Scripture and Obedience

"And hope maketh not ashamed; for the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the holy Ghost which is given unto us." (Romans 5:5). In order for us to understand what it takes for us to have the love of God in our lives, let's first look at just a few scriptures: "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). A good match to this scripture is Rom. 13:10: "Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." And add Gal.5:14 to these: "For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." And finally, as should be evident by these passages; "And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not [love], it profiteth me nothing" (I Cor. 13:3). Actually we could go on almost endlessly with quoting scriptures that substantiate the reality that having God's love in our lives, and putting it to work, is what the faith of Christ is all about. And as the last scripture mentioned pointedly states, if our hearts do not possess divine love we are nowhere with God. And to be certain, if we are nowhere with God, we are certainly lost. Jesus drove this point home graphically in Mat. 24:12,13: "And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure [keep the love of God alive in himself] unto the end, the same shall be saved." So according to Jesus, we must not only receive the love of God; we must also keep it actively thriving in our lives until the end of our lives, if we want to inherit eternal life. With this truth irrefutably confirmed by the scriptures, we now are confronted with this reality: According to our text scripture, we can only have God's holy love in our hearts if we have received the holy Ghost; because it is the holy Ghost that "sheds abroad" the love of God in our hearts. And it is certain that receiving the holy Ghost is the exact same thing as being baptized with the holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking with other tongues.

So if we haven't received this blessed experience, then there simply is no way that we have even received the love of God into our hearts; much less can we be keeping it actively alive in our lives. So with these things established to us by the scriptures we can see how the scripture can say, "Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his" (Rom. 8:9). The Spirit of God is the divine nature because it is the very divine life substance of God's heart and mind (Jn. 5:26; Rom. 8:2). And according to 1 John 4:8,16, the nature of God is love; meaning of course divine love, which is something separate from, and far greater than human love. And I Cor. 6:17 tells us that "he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" [with the Lord]. We are made one spirit with the Lord when we receive His Spirit into our spirit, just as a husband and wife become "one flesh" when they are joined to one another physically. This is how we are made "partakers of the divine nature," as mentioned in II Pet. 1:4. The love of God is developed and increased in our lives through denying the sinful nature, and allowing the Spirit of God to overcome and put away sin from our lives (Rom. 6:1-10; Titus 2:11,12; Rom. 8:13; Gal. 5:16,22-24). The only way that anyone can rid their heart of sin is through the power of God's Spirit, and according to the Bible anyone who retains sin in their life will not be saved (Eph. 5:1-7; Gal. 19-21; I Cor. 6:8-10; Mat. 5:8; Heb. 12:14, etc.). So then we can follow after the holy and divine love of God if we've received it, and be saved; or we can follow after sin and lose out with God. Sounds like a no-brainer to me, how about you? Amen.