Our call in Christ

Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. ~Ephesians 5:1-2 (NIV)

The world today has many different ideas about what love actually is.  There have been songs upon songs written to try to define love from how it makes us feel to how it causes us to act, but contrary to popular belief love is not a feeling or an action.  Those are by products of what love actually is.  Love is a person.  The bible teaches God is love.  He is the real deal.  He personifies love and Jesus is our example of God, in the flesh.  Jesus demonstrated God’s love because He was love incarnate.  Everything He did was in love from healing the sick to laying down His life for mankind.  He was a giver and not just of His power and resources.  He was a giver of Himself and His time.  Nowhere in the bible does it teach that Jesus did not have time to demonstrate God’s love to anyone.  He might have retreated to the mountains for rest and time with the Father, but Jesus was sinless.  That means He never stepped off the love walk.  Even in His anger and tearing down of the market they had turned the temple into, Jesus was loving the Father and loving those who were being led astray by the religious leaders of their time.  His ultimate demonstration of love was to sacrifice His life on the cross for our sin to restore us to a right relationship with our Holy Father. 

Jesus laid down His life for us and wants us to lay down our lives for others to be a witness for Him.  He knows we aren’t perfect and that we step off our love walk every day, but the Lord takes the mistakes we make and turns them into lessons using them to polish us and make us shine.  Are we doing the same for those around us?  Or are we talking behind their backs or beating them up about what they can’t get right?  God is the master of restoration and wants His children, who are also known as His ambassadors on this earth, to be masters of restoration.  To love like Jesus did we have to make a decision, and that decision is to sacrifice our will as a demonstration of our love for God and mankind.  That is exactly what Jesus did for us and the bible teaches us it was a fragrant offering to God.  Sacrificial love requires commitment.  Commitment means making a choice to give up other choices.  When we accept Christ’s sacrifice and ask Him to be the Lord of our lives, we are telling Him we will make a commitment too.  When we make that commitment, He comes alongside us and helps us to become His disciples and obey His commands.  1 John 5:3 tells us “This is love for God: to obey His commands and His commands aren’t burdensome.” (NIV)  Are you a disciple of Jesus?  If so, are you submitting your will to His and loving others sacrificially?  Jesus said in John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this; that he lay down his life for his friends.” (NIV)  Human nature say’s “love, preserve and take care of yourself”, but when we become a child of God, we take on His nature.  Commit yourself to bringing the love of God to a lost and hurting world.  This is the great commission from our Heavenly Father.

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. ~Galatians 5:13 (NIV)

What areas of your life do you struggle with committing your way to God’s way of doing things?

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