Read: John 15:13   Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

The Jesus kind of love is something we must aspire to have. We are to “follow the way of love” (1 Corinthians 14:1). The “follow” means to pursue eagerly, to seek earnestly, to acquire. But this does not mean that we can simply will or psych ourselves up through some mental technique to be loving like Jesus. The answer lies in abiding or remaining in Christ, letting His sacrificial love dwell within us through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. When God dwells within, His love will flow into and from us. This is what Paul meant when he said, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2.20). We remember how Jesus prayed to the Father “that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them” (John 17:26).

We tend to overestimate our love for God and others. Peter was one such example. He had proudly assured Jesus of his love. Jesus had shared about the kind of true love that makes a man lay down his life for his friend (John 15:13). But Peter proved a poor and unreliable friend—he denied his friendship with Jesus rather than stand with the Man who had loved him so much.

The answer lies in abiding or remaining in Christ, letting His sacrificial love dwell within us through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. When God dwells within, His love will flow into and from us.

Nevertheless, the love Jesus had for Peter remained. The angel in the empty tomb told the women, “But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee’” (Mark 16:7). Note how Peter was singled out. There in Galilee, Jesus met Peter and restored him to ministry and service (John 21).

At the Pentecost experience in Acts 2, Peter and the other disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and Peter experienced a new surge of supernatural power. The indwelling power of the Spirit brought him into the realm of sacrificial love and from then on he lived his life loving Jesus and the people to whom he was sent. Eventually, as Jesus had predicted, Peter was crucified in Rome, and as tradition has it, he requested to be crucified upside down, counting himself unworthy to be crucified in exactly the same manner as his Lord.

Love produced by the indwelling Spirit trusts God and shows it through a life of obedience. It is prepared to go beyond the self and is willing to lay down its life for a friend, or even an enemy. Above all, it brings the self to the altar in obedience to and love for God.

Meditating on the Word of God, fixing our eyes on the cross, engaging in prayer that experiences the loving presence of God—such disciplines will help develop gratitude to God in our hearts.

This love will grow within us when we keep our eyes on the cross of Jesus and continue to discover more deeply what God has done for us. Charles Wesley was converted when he realised how personal the verse “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20, emphasis added) was. To him, the word “me” in that verse became a personal experience as he recognised God’s love for him. A continuing experience like this will enable us to live in Christ and He live in us.

Meditating on the Word of God, fixing our eyes on the cross, engaging in prayer that experiences the loving presence of God—such disciplines will help develop gratitude to God in our hearts. It is with this gratitude that our love for God grows and expresses itself daily towards Him and others.

Consider this:

Why is it difficult for us to love as Jesus did? How can we overcome this?

 

Excerpted and adapted from The Virtuous Life: Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit by Robert Solomon. ©2012 by Robert M. Solomon. Used by permission of Armour Publishing. All rights reserved.

 

Related Resources:

Compassion: Learning to Love Like Jesus.. Displaying the character of Christ is not always easy, especially in a society that promotes selfish ambition. Discover how you can become a channel of God’s love and kindness when you follow the example of Christ—the One whose compassion never fails. Find out more here.