Love. What will it cost you.

The apostle Paul states "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love."

When I read that tonight I began to think, wow Paul. You raised the dead, cast out devils and healed the sick. You wrote two thirds of the New Testament and preached the Gospel to the known world. Had incredible visions, and caught up to heaven and you say; "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love."

I remember the Lord saying, "As I have loved you, so you must love one another."

I thought about a story I read concerning the apostle John. During his last years he was the bishop at Ephesus and he would be sitting at a table to preach. He would repeat over and over little children, Love one another. (Take time to hear it.) Little children, Love one another. (Hear an old man at the end of his life.) Little children, Love one another. (He has out lived all of the twelve and he says) Little children, Love one another.

I thought; it will cost you, to love someone. To have this kind of love. It will cost you.

To see a need and know you can meet it. It will cost you. To hear someone ask, and know I could do that. It will cost you.

It cost the Lord to love you. He paid a price to love the world, to love you, to love me. Yes he died, yes it was cruel, and yes it was real. But it cost more than that.

He will always be known as the Lamb that was slain!

God!

Become man!

God-man, the Omnipotent Potentate, Creator of the cosmos, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, The Monarch of the Universe. Ruler of all that ever was, is and ever will be.

He didn't have to do that. He could have had the heavens roll back like a scroll and appear as the Great God! Monarch! Lord of Lords! King of Kings! in all his splendor, majesty, power and glory and bid the world bow down and acknowledge his Lordship.

But He divested himself of all that glory and humbled himself and became a human being like us. He will always be the Savior of the World. The Lamb that was slain. The one who bore the sins of the world. It cost him something to love the world. To love us, to love you, to love me.

And then he says, Love one another as I have loved you.

Little children, Love one another,

Arthur, TLIR