The world has sadly distorted what and who Love truly is. It seems that when many think of love they have to navigate the idea of love having to be romantic and or sexual in some way. Since that view of love has been so twisted, what happens to so many is that they unravel how to do relationship through a lens of what the world screams that love is and then filter it through a misunderstood biblical lens. Love is always God and His unselfish goodness flowing through us, the worlds view of what they think love is only has able to effect how we interact with people if we let it.
When we fall in love romance and sex are definitely good, but that's for a covenant relationship of marriage and another topic for another day. Feel free to read the exact definition of love in my blog, Be Perfected in Love, where I elaborate on the Greek definitions of the entire passage of 1 Cor. 13 and the second half of Romans 12. Love is always pure, glorious, and life changing for all who encounter Him.
But what does love look like in the sense of laying down your life for the sake of the world? Think of what Jesus did. Jesus literally paid the price for all your junk. All you issues, all your sin no matter how big or small, all your sickness, all your guilt and shame, all your depression and everything negative and dogmatic. He went through the worst torture the world has ever seen, and paid to take all of your issues away for good.
Who do you know that would even pay money for all your junk, or even take it off your hands for for free? Let alone endure the most torturous process the world has ever unleashed on a human (Isaiah 52:14). He endured the cross for the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2), the joy set before Him was living inside you. We are His reward, and He is so pleased with us! Not only did God forgive us for everything, which if that was it that would be amazing, but it goes way further than that. He not only paid for and forgave us of everything, but He took it and gave His life and His stuff in exchange.
All of the benefits of walking in perfection and provision are our inheritance through the finished work of Jesus on the cross. Once you give your life to Jesus in exchange for His, you don't have the right to carry all your junk around anymore. It's His, He paid for it because He loves us and our true identity is His identity. He knew your true destiny, identity, and purpose when you only knew depression and lies about your worth and value. He knows who He created you to be, and then He paid to take any and all hurtful things away from you so you could live in that place of your true identity and purpose.
John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." (NASB) The Greek word for 'lay down' is tithémi - set, fix, or establish. Love allows it's life to be established on behalf of benefiting and blessing others as the message of their life. Jesus did the hard part, take all the trash of the world and in exchange freely gave us all His treasure. Our joyous task is to establish our lives in a way that shows people this way to life (Ephesians 3:16-17).
We get to use our gifts and talents to introduce people to the Author of Life (1 Peter 4:10). We model the Truth of real life in love and it ushers people into the Divine exchange (2 Corinthians 5:20). Our lives get used to reveal how Jesus has taken all of our junk that isn't our true identity anyways, in exchange for all His treasure and benefits (Psalm 103:2-4). We are heavenly ambassadors that have the privilege of being the living epistle of the King and a Kingdom that is so out of this world glorious that it almost seems like a fairy tale!
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