FIVE EXHORTATIONS (PART 5)

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“Do everything in love.”

1 Corinthians 16:14

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

If you were closing a letter to someone and wanted to leave them with one final piece of advice, perhaps there couldn’t be a better one than this:

“Do everything in love.”

When it comes to the Lord and what is at the heart of His holy word and plan for mankind, it really is all about love, isn’t it?

God wishes to bring the gift of salvation and pardon to sinners and so He offers up His only Son Jesus as an atoning sacrifice and does so out of love (John 3:16).

Once born and in the midst of His ministry, Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment and he gave number one and two, both with the central them of love (Matthew 22:34-39).

Jesus even offered up a new commandment in the Gospel of John for people to love one another as He loved them (13:34).

Yes, love is central to our Lord and He wants it to be central to the way we relate to Him and one another. In fact, love is so powerful that we are told in 1 Corinthians 13:8 that it never fails and if the Bible says never, it means never. You won’t ever go wrong when you love the way the Lord loves and the way He leads us to love.

In regard to that latter statement, we should all open ourselves up to allow the Lord to love through us. Left to our own devices, we are destined to fail at loving other properly because we are flawed people, sinners who fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23). But when we become willing vessels that the Lord can fill with His love to pour out on others, then we will always love right and in a way that never fails. We simply must work intentionally to make the Lord’s love our own.

Friends, think about how radically this would change our lives, our communities, our churches, and our world, if everyone would just submit themselves to the Lord and ask Him to love others through us. We could work to get rid of hatred and discourse. We could move from division toward unity, one people loving the same way through one Lord.

“Do everything in love.”

This was Paul’s last of five exhortations given to the Corinthian church as he closed his first letter. If the church was going to thrive within and then outside in the Gospel work Jesus called them to, then they had to always conduct themselves with love toward one another and others.

Paul wrote these words out of love for the Corinthians and we get to read them today out of the love of our Lord who wished for His word to persevere forever. As we go about our personal lives every day and work through our own churches to fulfill the Great Commission of Jesus, may we do everything in love so that others may see that Christ is alive, well, and working within us to carry out His purposes until that day when He returns.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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