Here is the revelation that is shaping my life today – love is the only command of God. So he submits himself to me and invites me to be loved. Walk in or walk away, God never changes his posture of submission.
1 John 2:3-6,12 TPT
[3] Here’s how we can be sure that we’ve truly come to know God: if we keep his commands. [4] If someone claims, “I have come to know God by experience,” yet doesn’t keep God’s commands, he is a phony and the truth finds no place in him. [5] But the love of God will be perfected within the one who obeys God’s Word. We can be sure that we’ve truly come to live in intimacy with God, [6] not just by saying, “I am intimate with God,” but by walking in the footsteps of Jesus. [12] I remind you, dear children: your sins have been permanently removed because of the power of his name.
Observation
When we read “commands” this sounds like we need to perform well, and “keep his commandments” in order to have a “place in him.” You can have an experience but if you don’t behave then you are out! We live in this world of letter and law and performance-based worth and acceptance, and so we read the world into the ways of God.
We must remember what his single command is – love. Be loved and then be love. This fulfils all commands. Anything else you read is simply an explanation of love in action. So don’t fulfil the action without being loved. You see, you can’t be loved and not be transformed by love. If you have an experience of love you will be changed by that experience. So the real test is not my performance but how well I have been loved and then how much that love is allowed to heal me as a lover, and be reflected as I live as a lover, my truest form of self. Love is perfected by being in love’s presence. We can be sure we have experienced the intimacy of love when we walk like love, in the footsteps of love. This is not a personal disciplined obedience of imitation, this is a personal experiential transformation by proximity. Walk in love you will walk like love, that’s the power of love. So obedience is the presence of love yielding to love’s transformative power.
Now love submits to you. God submits to you, that’s what love does. Love does not force or manipulate, if it does it ceases to be love. Love submits. So love submits itself to me and then for love to transform me I submit to love, as I walk in love. This is the disciple’s walk, submitting to love. Submitting my protection mechanisms, my faulty love stories, and my trauma with love to his healing of love. Love submits, with open arms inviting embrace and waiting for mutual submission. This is obedience to love, this is “keeping his command.”
When we read performance we always read the negative, that is you are out if you fail. That’s the world’s policy. We must continually be reminded that my failures, in all their forms, have permanently and forever been removed from my performance record by the power of his name. When I let darkness in I am not expelled from the light, I walk closer to the light for that is what dispels darkness. So in following his command to be loved and be love, as you fail on this healing, learning, and submitting journey, you are not expelled, you are simply invited to walk closer. Sin has absolutely no effect on God’s love for you, His presence with you, your standing as his son, friend, lover, or your stated perfect righteousness. Sin has been defeated in all its aspects of the ability to bring death to our love relationship with God. So stop being so focused on your stuff and get walking close to his love. That is where you become you, the made in the image of love you. After all, you are more sinful than you will ever realise or admit and more loved and adored than you can ever imagine. We live in the tension created by the world’s story.
Application
Walk in the command to be loved. Be transformed by submitting to the presence of love. Walk securely in the knowledge that there is never a fail mark against my name.
Response
Thank you that love is all that matters, and love is all that is commanded. Thank you for submitting in love to me, and inviting me to mirror your submission in myself to you. The beauty and complexity of love is the only true transformative power in life that will enable me to be me, thank you that this is the focus of your command, my fullest life, being me. I love living loved.
Meditation
Meditate – your sins have been permanently removed.
Consider:
Do you submit to love?
Do you live in the freedom of the invitation of love?
JOURNEY DEEPER
