Monday, April 1, 2013

God Teaches us to Love

"But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another." (1 Thessalonians 4: 9)

God teaches us to love, or better yet, we are divinely instructed.
 
Theodidaktos: taught of God --  θεοδίδακτος, ον "taught by God, divinely instructed."

How does God do this? By the power of the Holy Spirit:

"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:

"And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.

"For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." (Hebrews 8: 10-12)

God has written His laws in our hearts and minds, and the key element that makes manifest in our lives -- that all our sins are forgiven.

That is the surest sign of God's love for us:
"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4: 10)

This love transforms us into His sons (1 John 3: 1), and Jesus is the first-born of many brethren (Romans 8: 29):

"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." (1 John 4: 17)

This love is perfected in us because through this love we are made a new creation:

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (2 Corinthianss 5: 17)

and

"For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature." (Galatians 6: 15)

When we are established in Christ's perfection righteousness (2 Corinthians 5: 21) and His perfect love (1 John 4: 17), then we will see every fear cast out of our loves (1 John 4: 18).

When we have received the full and growing knowledge of God's love for us, then we love others:

"We love him, because he first loved us." (1 John 4: 19)

"He first loved us"  We learn how to love when we understand how much God  loved us:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3: 16)

So,  God is love (1 John 4: 16), and God has manifested His love to us in His Son, and the  more that we are instructed of His Son and all that He has done, then we love others.

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