How am I to respond to this love?

Hanging out with some friends at Playa Bagdad.

We have looked at several of the ways God loves us. He is committed. He is near. He is tender and compassionate. He is not angry with us but grieves over the high cost of sin in our lives. God's love for us is selfless. He endured the cross because He knew the joy He would experience as the way was open for men to begin to turn to Him. While He walked the earth as a man, He knew the suffering that was coming and He continued moving forward to fulfill His destiny and to open the door for us to embrace ours. This selfless act calls for a response from us. What should that response look like?

We are created in the image of God. We are adopted into His family and we have been given a new heart, capable of responding to God and to others with the same love as Jesus showed to us. He opened the door for us to step into this love in every aspect of our lives. We have been sold a lie that we cannot love and live like Jesus but the reality is that is exactly what He has called us to do. Our right response to Him should be, "Yes Jesus, wherever your Holy Spirit leads, I will go. Whatever He tells me, I will do. Whatever He gives me to speak, I will say." It is easy to believe the lie that we cannot do that. We cannot lay our sin down and walk in the life and authority of Jesus, demonstrating His love wherever we go to whomever we encounter. the lie of  "I can't" feels true but according to Jesus, and His word, it is far from it.

Mar 12:29-31 ESV - Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

Mat 17:20 ESV - He said to them, "Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you."

Jas 1:2-4 ESV - Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Tit 2:12-13 ESV - training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,

Heb 10:12-22 ESV - But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds," then he adds, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

These verses are far from exhaustive. There are many more verses that point us to how we should live and show our authority to walk in freedom from sin and in love. There are many more but these begin to paint the picture for us. Jesus told us to love God and our neighbor. He pointed to these two things as the totality of the law. He did not suggest them but said they are commandments. He expected us to live in them. Then in Matthew, He shows the authority that we have in us. He was speaking to the disciples and pointed to their faith as the force that could speak and move mountains. Of course that faith must be rooted in Him but He said they could speak and it would be done if they possessed the faith of a mustard seed.

In the verses in James and Titus, we see that we are in a process. We are being sanctified so that we can walk out these commands to love God and people. He is training us to walk blamelessly. He does not transform everything in our lives overnight but He does transform our lives. The Spirit is constantly speaking to us and revealing Jesus to us so that as we see Him, it will reveal any areas of our lives that do not look like Him. Then He will change and transform us into His image. There are times the process may seem slow but we need to continue walking in it. A day will come when we will see noticeable changes in ourselves. We will not look like like the person we were and we will not struggle nearly as much with things that used to be great temptations for us. This perfecting is not a thing that we are waiting for Heaven to see. In Titus, it tells us that we are to live this godly life in this present age.

The funny thing is that according to the verses in Hebrews is that we are already perfected, not because of our actions but because of the work of Jesus in us. We often feel far from it. The devil is really good at pointing out our sins and shortcomings but while we are being sanctified as an ongoing process, we are already perfected because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. This is important because it means that sin cannot freely have its way in us. We have the ability through Jesus to say not to sin. We also have the authority to refuse sin when it comes calling. We are perfected. The old identity of sinner is no longer ours. We do not have to carry the guilt and shame. We only have to surrender our shame to Jesus and let Him reveal the new identity that we have in Him. We have been, in the past, 2,000 years ago, at the cross perfected in Jesus for all time. Now we just learn to walk in that.

We are not just forgiven sinners. We are saints, holy ones. We have been made new in Jesus. Our sin nature was crucified with Jesus at the cross. He has now given us a new nature. We must accept it, not because we have earned it but because He has given it to us. It is not humility to profess to just be a sinner. It is a slap in the face of God. He has spoken a new truth over us and to deny that new identity is to reject all that Jesus died for. You did not earn your new identity
but it is your identity none the less. The only right response to the love of Jesus is to accept who He has said you are now and run with it. Run to Him. Run after others with His love and reveal His glory to everyone that you come in contact with.

2Co 5:20-21 ESV - Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.