John couldn’t have put it any better when he said,
“Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. ” – 1 John 3:16
You will hear people say, “I love you, but I can’t die for you”. That’s because they don’t understand what Love is. The opposite of LOVE is not hatred, but rather SELFISHNESS. And that is exactly what the natural man’s love is – it is self-seeking.
This God-kind of Love in your heart demands that you put other people’s life and interest ahead of yours – even to the point of death. That is Love. Can you do that? I tell you, you can, if you have God’s Love in your heart. Look at how the Bible puts it in the following scriptures:
1 Corinthians 10:33
Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.
Philippians 2:3-4
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, IN HUMILITY VALUE OTHERS ABOVE YOURSELF, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
When I was growing up, one of my Sunday School teachers taught me that, “Jesus didn’t say love your neighbor more than yourself but rather love them as yourself.” Meaning, I shouldn’t love them at my expense. I guess, he didn’t know better – and even upto this day I hear people still say that. That is contrary to what the Word of God really teaches.
The very nature and spirit of love is to put others ahead of yourself – Seeking the betterment, interest and profit of others at your own expense. Love doesn’t say, ‘this is my breakfast and I also need it’; Love says, ‘I need my breakfast but you also don’t have anything to eat so you can have it.’ Love goes hungry so her brother or sister may be satisfied. That is the new kind of love that Jesus has birth in us. And He said, BY THIS SHALL ALL MEN KNOW THAT YOU ARE MY DISCIPLES, IF YOU LOVE ONE ANOTHER – Jn 13:35. Hallelujah!
Jesus loved us and put our need above his and died for us; then he commanded us to love one another just as he loved us. He said, “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. “(John 15:12-13).
A good friend of mine asked me the other day, “Pastor, do you think we have people who can love others to the point of dying for them?”. With man’s love, NO, It’s Impossible. But with AGAPE in our hearts, YES, there are many. And that is how everyone born of love should actually live.
Let me tell you of the Scottish missionary, David Livingstone, who was one of the first to bring the gospel to Africa. He was warned by many that the continent is a dark place with plagues and malaria and diseases which had no cure at the time. But he said, “I’d rather be in the heart of Africa in the will of God, than on the throne of England, out of the will of God”. And do he came to Africa and eventually lost his wife through malaria. He himself later suffered from dysentery and malaria and died. When he was asked why he sacrificed so much to bring the gospel to Africa, he said, “People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a PRIVILEGE.”
It is Love which will put other people’s life and interest ahead of yours, even to the point of death. The JESUS-KIND OF LOVE will make men embark on a journey which they know might kill them but still embark on it and die for it nonetheless. LET GOD’S LOVE DRIVE YOU, BELOVED. Amen.
