Standing On Our Tiptoes

And in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. à 2 Peter 1:7 

Love is indefinite to most of us; we do not know what we mean when we speak of love. Love is the sovereign preference of one person for another, and spiritually Jesus demands that that preference be for Himself (Luke 14:26). When the love of God is shed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ is easily first; then we must practice the working out of these things mentioned by Peter. The first thing God does is remove pretense and pious pose right out of us. The Holy Spirit reveals that God loved us not because we were lovable, but because it was His nature to do so. "Now," He says to us, "show the same love to others. Love as I have loved you. I will bring any number of people about you whom you can not respect, and you must exhibit My love to them as I have exhibited it to you." We won't reach it by standing on our tiptoes. Some of us have tried to, but we have soon become tired. The Lord, however, suffered long; let us look within and see His dealings with us. The knowledge that God has loved us to the highest level, to the end of all our sin - our meanness, selfishness, pride, and wrong - should cause us to go into the world and love others in the same way. God's love for us is inexhaustible; thus, we must love others from the rock of God's love for us. Growth in grace stops the moment we become angry because we have a difficult person to live with. But think how disagreeable we ourselves have been to God! Are we prepared to be so identified with the Lord Jesus that His life and His sweetness is being poured out of us 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.