The Nature Of Love
Everyone is capable of loving because God put natural love into the heart of every human being, whether they are Christians or not. With this, we love our spouse, children, parents, relatives, friends and neighbors. If anyone is incapable of expressing this love, he or she needs to pray a lot because something has gone wrong somewhere.
In addition to natural love, the Spirit of God has poured out a more potent type of love into the hearts of those who are saved: that is divine love (Romans 5:5). Christians use this love to potentate their natural love for others, and to love each other and God. These acts of love connect us to the potent powers of God so that we may be energized for successful daily living. Let us examine what the scriptures say about this.
Love Is The Foundation Of God’s Power
The scriptures declare: “No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (1 John 4:12-13). God is love (1 John 4:8), therefore the expression of love from our hearts is an expression of the nature of God in us. When the above scripture says that “…if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us…” it is saying that when we love our fellow brothers and sisters, we are expressing the nature of God in us. This love creates in our hearts the environment that allows God to live in us. As a result, God abides in and lives in us. When our love for one another is full, the love of God in us is likewise fully expressed or perfected through us giving rise to the fullness of God filling us or dwelling in us. From other scriptures, we know that God lives in us in the person of His Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 1:21-22). And that is what is implied in the next verse that God has given us His Spirit as evidence that He lives in us and we live in Him. In other words, when we love each other we allow the Holy Spirit to rest in us. The more we love, the more the Holy Spirit rests in us, and when our love reaches full strength, it allows the fullness of the Holy Spirit to rest us.
Most of us understand that the Holy Spirit lives in us. But many don’t understand that there ought to be fellowship or communion or communication, or sharing between our spirit and Him. The strength of that fellowship depends on how much of Him we are filled with. As such, the greater the measure of the Holy Spirit in us, the greater the strength of our fellowship with Him. Since our love for each other and indeed our love for God (John 14:21-23), allows Him to live in us, we can conclude that our love for each other and God strengthens the fellowship between us the Holy Spirit. In this connection between love and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit lies the power of love. For the Holy Spirit is the one who manifests the power of God. When this fellowship is strong, He responds to our prayers right away; “interceding for us according to the will of God” and ensuring that our prayers are answered (Romans 8:26-27). Truly, a measure of the Holy Spirit lives in every Christian, but God’s miraculous powers are only manifested through those who have strong fellowship with Him. Think of how fast and how readily God answered prayers from the great Saints such as Peter, John, Philips, Steven, Paul, etc. The reason for this is that these men were continually in strong fellowship with the Holy Spirit. As such, when they said to the sick, “be healed in the name of Jesus”, the Holy Spirit responded instantaneously to them and the sick received healing right away. Recognizing our need for this fellowship, the Holy Spirit gave us the scripture that we call “the grace“: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion (or fellowship) of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14). When we say the grace, we are praying that God helps us to maintain fellowship with the Holy Spirit, as well as grace from Jesus and love from the Father.
How Do We Love?
What is great about this is that we have the ability to strengthen this fellowship to help us easily draw from the power of God to help us in times of needs. All that we have to do is love each other and God. How do we love? We love each other according to the definition of divine love in (I Corinthians 13:4-6). We love each other by being patient, tolerant, kind, caring, humble, selfless, faithful, believing, trusting and joyful towards
each other. Furthermore, we strive to love each other by riding ourselves of wrath, rudeness, pride, envy, selfishness, faithlessness and sinfulness towards each other.
Finally, He who loves God is He who hears His words, believes it and keeps it. When we so love God through obedience, it leads to Holiness (John 14:21-23). Such are what divine love is made of. When we faithfully and consistently practice love for each other and for God, we will be enriched with divine power to live successfully.