“How's your love life?” used to be a very famous question to which a person would respond, “Oh it's wonderful” or “What love life?” So many people are looking for love, and it seems that they never find it. Consider all the match-making websites out there today. Others are looking for love so intensely that if they love anything or anyone they determine that it is right and okay simply because it is related to love. John the apostle has been sharing with us about having fellowship with God. He's written about the removal of the sin barrier between God and man. He's written about walking in the light, keeping God's commandments, and growing in maturity in the Christian walk. Now John addresses our love life in particular as he writes in First John chapter two verse fifteen:
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.
“Love not the world?” Does John really mean that we are not to love this world neither the things that are in the world? The idea is not the wonderful creation that God has made, but rather the worldly-system that is here. John puts so much emphasis on this that he declares that if a person loves the world, “the love of the Father is not in him.” What ever does this mean, and is there anyone out there who can keep such a command? The idea here is “agape” or pre-eminent love. Nothing is to have pre-eminence over love for God. Some people elevate the world and its systems to the same level or above God. Jesus declared,
“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” Matthew 6:24
This world is material and temporary. Why would anyone fall in love with that which eventually shall not be? John is exhorting us to love the permanent, unending and eternal things. If our love life is pointed in the right direction we will indeed have fellowship with God. Temporary things such as the world and the things that are in the world will have no standing in our love lives when we place the love of God in pre-eminence. If we love the right things we have it made, but if we love the wrong things we have it unmade, so much so that John declares “the love of the Father is not in him.”
The key to the study today is to ask oneself, “What do I really love, and is what I love in keeping with the word of God?” Personal examination is imperative if we are to have fellowship with God as He desires.
Tomorrow we shall explore three areas of temptation in which the world tries to draw us in to love it. Read ahead, and we shall share together about these temptations then.
Until tomorrow...there is more...
Look for the new devotional book “Equipped for Battle – From Generation to Generation” in all major bookstore sites, www.amazon.com ; www.barnesandnobles.com ; download to e-books, find locally at www.mrzlc.com/bookstore
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