LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
The Perfection of Love
The Stamp of our Discipleship
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:34-35.
The greatest evidence of the quality of the divine life is love. According to the Lord’s words, love must be the characteristic and revealing seal of discipleship. Let us see what this love is.
As I have loved you
The quality of love with which those who are of God are to love one another with is assured to be of the same class and intensity as that of that Christ's love. In fact, it is the same as Christ's love.
The Lord said: –Love one another, as I have loved you...
How did Christ love us? Christ demonstrated, the quality and intensity of his love in a real way, because he gave his life for love.
Many other forms of love could have been demonstrated, but this is the greatest. He Himself said this on another occasion: –Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
Jesus' love, offered to the point of death has, in the Scriptures, three connotations: as the Friend that lays down his life for his friends (John 15:13); as the good Shepherd, who gives his life for the sheep. (John 10:11), and as the Lover and Husband, who surrendered himself for his beloved, the church. (Ephesians 5:25)
Are you Jesus' friend? Jesus laid down his life for you. Are you Jesus' sheep? He gave his life for you. Are you a member of the body that is the church? Jesus surrendered himself for you.
This is the wonderful and definitive demonstration of Christ's love.
His substitute death
Therefore, the maximum demonstration of love is to offer one’s life for others. That is to say, to go to the point of death.
When we were under condemnation, and we could not save ourselves, he was our substitute on the cross. He took the place of our death on the cross.
The Scriptures help us to visualize this.
The meek lamb
The Jews in the time of the law went every so often to the tabernacle. They always went with an animal -preferably a lamb - to offer in the tabernacle for their sins.
Each one of those lambs, or calves, or male goats, was symbolic of one that had to come, and who must take upon himself all of our sins.
If we had been there to ask to a Jew: –Where are you going with that lamb?
He would have responded: –I’m going to the house of God. By means of this lamb I am saved. I have many sins, but this lamb will allow me to return in peace. I have infringed many commandments, but this lamb will give me life. When its blood falls to the earth, I will be free.
In the tabernacle there was a place prepared -the atrium -; the lamb would be put upon it, and the knives would fall on it.
Those lambs didn't emit a cry when dying nor resist that death; those hundred and thousands of lambs that were sacrificed in this way, spoke of Jesus. Every day of his ministry on the earth, Jesus knew that he was a lamb. And as such, his destination was fixed ahead of time. And he didn't do anything to change it, even though he could have. –I have authority to lay it down (his life), and authority to take it up again - he said.
He also said: –Nobody takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord (John 10:17-18).
What do those words mean? It was not impotence that took Him to the cross. It was not weakness.
It was the love for His sheep; it was the love for His friends.
The lightning rod of God’s wrath
This same love of Christ that led him to offer Himself as our substitute on the cross also has another connotation: Christ was like a lightning rod that stopped God’s wrath upon sin.
You must remember the day that God gave the law to Israel on Mount Sinai. (Exodus 20:18-21; Hebrews 12:18-21). What was there on that mountain? You will remember that it was a terrible scene. There was thunder and lightning, and the sound of trumpets. The whole mount burned and fumed with fire. The people trembled, and so too Moses.
What happened there? The God of righteousness, who does not tolerate sin, was showing the demands of His holiness. The people below, at the foot of the mountain, were a sinful people. Therefore, that fire was God’s wrath against sin.
Let us retain that smoky mountain in our minds for a moment, and now look toward another mountain: Calvary.
At one end we have Sinai, blazing, and at the other, Calvary, gloomy and somber. Let us see now how those bolts of thunder and lightning cross the air, the ages, the centuries and fall on Golgotha. The demands of God’s righteousness that leave Sinai fall on Calvary. And let us see Christ, nailed on the cross, like a great lightning rod, preventing God’s wrath, so that it doesn't reach you or I.
That was Christ's love.
That day in Golgotha, He said: –My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
One that had never given reasons to be left, or abandoned; one that didn't have any flaw or sin became the object of God’s wrath. He became a curse for us. (Galatians 3:13)
In that moment, it was as if Jesus said: –Father, your demands are for me. May your judgment fall on me. May your wrath fall on me, but don't touch them.
The hen and her chicks
This same love that offers to defend man from the wrath of divine justice, is also represented, in its fondness and in its force, as a hen and her chicks.
Jesus cries over Jerusalem: –O Jerusalem, Jerusalem you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! (Matthew 23:37).
