Tag Archives: love one another

Keep My Commands

Christian Life, , ,

KEEP MY COMMANDS

If you love me, keep my commands (John 14:15).

The fourth requirement of a disciple is obedience.

The concept of “keeping” the commandments means much more than obeying them. In Hebrew thought, to keep meant to remember and preserve as well as observe. To preserve meant to uphold and to keep intact. Israel was to live as a community.

The commandments or “Torah” – God’s teachings or instructions for living, were God’s constitution to preserve the community. It had a two-way focus – their attitude towards God and their attitude towards one another. By being faithful to God’s teaching, they were not only preserving their own lives but also the well-being of the entire nation.

Jesus gave His disciples a “new” commandment on the eve of His death – ‘that you love one another as I have loved you.’ This commandment was not new in the sense that they had never heard it before. Love for one another was embedded in the greatest commandment; to love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength and to love their neighbour as themselves. All 613 commandments in the Torah fleshed out the greatest commandment by practically applying it in all the circumstances of their lives.

Jesus drew the attention of His disciples to the greatest motivation for observing and upholding God’s commands – love for Him. His mission included the revelation of the true nature of God – not the rigid disciplinarian they had recreated Him to be, but a loving and gracious Father who set boundaries around their lives so that they could live safe, happy and free lives within those boundaries.

Unfortunately, the religious “Gestapo” had set up their own boundaries which were so unrealistic and restrictive that the people groaned under the weight of ridiculous rules. Fear of failure replaced real love for God. Some tried in vain to appease Him by rigidly sticking to the letter of the law. Others gave up and lived lawless lives. Jesus offered rest to those who were tired of trying to carry the burden of the religious yoke. His yoke, He said, was easy and His burden was light.

What was His yoke? Summed up in one word, His yoke was love.

A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another (John 13: 34-35)

When He spoke those words to His disciples in the upper room, He swept aside all petty manmade and irrelevant rules and focused on the heart of God – love. If love directed their lives instead of religion, they would observe, preserve and uphold what God wanted them to do in every circumstance and situation. They would not have to run to the book to find out what to do. They would worship God alone and contribute to the unity of their community at the same time.

Why did Jesus call love a “new” commandment? It was not new in the sense that Jesus had thought up something that had never been known. It was “new” in the sense that He was calling them back to God’s original intention. We could use the word “renewed” instead of “new” In the religious climate in which they lived, heart and motivation were buried under a load of rules. Jesus called them back to what God had created in the beginning – people who related to and loved Him as their Father.

But that’s not the end of the story. It’s all very well commanding us to love one another, but how do we do it when our basic nature is selfish and greedy? Jesus made a promise to His disciples and to all who follow Him that He would give them the Holy Spirit to live in them and to transform their hearts so that they would have the power to obey Him. The Holy Spirit would replace Jesus’ presence on earth as His “other self”, one exactly like Him who would lead them into truth, reveal Jesus to them and remind them of His teachings.

It can’t get better than that! Jesus actually living within, working in us, transforming us into His image, teaching us how to be true sons! The Holy Spirit enables us, as we respond in obedience to His promptings, to follow, learn, imitate and obey our rabbi in a process of ever-increasing maturity. What other so-called “god” can do that!

Obedience to our Master is not an impossible and beyond-our-reach demand. Jesus would never ask us to do what He does not empower us to obey. After Pentecost, His disciples lived out His command to the extent that, in spite of intense persecution, the church grew because people were attracted by their love.

Nothing is impossible for us to obey with the Holy Spirit within. The same Spirit who empowered Jesus, lives in those who believe in Him.

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

Have you read my blogs on www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com ?

Real And Unchanging Love

Bible Study, , , ,

REAL AND UNCHANGING LOVE

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love. This is how God showed His love among us. He sent His one and only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. This is love; not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4: 7-10).

This is one of the most profound passages of Scripture in the whole Bible. Strange that it should come from the pen of one who was once nicknamed, together with his brother James, “Boanerges”, sons of thunder. These two brothers were real hotheads.

Jesus had to rebuke them for wanting the fry the Samaritans in a certain village in Samaria for refusing hospitality to Jesus. It’s quite understandable that the Samaritans didn’t want this Jew in their village. After all, it was the Jews who despised the Samaritans, not the other way around. Why would they accept Him into their homes and then have Him ridicule them to their faces? Of course, they did not know Jesus.

This same hothead wrote these words, Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. What brought about the transformation? Just being with Jesus and being loved by Him! Three years in the Master’s company did wonders for the disposition of these two brothers. But it was even more than that. John himself was loved – deeply loved by Jesus. Jesus loved him not only for who he was but also in spite of who he was. Did you get that? That’s the miracle of God’s love. It’s so different from human love.

