Love’s Preeminence (Recap)
As the Lord’s prisoner, then, I beg you to live lives worthy of your high calling. (Ephesians 4:1 J.B. Phillips)
Part 2 of this series made the argument for the preeminence of love as the supreme characteristic of a life lived worthily. But what sort of love was the apostle Paul talking about? Fortunately, he didn’t leave us in the dark but went on to describe God’s idea of love in detail.
The love God calls us to
This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience—it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.
Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.
Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a)
In the fourth chapter of the First Letter of John we read that “God is love” (v16). If this is so, try reading the passage above from 1 Corinthinas again, this time substituting “Jesus” for each instance of the word, “Love”. I think you will find yourself well satisfied that the God who became a man is, indeed, Love incarnate!
So then, if love is the foundational characteristic of a life lived worthily and the nature of this love is as we have just read, How are we to attain to such a love? The answer lies in the words of our Lord.
I am the real vine, my Father is the vine-dresser. He removes any of my branches which are not bearing fruit and he prunes every branch that does bear fruit to increase its yield. Now, you have already been pruned by my words. You must go on growing in me and I will grow in you. For just as the branch cannot bear any fruit unless it shares the life of the vine, so you can produce nothing unless you go on growing in me. I am the vine itself, you are the branches. It is the man who shares my life and whose life I share who proves fruitful. For the plain fact is that apart from me you can do nothing at all. (John 15:1-5)
Abiding in Christ—sharing Jesus’ life and allowing him to share ours—is the subject of the next post in this series.
Michael
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