would have us give to others does not
savor of sentimentalism, which is a snare to the soul; it is a love that is of heavenly
extraction, which Jesus exemplifies by both precept and example. But instead
of manifesting this love, how often we are alienated and estranged one from
another.... The result is estrangement from God, a dwarfed experience, a blighting
of Christian growth....
The love of Jesus is an active principle, uniting heart with heart in bonds
of Christian fellowship. Every one who enters heaven will on earth have been
perfected in love; for in heaven the Redeemer and the redeemed will be objects of
our interest.
[28]
21