I don't know if you have seen how a hen covers her chicks. Danger comes upon her, but she doesn't take care of herself. She extends her wings to cover all her chicks, so that none is touched by evil. Strong wind could come, or aggression, but the chicks are safe under her wings.
Perhaps you don't know how terrible it can be for a hen that covers her chicks. She doesn't want any of them to be touched. For that reason the Lord said: –Of those that you gave me none of them were lost.
Jerusalem didn't want to be covered. But blessed are those who today are covered under the shade of His love.
His substitute life
Just as Christ was our substitute on the cross to die and also to receive the judgment of God that corresponded to us, today he is also our substitute inside us.
Before, we could not survive death (we needed him); today we cannot live for ourselves (we need him). Now we are free from condemnation; however, we cannot live except through His life.
Just as we have been judged in Christ on the cross of the Calvary, today we can live his life. Because we are dead, He can live His life in us.
Christ's love is not an aspiration, nor an object of imitation. It is a reality that we live because Christ lives in us.
The perfection of love
We have reviewed some palpable demonstrations of Christ's love. But let us now look at a matter that affects us directly. How is Christ's love in us? How can one know and express Christ's love in the church?
We go to Paul.
Surely people asked the apostle Paul many times: –Paul, would you be able to describe Christ's love to us?
Therefore, in Ephesians chapter 3, Paul tries to do this. His words are very interesting.
He says "...I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge- that you may be filled to the measure of the fullness of God." (17-19)
Here Paul tries to express the indescribable. He therefore speaks of the width, of the longitude, of the depth and of the height of Christ's love. Paul says here that love has measures; that it is something three-dimensional. What importance does this have? The explanation that Paul gives about love is not something very logical: it is a spiritual explanation.
What three-dimensional bodies are described in the Scriptures? There is one which is especially significant. In the Scriptures, the perfect things of God have a form of a cube. A cube is perfect, because it has the same measures on each one of its faces.
Two important things have that form in the Scriptures. One of them was in the tabernacle, and it was the Holy place. Let us remember that the atrium, the Holy place and the Most Holy place were in the tabernacle. The first two places were very important, but the Most Holy place was even more so, because God inhabited that place. God is perfect and He inhabited in a perfect atmosphere.
The second is the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:16). The celestial Jerusalem is not only a city, but rather it is also the bride, the wife of the Lamb. (Rev.21:9-10)
Thus the Most Holy place, just like the Holy City which is the church, have the form of a cube. And Paul insinuates that love is also like a cube. Why?
It is because Christ's love is perfect. It is just like the place where God inhabited under the Old Covenant, and also like the place where God inhabits today in the New one.
Love is three-dimensional
It is important to see that the description that Paul makes of Christ's love is three-dimensional, and not two-dimensional.
You can draw a cube on paper, and place it in your hand. You can also place a three-dimensional cube in your other hand. In this way, in both hands you will have a cube.
But there is a great difference between both. In the first, you have only a paper on which a cube is drawn. In the other, you have a body -with volume - whose form, weight and texture can be perceived in your hand. It is an object, therefore, that one can feel. It really is a cube, not a mere figure of one. It is something perfect in itself.
This has a deep spiritual significance.
Love is perfect, and it is not only a description, or an idea. It is a reality that you can feel and see.
For that reason the Lord said: –By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
Love is something that all could see, and prove.
Christ's love was expressed by surrendering His life, and therefore the love of Christians is expressed in concrete, palpable and visible facts. The love of a Christian is expressed when they are willing to die for their brothers and sisters. So that all see, and know who God is.
When Lazarus died, Jesus went to the tomb, and he wept. And the Jews that were nearby said: –See how he loved him.
Likewise it must be heard spoken of the Christian in the world: –See how they love one another.
That is the church. It is an atmosphere where men and women of God love one another. An atmosphere where love is lived, and felt; where it is visible and perfect like a cube.
The fullness of God
Paul, in Ephesians 3:18, says that love is a matter that must be understood and carried out “with all the saints.” This means that love is the practice of the church, not the attribute of a single person, or of an individual Christian.
If we know this love that exceeds all knowledge, we will be full of all the fullness of God. The fullness of God is Christ's love that denies itself and that gives itself for others. It is the life that offers itself to the point of death for others. It is love that is poured out, experienced and lived, in the heart of the church.
Christ died for love; his friends must also die for love. Christ demonstrated that to love is not easy; that it is not merely a matter of words.
Those that follow Him and live with Him love in this way, because He lives in them.