Monday, January 22, 2024

Love is not an Act it is a Part of our Being

1 Corinthians 13:4-8
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away."

Love is not merely an act of kindness. Even unloving people can do kind acts to benefit their own reputation without any sense of love for the person they help.
Worldly love is always about personal benefit and conditional. God's love is a part of the being of the one who loves. They don't have to try to love or pretend to give they just are naturally empathetic and concerned for others.
 
The love of the world is based on self-aggrandizement not authentic sacrificial tenderness and affection.
 
All the qualities of Christ-like love are what Christ does in us when we become born again. We don't have to try it is what comes out of us without thinking or trying.
 
Those who have worldly love will only show kindness when it benefits them and almost never when it interrupts their routine or plans.
 
The only reason to know what these people are like is to make sure we do not become like them by paying more attention to our feelings and desires than to God's principles and guidance.
 
We are all capable of becoming something less than Christ-like if we allow feelings to guide us. The more we are guided by Christ the less we will "feel" a need to respond the way the world responds. In fact the more we obey God the less feelings matter at all.
 
We do have feelings and should say so, but we ought never to live according to those feelings. Often feelings alert us to problems within ourselves that need work. When our first response to an insult is to defend ourselves or fight back we know there pride that needs to be extinguished.
 
1 Corinthians 16:14
"Let all that you do be done in love."

1 John 4:8
"Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love."

John 13:34-35
"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.”

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