The Unknown Quality Of Love Series

The Apostle John said it this way:

“Dear friends, let us love one another, FOR LOVE COMES FROM GOD. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” (1 John 4:7)

What that tells me is that God’s kind of love doesn’t generally come naturally to you and me. Love in its purest form comes from God. And without God’s kind of love in our lives, our own concept of love will be a pale echo of His.

So if true love doesn’t come naturally to us… what does? Colossians 3:1-10 tells us what is really “natural” for men and women. It goes thru a whole litany of sinful behaviors like anger, rage, malice and slander, and filthy language… and then it says “You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.”

III. The Bible teaches that even the nicest person has a selfish streak… just below the surface.

It’s kind of like the story I read about a zoo that housed a lion and a monkey in the same cage. A visitor marveled at this and asked “How do they get along?”

The zookeeper responded “Well, usually ok… but occasionally they have a disagreement and then we have to get a new monkey.”

What was that zookeeper saying? He was saying that things were generally going to be ok until that lion began acting like a lion.

Common sense tells us unless lions can be made to stop acting like lions

* that zoo was either going to need a good supply new monkeys

* or they’d have to stop putting those monkeys in the cage with the lions.

And the Bible tells us, that UNLESS the Spirit of God guides us in our lives

Unless He continually teaches us to love one another we will revert to our old selfish, self-centered nature. The lion going to come out and somebody’s going to get hurt.

ILLUS: Now, I personally like to think of myself as a pretty nice guy. How many of you think of me as a “nice guy?” Yeah. I’m easy going. Easy to get along with. I’d generally give you the shirt off my back… BUT NOT the food off my plate.

My wife discovered this shortly after we were married. She playfully reached over with her fork and took some food off my plate. I was not happy about that. I didn’t like the idea of sharing my food with anybody – even the woman that I married – the woman I had said I wanted to share my whole life with. I was willing to share just about everything with her… except the food on my plate.

I didn’t growl at her. I didn’t snap at her. I just got edgy and irritable. I became “unpleasant” Why? Because - just beneath the surface – I’m just as selfish as the next guy.

God says we are ALL selfish… just beneath the surface.

And so the Bible repeatedly tells us again and again and again… “Love one another”

IV. But God doesn’t just “tell us” to love one another He gives us His Spirit to help us learn how to love His way.

Galatians tells us that love is part of the fruit of having God’s Spirit within us.

When you and I became Christians we formed a “contract” or a covenant with God.

Our part of the contract was

1. Believing that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

2. We acknowledged that we were sinners and we wanted to repent of our past and start living for God.