Jesus took LOVE to a whole NEW LEVEL! (The Discipline of a Disciple–part 3)

 “I give you a NEW commandment: Love one another. You must love one another as I have loved you. By this shall all men know that you are my DISCIPLES, if you LOVE one another” (Jn 13:34-35).

All that man was left with after the fall was a human kind of love. But Jesus brought that NEW kind of love, that which was LOST. The AGAPE love. The very nature of God.

All that man was left with was “feleo” love. Nonetheless, a love so powerful and so rich in the mother’s heart towards the child she loves, and so passionate in the husband’s heart towards his wife. Yet a love so limited as to be the predominant topic in divorce courts and so very feeble as to call for human sorrow and suffering; the kind of love responsible for squeezing the tears out of agonizing hearts, the love that turns to jealousy and murder, the love that causes more failures through selfishness and self-gratification. So powerful and yet so limited.

But Jesus brought in a love that seeks not her own. A love that mirrors the very nature of God. A love that can’t operate out of the natural heart, but from the RE-CREATED heart. The manifested love of God in the heart of the “new man” .

A love that is tender, forbearing, long-suffering, kind and unselfish. A love that seeks the joy and the welfare of OTHERS.

SELF is at the center of human love. But God is at the center of AGAPE love. Human love fails, but agape love never fails. But you cannot have AGAPE love without divine nature. It cannot be put on, it cannot be synthetic or fake for it is the heart of God throbbing in a RENEWED heart.

AGAPE love is the badge of true Christian discipleship. It’s the kind of love that elevates Christianity above religion.

Agape is the NEW LAW that makes the life of a saint SWEET. It brings joy, beauty, peace, understanding and compassion in one’s life.

It’s AGAPE love that forgives enemies and can say “for they know not what they do”, and gives you a heart to pray under persecution, and that gives you the strength to forgive.

It’s AGAPE love that clothes bravery in humility, strength in gentleness.

It’s AGAPE love that makes the strong bear the burden of the weak and the rich pay the bills of the poor, the educated be a companion to the simple.

It is AGAPE love that manifests Jesus amongst men.

It’s AGAPE love that takes jealousy out of love, envy out of competing, anger out of conversing and pride out of teaching.

It’s AGAPE love that makes a home, heaven.

The apostle Paul really understood this NEW LAW of love. He spells it out so clearly in 1Cor 13. He says, “Without AGAPE love, all teachings, all preaching, all knowledge, all solutions and revelations, all discoveries and all prophecy and all learning is NOTHING”.

It’s all religious mechanics and logistics and “subscribe” buttons. It’s the husks and the chaff without the wheat. It’s the gifts without the Giver. Even all faith, yet without the compassionate and throbbing love of God in our hearts which weeps with them that weep, is all NOTHING. It’s ALL philanthropic sweat. The kind of “heartless efforts” that will get you the greeting: “depart from Me, ye workers of iniquity, I never knew you.”

Paul goes on to say that that kind of love of God in us makes it possible for us to suffer long, to not envy and to not vaunt ourselves, nor operate in pride. To not be selfish, but think of others’ needs, to not behave unseemingly, to not seek our own, to not be dishonest or rude, to not be easily provoked, nor be so sensitive, to not be scandalous or gossiping and never to rejoice in lies.

It’s the kind of love that bears all things, endures all things, hopes all things and believes all things. It never goes bankrupt, there’s never an empty tank of it. It goes on loving…it never fails, because it never quits loving.

Brothers and sisters let’s not live within the limitations of human love. We’ve been empowered with a GREATER LOVE. “Greater love has no man than this than a man gives his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13). Let’s operate in AGAPE kind of love. Let’s deny ourselves, let’s lay down our life for others. It’s the love of the Holy Spirit of God. “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the HOLY SPIRIT who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5).