I think most Christians are aware that we are supposed to love people. Even unbelievers are aware that Christians are supposed to love people. Christ summed up the law of God in Mark 12:30-31 as loving God and loving our neighbor. The Apostle Paul repeated this in Galatians 5:14.
This command to love is clear and unambiguous. However one difficulty we can experience is in the meaning of love. Many things pass for love in the world that are nothing like the love of God. Even worse much passes for love in the Church that has little to do with real love.
The Apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesians that they might know the love of Christ which passes knowledge so that they could be filled with the fulness of God (Eph. 3:19). If we are to know what passes human intellect we must have a beyond human experience in some way. Several years ago I had a small experience of this.
It happened totally unexpectedly at a youth group I was attending at the time. I was about 18 years old and a typical self-centered youth more interested in trying to fit in myself than in seeing others accepted. Because of the insecurity associated with the teen years, people tend to be less accepting of others at that time. We are still discovering ourselves and trying to find where we fit. At this service the youth leader lead us in singing "I love you with the love of the Lord." It isn't a song I usually look forward to, because most of the time when people sing it they are lying, but as I sang it at this time, I felt a love come into my heart for everyone there in the service. I knew it was a love beyond any that I could have in myself. It was a love that could look beyond all the differences in personality and all the pettiness that so often is in churches and receive and except everyone who was there. It has haunted me ever since, and ruined me for anything less, though I have failed to walk in its ways often afterwards. It embraced all, even many that I barely knew and had never taken the time to try to know. It is hard to describe this love.
Because of the way that the word "love" is misused, I believe it is important to study 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 which shows us the hallmarks of true love. This is the love we are to show, not only in word but in deed. I would like to do a few posts on this subject. The first one is comparing the life of Christ with this portion where we can see how He manifested this love on earth. Then I would like to apply it as a touchstone to our behavior in certain circumstances we may face (currently I am thinking of 2 specific ones, but I might do more). The purpose here even if you don't agree with all my applications of these principles is to stir us up to test ourselves and our day to day actions by the law of love.
May God grant us grace to do so!
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