Know How to Love

To quote the words of a fairly famous song of recent memory; “I don’t know much, but I know I love you; and that may be all I need to know.” Well, all I can say is amen, and that IS in fact all we need to know. If all of our knowing gets us out of the groove of God’s love toward everyone around us, then we are ‘knowing’ too much. Please don’t misunderstand me, I am as much of an advocate of learning and knowledge as anyone I’ve known. But the thing I have learned over long years of seeking and experiencing the knowledge of God, is that experiencing God’s love is all there really is to learn or to know. I love the vastly overlooked but mega powerful statement that the apostle Paul made to Timothy, his son in the Gospel: “Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee” (I Tim. 4:16). That’s right, the apostle said clearly that true doctrine saves us if we continue in it along with “keeping [our] hearts with all diligence” (Prov. 4:23). It’s really a shame that somehow God’s people have been taught and conditioned to think that the word ‘doctrine’ is by and large a bad word, and a scary word; and a word that we need to avoid. Why do you figure that is? I’ll tell you why. It is simply because the greater part of the actual doctrine of Christ for Gentile believers has been missing in action for about 1900 years, or since the apostle Paul was taken from the earth. Yeah, I know that’s a hard pill for almost everyone to swallow, but nonetheless it is true. Nobody thinks much about this because we have the modern 'Christian’ traditions that are projected as being the doctrine of Christ, though in fact they are not. But I will give you a couple of really powerful points that pretty much sum up the simplicity of God’s doctrine for us.

First of all we have Paul’s statement about the sum total of the entire doctrine of Christ: "Now the end of the commandment is [love] out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned” (I Tim. 1:5). It doesn’t really get any deeper than that. If it does then it’s too deep, like I said at the beginning of this article. God’s love dwelling in our hearts and being projected from our spirits to all those around us, is the whole purpose of the Gospel. Jesus told us how the world would know that we are his. It wasn’t by how many religious services we attend. It wasn’t by how many signs and wonders we show forth. It wasn’t by how much we talk about Jesus and the Bible. It was simply this: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (Jn. 13:35). That’s it, love; and godly love at that. People just don’t know what to think about it when they are hit straight in the heart with a straight arrow of divine love. There is just nothing that feels better than the divine love of God, whether it is being received, or whether it is being given to someone else. The scripture tells us that “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the holy Ghost which is given unto us”(Rom. 5:5). So how do we get the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the holy Ghost? “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. [But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive]” (Jn. 7:37,38). So there you have it: Faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ results in being filled with his Spirit, which Spirit sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts; which love of God is the totality of the Gospel. Nothing difficult about it. All it takes is honesty of heart, humility, and faith in Jesus through prayer. He does the rest by the empowerment of his Spirit in us. So I am in full agreement with our text scripture. If we preserve our hearts from sin, and continue in the doctrine of the love of God, we will surely save ourselves, as well as those who we manage to influence. I don’t know about you, but where I come from it just doesn’t get any better than that. Or more simplistic. Amen.