Mike Bickle emphasizes the inseparable relationship between the first commandment, to love God, and the second commandment, to love our neighbor. He explains that true love for God naturally overflows into love for others, and that prioritizing ministry to people over our relationship with God can lead to spiritual burnout. Bickle highlights that all of God's purposes hinge on these two commandments, and that genuine love requires the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. He encourages believers to pursue a deeper relationship with Jesus to effectively love others, as love is the ultimate fulfillment of the law and the essence of God's heart.

Father, we thank you in Jesus' name as we open our heart before you. And Holy Spirit, we invite your presence to come now and to come inspire our understanding and strengthen our spirit with might. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Tonight, we're going to be talking about the relationship of the first commandment to the second commandment. In Matthew chapter 22, verse 36 to 40, one of the religious leaders came to Jesus in verse 36 and asked Him a question. He said, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And Jesus said, You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, in all of your mind. Verse 38, this is the first and the great commandment and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And then verse 40, he says on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Now, the foundational premise of this course on the first commandment, we're spending 12 Friday nights, 12 sessions, focusing on the first commandment because the Holy Spirit is restoring the first commandment to first place in the generation the Lord returns. And I believe we're in that generation. I believe we're in the early days of that. And I believe that the Holy Spirit wants the body of Christ contending for the anointing to operate in the first commandment. Therefore, we have to understand it. We have to reach for it. We have to believe God for it. We have to talk about it, pray for it. And that's why we're teaching this course on it. But the foundational premise of this course is that people who love Jesus with all their heart will always love people far more. And the reason I say that is that over the years, as we've focused on the first commandment, I've heard people say, what about the second commandment? And it's a very theoretical question, or in some cases, even a debate. Some people say we're into the first commandment. Others say we're in the second commandment. It's a completely false concept because it is impossible to touch God in love without overflowing in love towards other people. And it's impossible to love other people in a deep way without it coming in the overflow from loving God. And so the two commandments are dynamically joined. It's not just they're supposed to be. They are in reality. You cannot do one without the other. The first commandment always leads to the second. And the pursuit of the second commandment by itself will always be empty and flat without being energized and generated by the anointing of reaching to Jesus with all of our heart and all of our strength. Now I have here in paragraph A that to put the second commandment first, which is very common, to put our ministry to people before our ministry to the Lord is to make our ministries an idol. It's to get in the way of the purpose of God. I want to say that again. To put the first, the second commandment first, which is common, not only will it lead us to burnout and disillusion, disillusionment and discouragement, it is actually to make our ministry to people an idol. It's to get in our, in the way of our relationship to the Lord. Now to put the second commandment 10th is another problem. But if the first commandment's first, the second commandment will always be big on your internal radar system. It will be on your screen. The Holy Spirit will make sure that it is. Now what's happening in this passage in Matthew chapter 22 is one of the religious leaders comes to Jesus. Of course they're, they're, they're trying to trick Jesus because it's obvious, everybody knows from the Shema Israel, Deuteronomy 6 verse 5, the famous verse, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart. Everybody knew that was the first commandment and it was the main one. And so what's happening is that they're asking, I mean, they knew it was the great commandment. I'll say it that way. And so they come to ask Jesus the question and he of course quotes Deuteronomy 6, 5, the famous verse called the Shema Israel. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart. That's what the verse is. He quotes it. And of course they thought he would, but he adds three new points that Moses did not have. The first point he says, he says, I want you to know this is the first and the great commandment. He adds that description to it. They were, they said the great commandment, but Jesus says, it's not only that, it's the first priority to God. It's the first one on God's priority list and the, and the agenda of the Holy Spirit. Secondly, he says in verse 39, there's another commandment and it's like the first one. This idea of loving people, it's like it. So this was a new concept that loving people is like loving God. Then third, he makes another point in verse 40. He says, matter of fact, on these two commandments, all of the purposes of God hang on them. Now the idea of hanging on the two love commandments, it means that it's, it's, it's like all the purpose of God is like the bucket at the end of a rope hanging. And the rope is the love of God. And what Jesus is saying is that all the purposes in the Word of God, all of them, they originate in God's heart from his design that people would love God and love one another. He said there is no purpose for Israel that does not come from this passion and reality in God's heart of loving God with all of our heart and loving people. This is what was in God's mind when he called Israel to be a kingdom or a nation, a kingdom of priests. This