Motives Guided By Love

Motives Guided by Love

Study Text: 1 Corinthians 16: 13 - 14

Introduction:

- The command to love is at the heart of what it means to be a Christian. Jesus preached that to love God and others are the greatest commands, and the call to live a life marked by love is a consistent message found throughout the Scriptures.

- We must do everything in love because it is an act of obedience to God, and this keeps our motives right, and guides us to be more like Jesus.

1. The Context of Our Message

2. The Command of Our Master

3. The Challenge of Our Motives

1. The Context of Our Message

- Believers are expected to act and make choices each day out of love that result in being patient, kind, and forgiving. They are to continue to live in ways that reflect obedience and trust in God by doing everything in love.

- Truly, doing everything in love holds our motives accountable to righteousness rather than selfish gain. When we do things out of love, that means we are not doing things out of selfish ambition, and this will help followers of Jesus to be more Christlike.

- What motivates you for Christ? Why do you serve Him, reach out to others, pray, or exercise spiritual gifts? The Bible says our chief motivation for living should stem from the presence of love.

- The only motive that will enable you to remain true is love, as stated in 2 Corinthians 5:14: “Christ’s love constraining [compelling] you will keep you faithful in every situation.”

- Love is the foremost motivation for our work for God and it was Christ’s foremost motivation for rescuing us. It was His primary incentive for entering this world that is infested with sins.

- Jesus said in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

- You can contemplate the purpose of Christ becoming human from any imaginable angle but there’s only one answer for why He condescended to our lowly estate: He loved us.

- It was infinite agape love that motivated Jesus to live among men, work for our welfare, shoulder our burdens, and die for our sins. And it’s that divine love flowing through us that should inspire all our actions for Him, not ambition or the need for praise or recognition.

- Love should motivate everything we do. Our ambition should be for love to be our driving and compelling force to reach and touch others.

- Do you love with Christ’s eyes? Eyes that don’t see condemnation for the woman caught in adultery, but eyes that see a lonely, confused woman in need of forgiveness.

- Do you love with Christ’s ears? Ears responding to lepers and beggars: those that the society ignores. Do you love with Christ’s hands? With hands willing to touch the world’s rejected?

- Do you love with Christ’s feet? Feet willing to walk toward the stench of Samaria or into homes of tax collectors or before the demonized? Do you love with Christ’s reputation? Making yourself of no reputation and assuming servanthood?

2. The Command of Our Master

- Paul wrote this teaching to the church of Corinth to help them grow and deepen in spiritual maturity. And this same message can help believers today deepen faith and grow more spiritually mature, as well.

- When we do everything in love, we can walk in the ways that God would have us do so. Doing everything in love results in believers choosing righteousness and leaving behind sinfulness.

- Jesus did everything in love, by dying for the sins of all humankind. In our own lives, we may have to deny ourselves in order to do things out of love for God and others.

- It may not be easy, but this is the command of the Lord, and obedience to God to do everything in love, is never a choice we will regret, but the one we will be eternally blessed and be grateful to God for.

- God has called us to love, and this may look different each day and season in life. We can love because God first loved us 1 John 4:19.

- The following steps will help us in making love a dominating characteristic of our lives:

1. Give Priority to Love

- Indeed loving people is difficult. Yet this is what the Bible commands. 1 John 3:11.

- Even though we have the freedom to set our own priorities, Jesus made a point of defining certain ones of them for us: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and most important commandment. The second is like it: 'Love your neighbour as yourself'" (Matt. 22:37-39).