Adding Love

DEVOTION

THE 2^ND LETTER OF PETER

ADDING LOVE

2 Peter 1:5-9

5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

NIV

Well, we are down to the last quality we are to add to our faith and that is love. This is the agape type love rather than that agapaoo, or social type love. This agape love is the affection, or benevolent, especially (plural) a love feast. This word was used to express the love of God toward men, the love of men to men, men to God, love of God to Christ, and the love of Christ to men. It is an all-encompassing type of love. If this is the type of love God has toward us, then we would have to believe His love for us is unconditional. The reason we have to believe that is because He died for us while we were yet sinners. God did not say to us that the only way we could accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior was if we first gave up our sin. Even the worse of sinners, if there can actually be, Christ died for them because of the Love of God toward them. God does not condemn anyone to hell, it is the person’s sin that condemns them, but if they confess that sin, repenting, by accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior, they are saved. It is that simple, because of the agape love of God. His love is not judgmental, although he will judge the living and the dead. But his judgment is not about the quality or quantity of sin or of good deeds. His judgment is between the goats and the sheep, or between those who believed and those who did not believe. No amount of sin or of good deeds lends to his judgment and he judges without favoritism. What this tells us is that if we are to add this type of love to our faith, along with all those other qualities we looked at, then we know how we are to love others. This would mean we have to love them just as they are, with all their faults, all their imperfections, all their sin, even if they offend us or do not love us. Again, this is not a reactive type of love as we do with God. He has told us we love God because he first loved us. But it is the first loves us, that we get the clue about how we must first love others. It is an active love, not reactive. That is difficult. It requires we set aside all judgment and all prejudices, which is a preconceived opinion that is not based on facts or actual experience. It is true that God hates sin, but he does not hate the sinner. Because we love others unconditionally, it does not mean we accept their sin as acceptable, if fact, we can hate their sin, but we need to love them. That is we always demonstrate a pure love toward them. This is the same agape love that is defined for us in the letter to the Corinthians which is most often read at weddings. This is the unconditional love of God toward us, and it is that love with which we need to add to our faith.