Why Love?

Love is the most powerful, controlling influence in any one's life. Love is the only thing that will ensure faithfulness, and this is true in all relationships. The relationship that I will focus on today, is our relationship to God.

A knowledge of scripture, or of the laws of God will never motivate an individual to complete faithfulness. There is no motivational factor behind them, except condemnation and death, when we don't keep them. Does that make them a bad thing? Absolutely not. But they are insufficient to consistently motivate us to do what we know we ought to do. That is why all religion is doomed from the start, in claiming what does... That it gets us in such a position with God, so that we can have eternal life. Religion is simply living by a set of laws and rules in order to obtain position with God, and we have seen throughout history that it is an abject failure. What it breeds, is self righteous people who have obtained an outward form of righteousness that is designed to please men and not God. This goes for all religions, not just one.

So what does true Christianity offer, that is different from all religion? It offers real love. A love of God that the natural person can't begin to understand. A love that says, "Lord, if every person in the whole world turns against me... I will still love and serve you".
This love I speak of, actually induces a person to a state of obedience and a faithfulness to God, that far supersedes anything rules, laws and principles (religion) can produce. This love that I speak of cares more of what God thinks, then other people. Living your life trying to please other men, brings only failure. It is meaningless because in the end, mankind won't be the judge... God will. So on a scale of importance, what God thinks far outweighs what other people perception of you is.

So, how is this love brought on? How do we attain this love? How do we get into this love? Through something we do perhaps? Absolutely not. How could something we do produce the love of God in us? No, it must be something God did. You see, God did something wonderful. God sent His only begotten Son Jesus down to this earth to die on a cross for our sins. God saw our sin, and He directed all His HATRED... All His ANGER and burning WRATH... His VENGEANCE... and He poured it out on His only Son who had never done anything wrong. God saw the travail of the soul of Jesus, and saw the blood that was shed, and was satisfied. His wrath was satisfied. Justice was satisfied. This was proven when God on the third day raised Him from the dead and seated Jesus at His right hand. We could now have peace with God, because of what Jesus did for us. We could have peace with God because justice was served for Somebody took our place. Jesus died in our place and took our punishment. This is the love of God. This is God's doings. It is through faith in this good news, that God's love is shed abroad in our hearts. It is when we perceive this love, that we come under the subjection of the ONE AND ONLY TRUE POTENTATE... THE KING OF KING AND THE LORD OF LORDS.

1John 4:10 HEREIN IS LOVE, NO THAT WE LOVED GOD, BUT THAT HE LOVED US, AND SENT HIS SON TO BE THE PROPITIATION FOR OUR SINS.

The love that we are speaking of is not that we loved God, but rather that He loved us, and His love was manifested in that act of sending His Son to appease His wrath and justice that should fall on us. We are the ones that sinned, not Jesus.

The moment we believe this, we start caring what God thinks of us, rather then what others think of us. This is when we start obeying and truly doing what we ought to do, out of love and not guilt. When we have this love, the result is that we keep His commandments. We don't keep His commandments in order to gain our position or to show God that we love Him. We love Him, therefore we keep His commandments. We believe, therefore we love God, therefore we obey.