Today’s Question:
“How Can I Love Christ More?”
The Question Came from Sophie Alperton
This is one of my favorite questions ever. Neighbor, I thank you for your Question.
First, Focus on How Much Christ Loves You
Yahshua/Jesus (ישוע) the Messiah and Son of God is One with the Almighty Father. He lived in perfect unity and perfect harmony of relationship with the Heavenly Father. Sin could not Him. Harm could not touch him. Danger could not touch Him. Disease could not touch Him. Sorrow could not touch Him. He was in the Presence of Perfect Love, and Perfect Joy, and perfect Unity with the Almighty Creator of the Universe. He voluntarily laid all of that aside, and poured Himself into a human being called Jesus. He did that for you. For your sake and for your salvation, He took up the life of a human being. He did that to purchase your salvation. When he became a human being, he wasn’t born to some rich powerful family that could keep them comfortable either. He was born to some really poor family that would have to do hard scrapping just to survive. For your sake and for your salvation He allowed Himself to be tempted. He did that so that he could overcome the evil one, and show us how to do it as well. For your sake and for your salvation, he experienced pain, sorrow, disease, temptation, rejection, and every human difficulty imaginable. Despite it all he still preached the truth. He obeyed the Commandments of God. He healed the sick. He provided for the needs of the needy. He delivered the demon possessed from oppression, He corrected the guilty and He showed love everywhere. At the end, what did he get for His trouble? Were people falling all over themselves with gratitude, and asking God to change their lives so that they would be more His Son the Messiah? No. The people’s response was to kill the Innocent person, but release the guilty one in His Place. His reply was father forgive them, because they do not understand what they do not know what they’re doing. Jesus paid the penalty that we deserve for our sins so that we could go free in His Place. Jesus took up what we deserved, so that we could inherit a portion with Him of what we and our sins deserve. Jesus love you so much that he would rather be tortured and murdered than risk spending eternity without you. Messiah was raised from the dead so that your faith would be justified. He returned to the right hand of the Almighty after having suffered so much on our behalf, and He is praying for you now, so that you would inherit and fully partake of every blessing that He purchased for you at so high a price. He is praying for you to succeed and overcome as a disciple even now. That is how much Jesus loves you. When you take the time to pay attention to how much He loves you; it gets pretty difficult not to at least try to love Him back.
As It Is Written: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8 NKJV)
As It Is Written: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10 NKJV)
The first and the best way that we learn to love the Messiah is by taking stock, and really thinking about how much He first loved us, and what He did to purchase our salvation from sin and death. It would be tough for any truly sane person not to love someone who loves us that much; that he is willing to be tortured and killed to purchase our eternal Life. I truly do love Messiah, but that is because I recognize how much Messiah loved me and made provision for my salvation, long before I ever knew Who He was. It’s hard not to love somebody who is eagerly willing to lay down their life to save you for eternity.
Learn Messiah’s Love Language… It’s Obedience
The way that Jesus the Messiah demonstrated that He loved the Heavenly Father was that Messiah KEPT YHWH Almighty’s Commandments. How do I know that? The Bible tells me so:
The best way to love Christ is to learn and to do His Commandments. How do I know that? Because Jesus said so:
As It Is Written: ““He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” (John 14:21 NASB95)
As It Is Written: ““Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. (John 15:9–10 NASB95)
As It Is Written: ““You are My friends if you do what I command you. (John 15:14 NASB95)
That is the Standard that Messiah Himself established for loving Him and being considered His Friends. No genuine follower of Messiah should ever minimize or contradict that. In effect though, Messiah, and later the apostolic writers were only restating something that had already been in Scripture since the beginning.
Obeying His Commandments is HOW We Love God
As It Is Written: “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. (1 John 5:3 NKJV)
Note: Don’t forget that 18 times throughout the Whole Testament of Scripture, God specifically equates Loving HIM, with KEEPING His Commandments. There is NOT a single Biblical example that demonstrates that we can show God that we love Him, by BREAKING His Commandments; and doing the OPPOSITE of what God said to do. NOT ONE.
(Exodus 20:6; Deuteronomy 5:10; Deuteronomy 7:9; Deuteronomy 11:1; Deuteronomy 11:13; Deuteronomy 11:22; Deuteronomy 19:9; Deuteronomy 30:16; Joshua 22:5; Nehemiah 1:5; Psalm 119:127; Daniel 9:4; John 14:15; John 14:21; John 15:10; 1 John 5:2;1 John 5:3; 2 John 6).
- According to John the apostle, the love of God REQUIRES KEEPING His Commandments, (1 John 5:3). Loving the children of God requires KEEPING God’s Commandments, (1 John 5:2). Since walking in God’s Love requires that I keep God’s Commandments, then walking in God’s Grace cannot mean that I should break God’s Commandments and not keep them. You can’t walk in God’s love one way, but then walk God’s Grace by living the opposite lifestyle. That’s insane.
Breaking God’s Commandments is How Love Becomes Cold
(Keeping God’s Law and Commandments is NOT the problem).
As it is written: “Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved. (Matthew 24:12-13).
One of the greatest heresies of modern and postmodern Christianity has been the idea that keeping God’s Law and keeping His Commandments somehow causes people to have less love. In other words, the belief has been propagated for decades that if people didn’t try to keep God’s rules so much, they would be more loving. That idea feels good. On the surface it looks and feels more liberating. It mixes the ideas of modern psychology with Christianity. So it sounds intelligent. The big problem is that it is false doctrine, and false teaching. The idea that keeping God’s Laws and commandments somehow causes us to have less love runs 180° OPPOSITE of what Jesus actually SAID. Read the passage again.
As it is written: “Because LAWLESSNESS is INCREASED, most people’s love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved. (Matthew 24:12-13).
Those are the Words of Jesus, not my opinion. Did you catch this?
It’s NOT Commandments KEEPING that makes love grow cold in the last days. Jesus specifically said that it is LAWLESSNESS; it’s Law-BREAKING; it’s the increase in BREAKING God’s Commandments, that causes love to grow cold in the last days. You don’t hear that in church a lot, but we should, because it’s what Jesus physically SAID. Why? Because the Commandments were intended to give us the mechanics to learn how to love, and if people reject learning God’s Commandments, then they missed the necessary training for HOW to love. That’s the whole point.
Thank you for your kind attention. I hope that helps you.
Brother Michel Lankford