Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
As leaders we lead others in knowing an intimate relationship with God. We don’t teach them to know God. We set an example of knowing God ourselves. Knowing God is an increasing fruit of being loved by God. God loves us and when we respond to His love in our lives we grow in knowing Him. God’s love is for everyone. God made a covenant with mankind through the shed blood of Jesus – God’s Son. That covenant was the fruit and testimony of God’s love for mankind as the Father of all flesh.
Ephesians 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
The riches of God’s grace are the testimony of His presence working in and through our lives. It is by His powerful love that we know the testimony of His presence dwelling in us. This is the testimony of God’s covenant with mankind.
Covenant is the fruit and testimony of love but covenant by itself cannot lead to love. Only a revelation of love can empower true covenant. The Old Covenant, a covenant of commitment based upon information, does not produce the fruit and testimony of love. The New Covenant is not based upon a covenant made by man. It is based upon knowing a person who demonstrated the fruit and testimony of love, Jesus Christ. He loved us before we loved Him and love is based upon a revelation, not a command.
John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Love is a revelation, not merely a command. When we have a revelation of God’s love, we are empowered from within to love God and to love others. This is the testimony of God’s New Covenant of grace at work in our lives.
The Old Covenant presented a perceived paradigm that God is the one who commands men and women to love Him. One day a Pharisaic lawyer approached Jesus with a question in regard to the commandments of God. Jesus told Him that the greatest commandment was to love God with all our heart, soul, and strength. He told Him that the second commandment was like the first, that we must love one another. Jesus said that upon these two commandments rested the entire law and the prophets (Mt. 22:34-40). The entire law and prophets rested upon two commandments. The Old Covenant law and prophets never really changed mankind. They offered commandments to love, but they didn’t provide transformations for loving. Later Jesus told His friends that a new commandment was now being given to them. He said that the new commandment was to love one another, even as He had loved them, that they love one another (Jn. 13:34). This commandment was not merely a command of law. It was an empowerment based upon a revelation of Christ’s love for them. Love is a revelation, not merely a command. Jesus shed blood to give the life-giving Spirit of Knowing so we could know the true intimacy of freely loving others from the substance of who we have become in Christ.[1]
The strength of our relationship with God is not a commitment to obey His commands. It is an empowerment to do all that He asks because of a revelation of His love for us. When we know His love, we cannot help but love Him. As leaders, we don’t lead others to be obedient to the commands of God. We lead them to know His love. Knowing God’s love will envision and empower each of us to believe Him and to do what He desires us to do. Knowing God’s love leads us to knowing God and knowing God will empower us to be who He desires us to be.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
[1] Ted J. Hanson, The Now Covenant, (Bellingham, WA: House of Bread Publishing, Second Printing 2022), p. 77.
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