Hereby perceive we the love of God, because “He laid down His life for us.” And the real test of any love is what it is prepared to “lay down.” How much is it ready to spend? How much will it bleed? There is much spurious love about. It lays nothing down; it only takes things up! It is self-seeking, using the speech and accents of love. It is a “work of the flesh,” which has stolen the label of a “fruit of the Spirit.” Love may always be known by its expenditures, its self-crucifixions, its Calvarys. Love is always laying down its life for others. Its pathway is always a red road. You may track its goings by the red “marks of the Lord Jesus.”
And this is the life, the love-life, which the Lord Jesus came to create among the children of men. It is His gracious purpose to form a spiritual fellowship in which every member will be lovingly concerned about his fellows’ good. A real family of God would be one in which all the members bleed for each, and each for all.
How can we gain this disposition of love? “God is love.” “We love because He first loved us.” At the fountain of eternal love we too may become lovers, becoming “partakers of the divine nature,” and filled with all “the fulness of God.”–John H. Jowett
