Peter believed that love was essential to knowing Jesus. It was the crowning quality essential in knowing Jesus. Like all the others, if you didn’t have this quality and increased in it then you would be unproductive and unfruitful in the only pursuit in life worth having.
A good friend and I were considering the difference between brotherly love and love. With brotherly love there’s often a reciprocal and relational dynamic that could be somewhat mutual in nature. That family connection is useful in exercising the quality of brotherly love. Yet there is something distinct about love itself that marks it out as a quality in itself and that is best seen in how God relates to rebellious humanity.
God is love. He exudes this whether we respond or not. Our actions don’t determine when He will be love or not. It might involve emotions from time to time, but it is not dependent on them. This love is about the will – the will to just be in whatever situation. When God exercises His existence and flows in that the results can be seen in areas of grace and mercy, from allowing people to live another day and give them food, to even giving evidence of His goodness in small and great ways from the beauty of nature to a capacity to hope for something better in life.
This love is particular evident in that when we were His enemies, when we turned out back on Him and refused His gestures, He still gave His only Son to die for us. This expression of love would move Paul to note how rarely it is for someone to die for the righteous, but to die for the ungodly, the unholy, the rebellious, the ungrateful – that takes a greater power than affection and desire to be kind. That is the power of the love of God.
Engaging in the kind of life God wants us to have, means engaging in this kind of love. We practise this love in how we treat those who oppose, despise and mistreat us. How we engage with those annoying and obnoxious work colleagues with their vile gossip. What we do with that pesky neighbour who seems to take pleasure in being a nuisance from time to time. What we do about those habits of those we live with that drives us up the wall. God’s response doesn’t advocate tolerance. His approach promotes blessing and seeking for the well=being of the other. God’s response is not about looking to His own rights, but to the welfare of the other.
That takes much. That takes much in a world where it can be tough enough getting on with those who claim to love you. To now have to extend that to folks who couldn’t care less to you and might even consider your act as a sign of weakness makes things considerably harder.
This is why, as with all the other qualities, making every effort to add to the qualities and increase in them, is not about summing up our own willpower to make it happen. It’s recognising these qualities come from God and depends on our trust in God to work through us to see these qualities manifest. Our effort is to remove every hindrance to total submission and total surrender to the power of God working in us for His glory. The effort is to keep focused on the one we love at all times and as we seek to follow Him, so we will see opportunity after opportunity to depend on Him to see that quality come to the fore.
This love is such an amazing quality to express in this day and age, no wonder Peter leaves it until last. It’s such an amazing quality to consider and behold, it’s worth looking at on its own.
Meanwhile, however, it’s important to notice once more how all these qualities are supposed to be added and developed over time for us to grow in our relationship with Jesus. Faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly love and love. Altogether. All to help in us knowing Jesus and becoming like Him more and more with each passing day.
I trust you will be fruitful and productive in your relationship with Him as you make it your priority to add to these things and ever increase in them.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 