COMPELLED BY THE LOVE OF CHRIST
When we embrace the love of Christ, our lives become completely new. There is nothing like the transforming power of Christ’s love. It will never leave you the way it found you. Believe that He loves you. Believe it deeply, in the depths of your soul and your heart. In the innermost parts of your being. Take it to heart. Rely on it. Believe that He loves you as much as you believe your own name.
Paul wrote that the love of Christ compelled him to live for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:14). Love leads to life. Loving leads to living. The will to serve Christ, no matter what comes against us, is found in knowing how much Christ loves us. We will never know it fully in this life, for the love of Christ passes knowledge (Ephesians 3:19). It is beyond human understanding. But we can grow in our knowledge of His love by spending time with Him daily and thinking about what He has done for us.
Paul knew how much Jesus loved him. And that was the powerful force that caused him to live his life in service to Jesus. When we think about people who have given their all in service to Christ, the apostle Paul has to come to mind near the top. But Paul was not super human. He did not have supernatural faith. He was a very sinful man who had plenty of skeletons in his closet. And yet he went on to accomplish as much for Christ as Christ called him to accomplish. Before he died, he could say that he had fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7).
Paul wrote about the love of Christ because he embraced the love of Christ. He taught others about the love of Christ. He talked about it constantly. It was the consuming obsession of his life. He knew that Jesus loved him. Do you know that Jesus loves you? Do you have that certainty? You can have it—by deciding to believe that God does not lie, and the cross of Christ is real. He died for you.
Though you deserved His wrath and condemnation, He took your sins to the cross. All of the penalties that I was due, He took for me. There is no greater love than that. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for His friends (John 15:13). Christ has laid down His life for us. And He calls us to be His friends by doing what He commands (John 15:14).
Paul did not have Jesus with him in the flesh while he did his work for God. The Corinthians had never seen Christ in the flesh. But that did not keep the apostle from saying that the love of Christ was the driving force of his life, and should be the driving force of theirs. It gave him the will to serve Christ daily. And it kept him from turning back to the life of selfishness, that everyone without Jesus ultimately lives.
So the people who knew Jesus while He was on earth knew that He loved them. And those who have known Him since His return to heaven can be just as confident in His love for them now. We can be as sure that Jesus loves us as the original apostles—whom He loved to the end while He was on earth (John 13:1)—knew that He loved them.
You simply must know that Jesus loves you. He has proven it. He has proven it in more ways than we can even imagine. But meditating on the cross is where the depth of the matter is found.
Dewayne Dunaway
