The Bull's Eye of Following Christ is LOVE

"If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate." 1Corinthians 13:1 The Message (MSG)

by Alexandra Copeland

One of the most prolific and extraordinary lessons that any of us can learn in life is the great truth that God’s love always wins. There are no ifs, ands, and buts about it. God’s love produces wonderful results! He’s demonstrated this all throughout His Word, and there is no doubt that we will witness the results of God’s love as we apply it in our everyday lives. His love changes things and causes them to be better than they were. We can count on this with every fiber of our beings. Many of us know it in our hearts, but the trouble is…when we’re faced with a heated situation or one that tests our resolve, we forget that God has given us a winning strategy and that it will help us hit the bull’s eye in life every time.

Whether you realize it or not, God wants us to have dominion over our emotions. This means that we are to be disciplined to the point that we will not outwardly express a negative emotion just because it bubbles up in our souls. Instead, we will put it in check with the love of Christ. When the confidence of God’s love is cultivated in us, negative emotions will not get the better of us, or cause us to feel as though we are about to burst uncontrollably with anger or rage. God expects us to maintain a certain level of emotional discipline, and we can see it very clearly in 1John 4:18(NKJV) where we are informed, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.” This verse lets us know conclusively that there is a choice ever before us. It is a choice of choosing to act, behave, speak, and think out of love, or out of fear. It’s up to us.

Lashing out conveys fear. It conveys that in our minds and hearts we are not allowing ourselves to be perfected in Christ. We lack the spiritual maturity and confidence that God has called us to. If we act out of fear, 1John 4:18 tells us that torment will be somewhere in the mix. This word ‘torment’ was translated from the Greek word “kolasis”, which means punishment or penalty. We see it used again in Matthew 25:46(NKJV), where Jesus Christ was teaching his disciples one of love’s lessons. The disciples were warned not to have an indifference to people that do not have society’s stamp of approval—people that were needy, poor, overlooked, and ignored. He taught the disciples that we not only get ourselves into trouble for doing the wrong things, but also from failing to do the right things. Our apathy and arrogance will cause us to fall miserably.

Jesus warned in Matthew 25:46 that there’s an incredibly harsh punishment for failing to demonstrate God’s love to those who need the warmth and care of it most. To those who fail to love, he said, “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.” The word ‘punishment’ in this verse is derived from the word ‘kolasis’, and it carries with it a very treacherous penalty, just like the torment of fear. We can see within this verse that there are two extreme and opposite sides of the spectrum: everlasting punishment and life eternal, both enduring forever as a result of the choices we make.

God has told us that there’s a reward for committing ourselves to His Will and Word. There’s a reward for doing anything that shows forth His love. Hebrew 11:6 (KJV) tells us, “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Our Heavenly Father is a rewarder to those who diligently seek Him, and we all know that diligence requires effort.

There must be an outward demonstration of our inner reality. The love inside of us through Christ was never intended to be latent. It was intended to produce results. We have a firsthand and personal demonstration of this love in action through the example of Jesus Christ. He didn’t sit around twiddling his thumbs. The Apostle John said in John 21:25(NKJV) “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.” This is a testament of how Christ used his life as an instrument of God to serve humanity. He just continued, day in and day out, to love, share, restore, and heal.

Romans 8:11(NLT) tells us, “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.” The same spirit that was in Christ as he ministered on this earth is in us!!! Isn’t that absolutely mind blowing?! To know that we’re walking around every single moment of each day with this much love-potential. It's just staggering! Even if we lived a hundred million years, we still would not be able to exhaust the infinite supply of the Father’s love.

Apostle Paul said in 1Corinthians 13:1 The Message (MSG), "If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate." We can speak with unknown tongues in other languages and with the tongues of angels all day long, but if the love of God—the love that was in Christ as he reconciled the world—is not in our hearts, nothing that we do means anything.

God has charged us with the responsibility to renew our minds to His Word. This means that we are prepared at all times to stand flatfooted and unmovable on the instructions He’s given us. We don’t budge an inch, come what may. This God-kind-of-love is one that rules the roost. It calls the shots in our lives. This means that we don’t get impatient with others. We don’t boast about our accomplishments at the expense of making others feel uncomfortable or bad about their own. And we don’t use the Word of God as a weapon for prejudice and hate. This God-kind-of-love cultivates real heart within us. It develops a sensitivity and compassion that causes us to see people differently. We don’t judge folks as invaluable or outsiders based on their outward appearance; at any time we could be in their shoes were it not for the grace of God.

Ephesians 5:2 says, "And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour." Walking in love is the bull’s eye of following Christ. Love should be our trademark as ambassadors for our blessed Savior, and 1Corinthians 13 gives us God’s standard for demonstrating His love. Take a look:

"Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end."

These words contain a beauty within them that cannot be matched or duplicated by anything in the world. This is the kind of love that leaves a legacy to our children, and to our children’s children. It’s never ending, because God's love never dies. So we need to be ever mindful that we’re meeting God’s standard of love, because He has given us everything we need to wear it like a second skin. And if there is any conviction in our hearts that we’re not quite there yet, we need to pray. Ask the Father to help you do as Psalm 51:10(KJV) says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”  Pray! Invite the Lord to tenderize your heart as you draw ever so near to Him. Before long, your heart will be transformed into the very image of His love.■  

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright ©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.