True Agape
A follow up on the love of God as Paul expounds upon it in Romans:
Romans 1-3 is critical to understand when studying the heart of God. In 2 and 3, Paul is explaining how God’s truth is written on man’s heart. God’s desire is that man’s heart be pure, like His. Then he will automatically keep His Word. It is that simple.
Paul explains that man’s tendencies are to keep the letter of the law (word) and entirely miss the heart of it. He says physical circumcision or uncircumcision mean nothing. In other words, what is done externally may mean nothing. It is what is on the heart (what God sees on the heart) that matters, and what truly guides outward things.
Paul explains this in the best terms he can (as a man). He is teaching very high spiritual truth and only has human language to express it. Its like trying to build a mansion using pebbles. He is asking the reader to come up higher with him and to not stumble on the limited language (don’t strain the gnat and swallow a camel). He wants us to let the word linger in the mouth and the scent of it to come up through the nose and the sense of smell, savoring what is really there. He is warning us not to gulp it down and miss the heart entirely….focusing on the letter and missing the heart.
Now Paul says that man tends to look to man to establish what righteousness is. He does this by using his highest understanding. But it is not high enough, so he falls short of true understanding.
In other words, a man may understand that God’s word has forbidden vengeance. But he looks at God and sees that God, even in the midst of mercy, often excersizes vengeance. Paul explains this apparent conundrum so well.
He says that man is tempted to look at harsh things in the word (I could list thousands), and say that God’s word is of no effect then. It doesn’t make sense (so he reorganizes it so that it makes sense to him). This always leads to cutting out the harsh things and grasping the soft things.
But Paul answers, “God forbid! Let God be true and every man a liar.” This is critical. Paul is establishing that only God establishes what is good, true, holy, pure, just, love. We don’t.
A believer who has not ascended here still determines truth by his human reasoning—which always leads to legalism, then liberalism. This believer is bound by many false doctrines, all man-made. He thinks he is free. He cannot think as God thinks yet. If it is the love doctrine, he is bound by all that is human love. This love doesn’t involve the heart. It obsesses over outward things—appearances, words, deeds, rules, etc.
But God is a consuming fire. He told Israel, the love of His heart, that He was the One Who wounded them with the wounds of a cruel enemy because of their sin. God’s love purifies. Man’s love is impotent, with no power to transform. It disappears like a vapor.
The man who has entered into agape, is truly free. He is bound by nothing, except his all consuming love for God (In all the world there is none but Thee oh God!).
This love for God inadvertently rules him, lures him by its sweetness, to do the perfect will of God. There is no regulating or compelling. It is the very air they breathe. He would rather die than to offend the Lover of his soul.
The man who has not risen to agape yet, is still bound by sin. He may have been forgiven, cleansed, but sin still binds him. He has an appearance of holiness (don’t touch, don’t taste, don’t this or that). But it is just that…an appearance. He is just like the Pharisee or the religious. He obsesses over things God never showed any interest in, tries to bind others according to this man made doctrine, but breaks every law he has himself set. He is first a legalist and then a liberal. The love of God eludes him. This is why Jesus said of them, “do what they say, just don’t do what they do.” He said they were white washed sepulchers filled with dead men’s bones. He was ruthless with these people who distorted God’s heart. How is the legalist a liberal? He is because he has first bound himself and others by so many rules and regulations that in order to prove to himself and others that he is not a legalist, he becomes visibly liberal.
Now here is where it gets even more complicated, but not beyond our understanding. Paul in chapter 3 describes the world (not the redeemed). He says there is none righteous, they are deceitful, full of cursing and bitterness, full of destruction and misery they have no fear of God. This is what the law gets them, and the ones bound by the laws of false doctrines.
Paul goes on to explain well here how the law (don’t this and that), is useful to show how mankind is sinful and in need of a Savior. He wraps it up that this Savior comes only by grace through faith in Christ Jesus! Paul expressed earlier that the prophets constantly and tirelessly taught the gospel of Christ. He reiterates that in Romans 3:21.
He ends chapter three by returning to how a man is saved. He is saved by faith in this Jesus who taught and teaches us to preach, repentance for the remission of sins, by and through His blood!
Where there is a believer who is ever holding the power of the cross and the resurrection in his heart, there is a free believer, bound by no man made doctrine, absorbed in the true love of God and equipped to pour that same love out to others according to the power that works within him. Where there is a believer who forgets the simplicity of the cross, he binds himself and others with all manner of regulation, falls for every wind of strange doctrine, sets rules and limits that are not in accordance with the simple word of God and lives a life without His peace, filled with very high highs and very low lows. There is no healthy steadiness about him.
Where true agape and peace are evident, then “Behold, the Kingdom of God is suddenly upon us”, and all of a sudden, all things are possible.
The Lord bless you and keep you!
Love,
Cheryl
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