We love those to whom we are drawn because of their looks, their personalities, their way of treating us etc. Our love is mostly reciprocal. Have you ever watched a new father gazing into the face of his new-born baby? There is nothing but wonder and love in his eyes. He holds in his arms a helpless little person who is utterly dependent on him, and he rises to the occasion. He resolves in his heart to protect, provide and care for the little one for the rest of its life.

But gradually things change. The helpless baby becomes a stubborn, self-willed toddler who throws temper tantrums, refuses to obey and causes the father great frustration and embarrassment, especially when the child kicks and screams in rage on the shop floor when he cannot get his way. The same father who adored his baby son now beats him mercilessly or shouts at him endlessly when the child begins to show the same characteristics that are in him.

By the time his son reaches teenage, father and son have lost connection with one another. Love has given way to indifference or ever rejection. Why? Because the child did not come up to the father’s expectations, or even worse, the son was so like his father that the father couldn’t bear to have him near. Where is the love for his child now?

But the love of God is not like that. God loves because He cannot help it. Love is the very essence of who He is. God loves us, not because of but in spite of who and what we are. We are His offspring, made in His image, alive by His breath in us. He loves us because of Himself, not because of us. Nothing we do or do not do changes or affects His love. He cannot love us any more or any less than He loves us now.

Is it any wonder that the devil works so hard to keep us from believing in the love of God? Who would run from a love like that if we really grasped the enormity and the reality of a love that embraces the worst of us and transforms us from hotheads to lovers of God?

How can we be sure of this love? Love is an action, not an emotion word. Love reveals its nature by what it does. God’s love reached its highest point in the gift of His Son to a world that hated and rejected Him. How great that love gives, but what about a love that gives the very best you have, to have it thrown back in your face? That’s what His people did to the Father. He knew it would happen but He gave anyway.

It was not only the Father who gave. The Son also gave – His life for the sins of the world. No one will ever know what He endured for the sake of love. His love was written in blood on the soil of His beloved land, spilled at the feet of those who hated and crucified Him. How reciprocal was that!  No, God’s love is pure giving love.

It is this love that melts our hardened hearts and calls for a response of love. We love, because He first loved us. It was this love that melted John’s heart and transformed a hothead into the apostle of love. It was this love that changed Paul from a murderer to a passionate lover of Jesus who was unafraid to pour out his own life blood for his Master.

If you gaze at this love long enough, you too will be transformed.

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

Have you read my blogs on www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com ?

 

 

Believe And Love

Bible Study, , , ,

BELIEVE AND LOVE

And this is His command: to believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ and to love one another as He commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in Him, and He in them. And this is how we know that He lives in us. We know it by the Spirit He gave us (1 John 3:23-24).

John’s recurring refrain through this letter is “we know”. How different from the religions of the world which can only say in the end, when they have presented all their fanciful theories and ideas, “We don’t know.” How tragic to get to the end of life, to pass on and to discover that they were wrong all the time.

There are so many reasons why those who believe in Jesus can say with confidence, “We know.” I know that we have been accused of pride and arrogance, that we have no right to force our beliefs on other people, that we are intolerant and guilty of “hate speech” and many other accusations but why should we not be confident in what we believe when we have concrete evidence of its truth.

Take, for example, the historicity of the person in whom we put our confidence. Did Jesus Christ really live? Was He a historical figure? Some have tried to disprove His existence but, apart from the testimony of the Bible (which is a historical document with more early manuscripts to verify the reliability of its records than any other ancient document in history), there is the evidence of secular documents from that period of history that Jesus really lived.

Not only was He a historical figure, but He also did what He said He would do. He was accused of blasphemy by the Jewish Sanhedrin, found guilty and referred to Pilate for sentencing. Pilate found Him not guilty of treason against Rome but sentenced Him to death by crucifixion as a concession to the Jews. He rose from the dead on the third day and appeared to more than five hundred people at different times.

His disciples were so convinced of His identity as the Son of God and His resurrection from the dead because they saw Him that they went everywhere preaching and passing on the good news of the kingdom of God. They were mercilessly persecuted as blasphemers and enemies of Rome because they refused to bow to Caesar as Lord, but they refused to recant. In spite of the threat to their lives, thousands of Gentiles turned from the idols to believe in Jesus and to worship the true and living God.

