“Add to your brotherliness . . . love.” 2 Peter 1:7
Love is indefinite to most of us, we do not know what we mean when we
talk about love. Love is the sovereign preference of one person for another,
and spiritually Jesus demands that that preference be for Himself （cf. Luke 14:26）. When the love of God is shed abroad in
our hearts by the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ is easily first; then we must
practise the working out of these things mentioned by Peter.
The first thing God does is to knock pretence and the pious pose right
out of me. The Holy Spirit reveals that God loved me not because I was lovable,
but because it was His nature to do so. Now, He says to me, show the same love
to others – “Love as I have loved you.” “I will bring any number of people
about you whom you cannot respect, and you must exhibit My love to them as I
have exhibited it to you.” You won't reach it on tiptoe. Some of us have tried
to, but we were soon tired.
“The Lord suffereth long. . . .” Let me look within and see His dealings
with me. The knowledge that God has loved me to the uttermost, to the end of
all my sin and meanness and selfishness and wrong, will send me forth into the
world to love in the same way. God's love to me is inexhaustible, and I must
love others from the bedrock of God's love to me. Growth in grace stops the
moment I get huffed. I get huffed because I have a peculiar person to live
with. Just think how disagreeable I have been to God! Am I prepared to be so
identified with the Lord Jesus that His life and His sweetness are being poured
out all the time? Neither natural love nor Divine love will remain unless it is
cultivated. Love is spontaneous, but it has to be maintained by discipline.
5月11日竭誠為主
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