Read 1 Corinthians 13
In all our life’s relationships, we are either committed to living a life of God’s love, so that God’s love is what’s increasingly motivating us in all contact with others, or we are living a life of self-regard and that’s what’s motivating us in our contact with others.
The human default mode of existence is a life of self-regard. We are born that way. Paul: “I put away childish things.”
God’s initial goal is to help us become so fed up with ourselves, so disgusted by our selfish ways, we come to Christ for a new spirit and a new heart.
That new heart yearns to live a life of God’s love. That is one way we know that the Spirit of God is in us. More than anything else we want to learn to love others unconditionally.
Definition: God’s love — to love someone with God’s love is to work with Jesus to create optimum conditions for that person to choose to become God’s friend or to deepen their friendship with God.
1 Corinthians 13 helps us understand what those optimum conditions consist of — the parameters within which love functions.
They are essentially patience and kindness. ["Love is patient, love is kind."]
As well as the absence of self-regard:
Then it’s back to the positive parameters:
I say, “parameters” because just because we may be patient or kind, for example, doesn’t mean we know what is the best thing to think, pray, do, or say, that will serve to advance God's purpose in another persons life.
So loving with God’s love requires God’s wisdom and guidance if we are, in fact, going to cowork with Jesus in drawing others into friendship with God.
And such receptivity in turn requires the routine disciplines of
And just what will Christ have us doing initially? Precisely what he had to do to get our attention: we are going to be helping him help others become so fed up with themselves, so disgusted by their selfish ways, that they too come to Christ for a new spirit and a new heart.
Only Jesus knows what that entails, hence our need for wisdom and guidance.
