Monday, January 27, 2014

Draw It In, Give It Out

"And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us" (Romans 5:5)

The human heart can love the human Jesus as it can love the human Lincoln, but the spiritual love of Jesus is something altogether different from the infinitely superior to the purest love the human heart can know.

Indeed it is not possible to love Jesus rightly except by the Holy Spirit. Only the Third Person of the Trinity can love the Second Person in a manner pleasing to the Father. The spiritual love of Jesus is nothing else but the Spirit in us loving Christ the Eternal Son.

Christ, after the flesh, receives a great deal of fawning attention, but love that is not the outflow of the indwelling Holy Spirit is not true spiritual love and cannot be acceptable to God. We do Christ no honor when we do no more than to give Him the best of our human love. He is not rightly loved until the Spirit within us does the loving.

We are not love, and we never expect to love by our own impulses. But Jesus is the heart of love. Jesus is love itself, and Jesus is ours. His love is ours. We draw it in and give it out.

~A. W. Tozer~

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