The test of love!

(1John 3:18) “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”

Is it possible to measure our love for God? Not measured by others or members of our church but individually. Let us call it a self examination of the “character of love” but without any suppositions or emotions attached. As an exercise let us only draw from scripture and see what our conclusion will be. I already know the answer, but need to find proof for it from scripture. There are two questions I need answered and nothing outside of scripture will do. The first; do I love God? Obviously my answer would be yes you know I do Lord, as you know all things, nevertheless the fear I have is that I may well receive the same reply that Simon bar Jonah received; (John 21) No! I am convinced of it! Secondly what keeps me from loving God? If anything!

It seems the more I focus on achieving a certain objective the harder I find it, and I am not making reference to trivia. We must understand the theory with absolute clarity before we will be able to achieve perfect results. Take the “theory of relativity”; “The Theory of relativity was developed by Albert Einstein in the early 1900s. There are two theories of relativity. The first is Special Relativity and the second is General Relativity. Both are based on the Principle of relativity, which was created by Galileo Galilei in the 1600s.” Now I know that if you are reading this your mind has now been heightened as it is on the edge of its capacity, for some anyway! I am about to lose some of you, but stay with me as it will highlight a valid point.

“Special Relativity says that every person has their own time. One person's clock says something different from another person's clock. The reason a person's time can be different from another's is because of Time Dilation, which can be thought of more easily by the Twin Paradox.

The Twin Paradox shows how time changes because of speed and mass. The faster someone or something moves or the more mass they have, then the slower time passes for them. This is shown by a pair of twins. Imagine that the first twin moves at a fast speed, near the speed of light for example, while the other twin stays in one general location. When the first twin returns from his trip, he will be younger than the second twin. Thus time and speed are related. - Speed and mass affect how fast time moves.” (Simple English Wikipedia) 

We then could look at General Relativity which then adds gravity to the equation, but enough has been said to prove our point. We must understand the theory well to end up with accurate answers. It is no different in applying accurate doctrine to our lives, if we are to walk obediently before a holy God.

Do we love God? There are many scripture that we are able to test our love against... John the beloved disciple is full of instruction and here are some of his teachings. But remember for this exercise we would take any suppositions and emotions out of the equation. But before we look into the “mirror of love” we must understand that God will never require anything from us that He has not proved, He is the greatest of leaders as He always leads by example. He would not require us to love if He had not first loved us; "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) – Here He proves His love! It is by His action that we are able to test the measure of His love.

Here are some of those tests: - “But whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him:” (1John 2:5) – “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (1John 2:15) – “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” (1John 3:1) – “By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.” (1John 3:10) – “For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” (1John 3:11) – “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (1John 3:16) - But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? (1John 3:17) – “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” (1John 3:18) 

There is much more John has to say on the subject but for the sake of time I trust enough has been said. We must come to grips with the theory before we can find the correct application in our lives, we must understand what it is that the Apostle John is teaching us, let us read through these verses carefully and then we will be able to look into the “mirror of love” with a clearer understanding. I am guilty as charged, were do you stand? We need to be more resolute in these areas of our lives and it is only the grace of God that will equip us to find true application to our lives. I now have a clearer understanding of what it is I must appropriate to my life, it would not help us to point fingers at others, we stand and fall before our Heavenly Father, and He alone will pass sentence as He chooses to discipline if need be. However, it is possible to test our love for God; scripture through John has proved it! Lord willing, tomorrow we look at what hinders us from living in God’s love.

There is a lot more to be said on his subject, so maybe over the next few posts we can unpack this a little deeper.

Signing off

Tyrone