June 30

God’s love in us for others

“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us” (1 John 3:1).
“He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16).
“The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God” (2 Thess. 3:5).

“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us,” not manifested or demonstrated, but bestowed, imparted, given to us as a gift. What a wonderful truth this is, that God’s love for us shall be in us, and become our love to others! Was this not what our Lord asked for when He prayed, “that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them”? The truth declared is that God gives us His love to love with. He has made His love our property, absolutely given it to us, so that it is now ours. Who can tell all that this means? Inspiration itself can only find relief in adoring gratitude. “Behold what manner of love.”


Perhaps we shall now better understand the new commandment to love “As I have loved you.” On Calvary we see love stronger than death. There we learn what love really is, and what it can do. When that same love drives our chariot wheels, we shall be ready to do as He did. It is where sacrifice begins that the proof of love begins. We must not offer, either to God or man, what costs nothing. The noblest thing in God’s world is a lavished life. Carnal, selfish men cannot understand the service and sacrifice of those “Who spend their lives for others, with no ends of their own.”
But when our love is in kind like His, we cannot help doing it. Our “must” then is like the “must” of God. God must give His love, whether souls accept it or not. Let the love of Christ, the most sublime of all motives, and the glory of Christ, the most sublime of all ends, become the ruling principle of action, and who can help living magnanimously for man and for God?
(From New Testament Holiness by Thomas Cook. Used by permission of the Epworth Press).

But the souls who love Him truly
Whether for woe or bliss,
These will count their truest heart’s blood
Not their own but His.
Savior, Thou Who thus hast loved me,
Give me love like this.

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