5.1 Love One Another
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The Eighth Most Important Verse
John 15:12-13 & 1 John 3:16. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. — By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
“Abide in Me and I in you” is not a “commandment,” but an invitation. We are never commanded to partake of life, but only invited to do so. Eating of life is by invitation only. However, once we find ourselves utterly inside of Jesus by faith, once we know that Jesus fills all that is us in all of our doing by faith, then we come into direct encounter with the absolute passion that fills the heart of the One who fills us full.
A Word of Creation. Love one another fervently with a pure heart (1 Peter 1:22). We do NOT receive this word as something we “try to do,” otherwise we would be always falling short. We receive it as the creative word of our Savior, the One who fills our hearts, as the very nature of His heart.
Because we believe in Jesus, the word, “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,” is always fulfilled in our hearts regardless of what we “see” or feel. The more we believe that the love of God does fill our hearts, the more we see it’s reality in outward circumstances, yet we never leave our original rest in God regardless of any outward “seeing.”
Seeing God. Notice that Jesus says: “This is MY commandment.” Thus it is Jesus Himself loving others through us. As we are utterly at rest inside the Lord Jesus Christ, we know this Love that always fills our hearts. He is different than we thought.
God is Love. — This is love, that a Man lay down His life for His friends. — This is God; know Him.
Jesus said that everything said about God in the Bible is figurative. He said that the only seeing of God granted to the entire universe, both heaven and earth, IS a Man laying down His life for His friends. But 1 John 3:16 shows us the same God revealed as us – And we also!
The Specifics of Love. By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us, and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Paul said, “Love suffers long.” John said, “And we also.”
Just as faith is specific and substantial, so also is love. Love is not some mushy, all-pervasive “force.” Love is specific and substantial. Love is the scariest part of God and the most contrary to the thinking of accusation. If I love you, I am always setting you free of myself. You are free of me. Love is the deepest respect and the highest regard. But love is not just setting all others free of itself; love is also bearing inside itself all costs of that freedom, all sorrow, all loss; all the pain of mistaken choices love bears inside itself.
Love Bears All. Love stumbles with His enemies along their way. Love limits Himself to their limitation. Love carries those “enemies” all the way into death and all the way into Life upon the Mercy Seat of God, inside Himself as His close and dear friends. Love bears all. Love endures all.
If I love you, I will always be setting you free of me, and I will always be bearing in my own being all cost of your freedom. To “force” others to do “what is right” is disrespect and not love. God never forces anyone, ever. Yet love is no permissive “anything goes.” In complete contrast to both of those human stupidities, Love sets free and then Love bears all the costs of freedom. Bearing the cost of freedom IS the most powerful power in the universe.
A Man laying down His life for His friends.
Made Perfect in Love. Let’s bring in a powerful supporting verse, one that simply blows this reality right out of our human limitations. That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me (John 17:21-23).
Spend time considering these words. Can they be true?
No Limit. By these words, Jesus created the New Creation; He spoke into existence the Kingdom of God. It is impossible to spend too much time on these words or to take them “too far.” There is no limit upon them nor what they mean in our lives and in fulfillment here on this earth in this present age. These words are God revealed. To limit ourselves by any limitation is not to know God. The God who fills us with all of Himself has no limit, therefore we have no limit.
For the Sake of His Body. I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church (Colossians 1:24). This is not something we could ever think of “doing” apart from God Himself filling us full. We are filled with the God who shows Himself through a Man laying down His life for His friends. We know Him, and in knowing Him, we bear His heart inside of ours.
Every part of our lives is the Lord Jesus Himself filling up in our bodies the cost of setting His beloved church free. For the sake of His body. We are, in every moment of our lives, the very intercession of Christ. The throne of God, the Mercy Seat of heaven fills me full, pressing out to my rib cage, and overflowing beyond in rivers. As it does you. — God!
Subdue by Love. And He has invested His authority absolutely in me. I have the right to become a son of God. I have the right to subject everything to the power by which Jesus subdues all things to Himself — LOVE!
And so I take the offense that is most frightening to me, when I am feeling the most vulnerable in close relationships with others, and I draw that offense and all my frightful vulnerability into the Love of God, into the Mercy Seat that fills me full. “God, I thank you for this difficulty and offense. I am so grateful. I love (name the person), and I love (name the offense) with all the Love that fills me full. They rest, both person and difficulty, in love inside of me.”
The Mercy Seat. The enemies of Jesus come into submission under His feet. I am His feet. And the person who committed the offense is now set free from all shadow of that offense. When we draw all things into love, we cause the offense to cease and the person to go free.
The power of the Mercy Seat is the Blood stains that cover it. Those spots of Blood are an awful transaction, God ripped open for all to see. Mercy is full judgment against sin. Mercy is a terrible, terrible thing. Yet the moment that Mercy has accomplished its work, all offense is forgotten and no longer exists. Love is rooted in Blood, the Blood sprinkled upon our hearts, the throne of heaven, the authority of God.
Sharing Heart with God. The love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us (Romans 5:5). – I have found Me a man after My own heart, David, the son of Jesse, who will do all My will (Acts 13:22 – KJV).
What does it mean to have hearts filled with, not just “the love of God,” but, in actuality, God who is love? What does it mean to possess a heart like God’s? What is a life of being the Mercy Seat of God? What is the honor of sharing heart with God?
He that has seen Me has seen the Father (John 14:9). – I am gentle and lowly of heart (Matthew 11:29). What does it mean to be filled with a God who is gentle and lowly of heart?
Seeing Others Better. Have you ever considered a God who is meek and lowly of heart and who sees others as better than Himself? What does it mean to be filled full and to overflowing with such a God?
I am setting before you these thoughts with the suggestion that there is nothing in all the human experience of greater value than for God to shape our hearts to contain and to reveal His heart – sharing Hheart with God. Our hearts are being shaped by the response of our faith to the Father inside of every moment of our lives. In all things, we see that this God who fills us full is Father, and that He shares fully with us everything that comes our way.
How Love Rules. Yet we are speaking here of a ruling verse. How would a verse like this RULE over how we read all other verses in the Bible? You see, we are not talking about the “love of God” as something out there, something separate from us. When Jesus said, “Love one another,” the only thing that could possibly mean is for us to “God” one another, for God alone is love. We are not saying that “the love of God” is the rule, though that is an excellent place to start. Rather, we are saying that that God who is love, filling our hearts with all that He is, such a thing must rule over how we read and understand every verse in the Bible.
Knowing Such a God. There is no “arrogant God.” The concept of a “God” who thinks more highly of Himself than He does of anyone else has, in fact, been one of the rules governing Christian thinking. When we know that Jesus alone shows us the Father, and not some human or angelic image of exalted heavenly glory, then we know God as meek and lowly of heart.
Knowing such a God, a God who fills us full, a God who thinks more highly of us than He does of Himself, alters our understanding of and response to every line in the Bible. The words themselves do not shift, but our seeing does. — By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.