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Topic: Love is the highest of all motives
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MentorsRiddle
Advanced Member
Member # 2108
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posted
I think this is a really great post.
This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
The Book of John, Chapter 15 verse 12
As we can see from the above scripture, Jesus valued love above all other things.
Since Jesus is God in the flesh, it is clear that God desires – if not demands love.
The scripture is basically commanding us to be Christians.
Great Post!
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With you I rise,
In you I sleep,
kneeling down I kiss your feet,
Grace abounds upon me now,
I once was lost
but now I'm found.
The gift of God dwells within,
To this love I now give in.
Posts: 1337 | From: Arkansas | Registered: Sep 2003
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becauseHElives
Advanced Member
Member # 87
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posted
![[thumbsup2]](graemlins/thumbsup2.gif) quote:
Hope of reward, fear, or duty can never inspire to obedience and service as love inspires. God’s greatest appeal is to our love. What we will not do from fear or from a sense of duty, or for a reward, we will do from love.
quote:
The emphasis is here laid upon love. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, and only he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God. So Jesus could say, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” He could make no stronger appeal. No “thou shalt” is necessary to love. So it is said, “He that loveth hath fulfilled the law.” Jesus said, “If a man love me, he will keep my words”; so if there is love, there is obedience. The one who loves, obeys not because he must, but because all his heart’s desire is bound up in doing what will please his Lord. The language of his heart is, “I delight to do thy will.” Love’s service arises to that sublime altitude where fear is forgotten, and the sense of duty fades. Love yields transcendent service, because within itself it is transcendent devotion, and the object of its affection fills its horizon. Only a divided love is double-minded in service. Only a divided love finds service irksome or compulsory. When we love God with all our hearts, his service is the delight of our hearts. Love to our fellow creatures does not divide our love to God. It is simply that love, overrunning. The higher the flood-tide of love, rises God-ward, the more it overflows to mankind. Because of this, the Bible teaches that if we love God we shall love our brethren also.
Great Stuff.....
He Loved us first...Oh My, Praise His Holy Name
My daughter told m the other day while she was in meditation of the scriptures.....she said dad
Yahweh so love the world He gave His only Begotten Son.....she said isn't that strange?
I said what's strange?
she said there is no because in that sentence....there is no reason for His Love, He just so Loved He gave....
Bless His Holy Name
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Strive to enter in at the strait gate:for many, I say unto you will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. ( Luke 13:24 )
Posts: 4578 | From: Southeast Texas | Registered: Jun 2002
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Found in Him
Advanced Member
Member # 7596
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posted
H.A. Ironside: "Where God has wrought the miracle of regeneration in the soul of a man, he [the man] finds within himself a love springing up for the will of God. He delights to walk in obedience to His Word, and thus he has corroborative evidence that he is a child of God."
The greatest and highest incentive to obedience is love. It rises to a lofty height, far above all other motives for service. Hope of reward, fear, or duty can never inspire to obedience and service as love inspires. God’s greatest appeal is to our love. What we will not do from fear or from a sense of duty, or for a reward, we will do from love. “Thou shalt” prefaced many of the commands of the Old Testament because from the very nature of the case God could not appeal to the highest motive. Few people in that day had learned to love God. Few, therefore, could serve him from the highest motive. And since the whole nation of Israel were to be his servants, as a people, the “thou shalts” were necessary, and even then they often failed in their purpose to produce obedience.
In the New Testament we do not find the multiplied “thou shalt’s.” The emphasis is here laid upon love. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, and only he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God. So Jesus could say, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” He could make no stronger appeal. No “thou shalt” is necessary to love. So it is said, “He that loveth hath fulfilled the law.” Jesus said, “If a man love me, he will keep my words”; so if there is love, there is obedience. The one who loves, obeys not because he must, but because all his heart’s desire is bound up in doing what will please his Lord. The language of his heart is, “I delight to do thy will.” Love’s service arises to that sublime altitude where fear is forgotten, and the sense of duty fades. Love yields transcendent service, because within itself it is transcendent devotion, and the object of its affection fills its horizon. Only a divided love is double-minded in service. Only a divided love finds service irksome or compulsory. When we love God with all our hearts, his service is the delight of our hearts. Love to our fellow creatures does not divide our love to God. It is simply that love, overrunning. The higher the flood-tide of love, rises God-ward, the more it overflows to mankind. Because of this, the Bible teaches that if we love God we shall love our brethren also.
There is no selfish fear in love; so he who loves serves not from fear. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,” and then it follows that “him only shalt thou serve”; not because it is a thing commanded, but because it is the gushing forth of love’s pent-up fountain. “Love not the world,” is not so much a command as the condition of possible service to God. God’s “thou shalt not’s” are not meant to imprison us, to shut us up behind iron bars and to limit our activities, but they are meant to be walls of protection for us. They are not meant arbitrarily to limit us, but to enclose the waters of our activity so that they will run deeply in the channel of his will and accomplish something effectual instead of spreading out by the pull of gravitation of our lower selves “to run ever in shallows or be swallowed up in the sand.”
The love of God in the heart is like the gas in the balloon. Through this love we rise above the mire and mist of sin, above the low levels of moral darkness, into the azure heights, there to breathe the pure, life-giving air, while the landscape of sin below us seems almost a part of another world to which we do not belong and with which we have nothing in common. When love has thus raised us up into the heavenly places, we can truly realize that we are not of this world, and that we do not have its spirit, nor desire what it desires. We are not inclined to walk in “its ways,” for the sweet fruition of love is so much more satisfying that our souls have no inclination to descend in order to feed upon earthly vanities. If we obey God only because we hope for a reward, or from fear or from a sense of duty, such language as “joy unspeakable and full of glory” will be a foreign tongue to our souls. It will have a strange sound in our ears and be void of meaningful content. The spirit of grace and of glory rests alone on those who by love, serve. The joy-bells of heaven ring only in the souls that love.
One characteristic of loving service is, the more we love, the more imperfect will our service seem; the less adequate it will appear to fill the measure of what we feel should be the service that is deserved by our beloved. We may be conscious that we are doing our best, but when we have done our best, we shall feel that our best is not good enough. The more we love, the more our spirits cry out, “Oh, that I might serve him more worthily!” The man or woman who feels that he or she is giving to God the full measure of service that God deserves to have given to him, is looking so much to self that God is lost sight of.
The service of love is a humble service. The heart cries out, “How great is my Master; how worthy is he!” When the heart begins to feel, or say, “How great am I!” it proves that self-love waxes and love to God, wanes. We may have an inner satisfaction that we are pleasing God, that our service is acceptable to him; we may have the testimony of his Spirit that we are well-pleasing in his sight, and yet if we love him fervently, despite all this, we shall not be satisfied with the service that we are rendering, for love ever spurs on to more devotion. It ever incites to greater and more perfect service. He who is thoroughly satisfied with the service he is rendering to God is thoroughly self-righteous. Love loses sight of self in the adoration of its object. It can never satisfy itself in service, and service is never hard where the heart truly loves. Love is the highest of all motives of service; it produces the highest type of service, the greatest service; it ennobles him who serves and glorifies him who is served.
http://www.whatistruth.info/story3/4story9.html
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~To Him That is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy...to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.~ Jude 24
Posts: 1503 | Registered: Jan 2009
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