Love without Lust The word love has been so attached to the lusts of the flesh and eyes and body that it is hardly recognizable as the agape relationship Jesus speaks of. Whenever love is used as an adjective to a thing, it has fallen from the lofty place of Christ. True love is ever giving, ever selfless, ever purposeful to the benefit of others. Will it ever be said of us, how the love wherewith we loved fell from the throne of grace, through our heart, to the need?
Jeremiah 31:3 The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
John 11:36 Then the Jews said, Behold how He loved him!
John 21:15 So when they had dined, Jesus says to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me more than these? He says unto him, Yea, Lord; you know that I love thee. He says unto him, Feed my lambs.
1John 2:15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
Living like you’re heaven bound Are we so attached to the things we own that they own us? What would we not be willing to dispense with if it would bring us home to heaven? What holds greatest esteem of the stuff of this world? Lot’s wife looked back after her stuff. Remember “We ARE going Home!”
Ephesians 2:6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
Hebrews 12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
2Peter 3:11 Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,
Revelation 21:2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
Liberty I can choose to be wrapped up in a system of legal dos and don’ts but it will not make Christ shine in my life. What it will do is allow me to glorify myself because I can accomplish a list of actions. Nothing could be further from Christianity. Nothing is a poorer witness. It is liberty and not a license to sin. It is both opportunity and command to walk in step with the Lord.
Psalms 119:45 And I will walk at liberty: for I seek your precepts.
Romans 8:21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
1Corinthians 8:9 But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to them that are weak.
1Corinthians 10:29 Conscience, I say, not your own, but of the other: for why is my liberty judged of another man’s conscience?
2Corinthians 3:17 And the Lord is that Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
Galatians 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Galatians 5:13 For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.
James 1:25 But whoso looks into the perfect law of liberty, and continues therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
James 2:12 So speak and do as those who shall be judged by the Law of liberty.