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Agape Love is the Answer

   Casting out evil spirits and performing healings of the mind and body are wonderful manifestations of the presence of the Spirit of God within us.  And Paul tells us that we are to desire to be a channel for these gifts of the Spirit.  We are told to “covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way” (I Corinthians 12:31).  They are the means to the end, not an end in themselves.  The end product in the hearts of God’s sons and daughters is the divine nature of our Father. The “more excellent way” Paul spoke of is agape love.

    The Greek word agape is translated in the KJV as “charity” and “love.”  In fact, 95% of the uses of “love” in the King James is from agape.  In fact, agape is used as the very definition of God.  “God is love,” that famous line by the apostle John, uses agape as the word that epitomizes the essence of God’s being and nature.

    Because the translators used the English word “charity” for agape in I Corinthians 13, we get a clouded picture of the description of God’s nature.  Paul is making it clear how we will act, what we will do, when the Spirit is perfected in us.

    For agape love is the beginning and the end; it is perfection.  It is what we will all be when the Spirit of God is fully formed in us.  It is the fully matured essence of God within us after He has grown up in us.  Agape, translated “love” and “charity,” is what God is and what He is about.

   Agape love in and through us is the end result of God’s reproduction process of Himself.  Agape  love is the end product of all of the other attributes and facets of His plan  and  purpose. All roads in Him lead to agape love. 

    Faith, hope, spiritual gifts, miracles, every promise, every covenant, every single scriptural catch phrase used by God to describe any thing in His plan, leads to being like Him, which is agape love.

    Faith and  hope  are out there in  God’s  plan  and  are extremely important. But agape love is His perfect nature and Spirit. Speaking in other languages, having the Spirit of God move our tongues to speak in a foreign language which we have never even heard before—that would be a wonderful experience, but it must come out of agape love or it is meaningless.  It would be in God’s eyes a senseless clanging sound with no heart, no feeling, and no love.

    Without agape love, none of the spiritual gifts have any meaning.  Love is the thing that makes every other good thing meaningful.  Love, God’s love, His very nature, is the whole package.  It is His divine nature.  And Paul lists in I Corinthians 13 the attributes of His nature.  It is patient and kind.  It does not envy, nor does it boast. It is not proud or rude, is not self-seeking, nor is it easily angered.  It keeps no record of wrongs, which is a forgiving heart.  It does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.  It never fails.

    What is agape love?  The answer is to be found in I John 3:16, NIV: “This is how we know what love is: Yahshua the Messiah, laid down his life for us.  And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.  If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?”  Agape love is not just loving with words only, but with actions and truth.  God’s love put it on the line.  He did something concrete and real for us to show His love for us.  He came in human form and took that Lamb to the tree and sacrificed it there for our sins to be blotted out. 

    And   now us   loving   with   our  actions  and  not  just  in mouthing words is how “we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in His presence whenever our hearts condemn us” (I John 3:18-20).

    The whole message of agape love is this: God is agape love.  God showed His agape love nature to us by coming down in human form and laying down His life for us so that we could be reconciled to the Father.

    And because the Father so loved us, we ought also to show this same kind of agape love in loving everybody.  Loving everybody?  He rains love down on the just and the unjust.  If He had not loved us when we were in an unjust, sinful, and unlovable state, we would have never been delivered.  We then should love friends and enemies, good and bad.  Letting the light of love shine unto all here on this earth is what He does; it shows His presence within us.  Love is the answer.  Let love reign in our hearts.  For if we love only those who love us, what good is that, the Master asked.  Even the hypocrites do that.  So if we want to be like our Father in heaven, we should agape love everybody.

Finally, it will be us tapping into His true agape love nature and channeling His love through us to others that will open the doors for the other gifts to work.  For without the love of God all the other gifts have lost the reason they were being given.

     It will be compassion and love that will move us to heal someone.  That will show the Father’s presence in the situation.  He will be shown forth, magnified, and glorified.  He will have reproduced Himself by pouring Himself forth, showing forth agape love to a love-starved world.  Yes, agape love is the answer.