Was this whole interlude just a series of events which took place in history? God’s trump card as far as authenticity goes, is prophecy. Hundreds of details about God’s Messiah were written into the text of His holy book centuries before they happened and accurately fulfilled in one person, Jesus Christ. This is impossible unless God both planned the events and executed them exactly as He had predicted because He knew the whole scope of history before it happened.

What is even more amazing is that He was able to marry His will and human free will in such a way that He could never be accused of treating human beings like puppets. Peter captured this thought accurately on the Day of Pentecost when he said:

This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men put Him to death by nailing Him to a cross (Acts 2: 23).

Peter could also triumphantly declare:

But God raised Him from the dead, freeing Him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him (Acts 2: 24).

Jesus Himself prophesied that He would be arrested and put to death by the Jewish leaders, not because they had power over Him but because He willingly laid down His life for His sheep.

The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord (John 10: 17-18a).

The rabble who came to arrest Him had no power to take Him until He handed Himself over to them (John 18:3-6). He had every opportunity to evade arrest, but He approached them and willingly allowed Himself to be taken.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost sealed every word Jesus had spoken and every promise He had made. The disciples were transformed in an instant from frightened and cowering men to bold and confident apostles of Jesus, facing the wrath of the Jewish leaders with courage and refusing to back down on their message because they knew it was true.

We also, who believe in Jesus, have every right to say, “We know,” because we share the same Lord, the same message, the same Holy Spirit and the same experience of transformation from selfish rebels to submissive and obedient sons and daughters of the living God as they had.

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

Have you read my blogs on www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com ?

What Is The Acid Test?

Bible Study, ,

WHAT IS THE ACID TEST?

For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death (1 John 3: 11-14).

Hey, John! Haven’t you got it wrong? I thought that to have eternal life means to believe in Jesus. Isn’t that what He said?

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

The whole world knows that verse! So how can you say that loving my brother and sister is the way to eternal life? Aren’t you mistaken?

Let’s look at it this way. It’s easy to answer an altar call or sign a decision card in a moment of emotion when the music is playing softly and the preacher’s words are persuasive. But what about tomorrow when you are faced with the same irritating people at the office or the same nagging wife at home. The same disobedient children live in your house. The same teenagers who hog the bathroom when you are already late for work, still show you no respect or consideration. How do you react to them now? Has anything changed?

Believing in Jesus is much more than a religious exercise or a decision made in an emotion- charged moment. It is a decision and a choice to accept by faith God’s offer of forgiveness for all your sin. That’s the first step. The second is to surrender the control of your life to the Holy Spirit who has pledged to take up residence in you and to put you back on the path of obedience to God’s way of living. The good news is that He also enables you to do what you could not do before.

It’s actually a two-way commitment. God only responds to your decision when He knows that you really mean it and are committed to seeing it through to the end of your days. It’s a life-changing transaction. His part is powerful and supernatural. He rescues you from the clutches of the devil and his influence and transfers you to the kingdom of God where He calls the shots. His rule is underpinned by love, not selfishness, which the Holy Spirit generates in your heart. He washed you clean of all the stains of your past and puts His own nature in you, a disposition of loving obedience and trust in Him.

How do we know that this transaction has actually taken place? How do you know what kind of fruit tree is growing in your garden? By its fruit. It’s as simple as that! Jesus that the fruit will identify the tree. How do you know that the confession of your lips is true? Has the change actually taken place in your life or are you the same person you were yesterday? Do you have the same reaction to those who annoy you as you did before you made your “decision” to follow Jesus?

Of course, that does not mean that you have suddenly become perfect. You still have your old sinful nature to contend with, but somehow things are different if Jesus has responded to your sincere faith in Him. There’s a stirring in your heart towards the person whom you disliked yesterday. You are beginning to see him through different eyes. You recognise that he has his own issues which make him difficult to get on with. You find that can let go of the things that irritated you about him before.

There are the beginnings of new fruit in your life. God’s nature is starting to grow in you. You find yourself strangely moved by other people’s suffering where you were once disinterested and indifferent. You open your heart and your purse to someone in need instead of turning your back and walking away. What’s going on?

It’s the life of Jesus in you, not just a religious experience but an actual change that has happened in your heart. God is becoming real to you, not just a name that you utter when you are exasperated or surprised. You cringe when others thoughtlessly call His name. The emptiness and restlessness in your heart have been inexplicably removed and replaced with a peace that makes no sense but is very real.

How do you know that you have eternal life? Not because you signed a card or went up to the front for prayer, but because a real transformation has happened to you. You know you have eternal life because love has begun to grow in your heart.

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

Have you read my blogs on www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com ?