Love produces love

"I love you.  Through thick and thin, my love for you remains the same." 

How do we usually respond to someone who's made a declaration like that?  Hurl rocks at them?  I guess that might depend on who said it.  But under most circumstances, wouldn't our natural inclination be to love them right back?  I know mine would.

This is consistent with the message specially entrusted to the Apostle Paul, "the gospel of the grace of God" (Acts 20:24).  Interestingly, Paul never speaks of his love for Christ or instructs us to love Him.  Instead he keeps talking about Christ's wonderful love for him and how Christ loved — and loves —us.

While the Law says, "You shall love the Lord your God" (Matt.22:37; Deut 6:5-25), law can't produce love.  Despite this, many preachers today still preach law, telling us that we must love God.  But the Law only convicts — it is meant to show us our need for a Savior — so rightly it only produces guilt. 

But now God comes to us in total grace and says, "I love you".  This is why Paul's epistles are so filled with "the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom 8:39).

The fact that God deals with us in grace doesn't mean that we should not, or do not, love Him. The very opposite is true. It's when we come to know the love of Christ, and His Spirit has come to indwell us (Rom 5:5; Gal 5:22), that our hearts respond to Him in love; "we love, because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19).  In the same way, the more we are convinced of Christ's love for us, the more we naturally love our brothers and sisters in Christ, who then naturally respond in kind to us — because love produces love.  The law could never accomplish that (Rom 13:10; Gal 5:14)!

Knowing and loving Christ brings inexpressible joy (1 Pet 1:8), but we can't love Him, or others, by trying.  Instead, we must accept His love for us in faith so that our hearts may naturally respond.

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word (2 Thes 2:16-17).