is what is in God's mind when he created the new Jerusalem for us to live in forever and forever and forever. That all of the purposes of God hang, or they, they draw their strength in their source from these two commandments. Roman numeral chapter two. Roman numeral chapter two. The review. Now we did this a couple sessions ago. The four stages of love. Stage number one, for those that are new with us, is that there's, love develops in our experience in these four stages. And there's an order to it. Of course, we pursue all four stages all the time. We don't focus on one and then say, you know, a few years we'll move on to the second one. In our spirit, we reach for all four of them simultaneously, but there's a sequence of which they're developed in our experience. Number one stage, we receive revelation of God's love for us. Now John is the one that would tell us in 1 John 419, we love God and we love people because, or in the overflow of understanding and feeling God's heart for us. When people say, I want to love God more, I say, I'll tell you exactly where to go. If you want to love people more, focus on feeling and experiencing how God feels towards you. Number two stage, when we understand God loves us, it awakens an overflow in our heart and we receive God's love for God. I mean, we love Jesus in the overflow of the Father, or the impartation of the Father's love for Jesus. It says here in John 17, he says, Jesus said, I have to, he's praying. He says, Father, I've declared your name to them so that the love, the love with which you love me would be put into them. And so the second stage is that we grow in love for God, obviously. Now the third stage, some folks don't focus on proper, properly, is loving ourself in the neighbor as ourself. Loving ourself actually precedes loving our neighbor. Now this isn't a carnal thing that he's saying, or a fleshly thing. There's a way in which people love themselves in the, in the flesh. Jesus is talking about a spiritual dynamic, about loving ourselves, or valuing who God has made us to be in the grace of God. The story I've used over the years is the lady that prayed and said, God, I, I, I want to love my neighbor as I love myself. She was praying the prayer and the Lord spoke to her and said, that's the problem. You do love your neighbor like you love yourself. You hate yourself. That's why you hate your neighbor. This is a, a real thing here. A real, I mean, a very important reality in paragraph C, that we love ourselves by knowing who we are in Christ and by rejoicing in who God has made us. I mean, in many ways. I mean, we all have limitations and it's kind of our natural bent to look at our limitations. I'm going to talk about our character. I mean, we always want to be more godly, more humble, wiser. I mean, physical limitations, gifting, personality, calling, and it's very common for people to despise those limitations. And in, in essence, they're really charging God with bad leadership in their life. They really are. And it really minimizes and hinders love in their life. But when we can agree with God and the way that He values us, and we agree with what He's done in our lives and rejoice in it, as Psalm 139 talks about. We talked about this a whole session a few weeks back. What it does is, it puts us in the position where it energizes our spirit and our emotions in order to flow in love. When we get ourself off of others in envy, and we get ourself off our failure, condemnation, we love significantly better. And so this idea, this third stage of loving one another, as we love ourself, you could even say in the overflow of how we love ourself in the grace of God, or rejoicing in, in who we are in God's eyes and agreeing with God's value over our life. Then the fourth stage, obviously, is loving others. Now loving others is the outward proof and the outward demonstration of these other three realities. It's, it's hard to see stage one, two, and three, when you look at a person, because those are the invisible passions of their heart. But this fourth dimension of love is easy to see because it's demonstrated in actions. But the truth is, all four stages come together in this fourth stage of loving other people. Now in this, our love for God is made visible. Now Jesus is the one who said this in John 13. He said, His command that you would love one another. And this is the way that your love for God or your devotion as a disciple is openly displayed. Now when you love another person, your devotion to Jesus in God's eyes, now not, not all people connect. Boy, they must really love Jesus. They, they, not everyone connects your relationship to Jesus with your loving actions towards others. But the Lord says more and more people will be able to do that. But even more importantly as God does. When God, when, when I love another person, the Lord takes it personal. He takes it as a statement of commitment in my life or your life to be a devoted disciple to Him. Now one of the things that we have to get clear here is on the definition of love. Because when people think of loving one another, some automatically go to the, you know, the outreach ministry where they give food or clothing to the stranger on the street. Now that's really cool. That's good to do that. And I value that. And the Bible is behind that. But most of the love that you show in your life won't be those outreaches you go on to for an hour or two or longer, where you give a stranger something, food or clothing. The, the love that you will demonstrate most, most is to the people that you're closest to and most familiar with, that you might be most tempted to despise. That's where love is magnified most. And that's where our love for Jesus is demonstrated in the most familiar relationships. It's not like, well, next month is the outreach. So then we're going to show love for people. No. We show our love for Jesus by the humility and the servant spirit we have with the people in our home or the people we live with. The people that we interact with day in and day out. Or even the, the, the people that we interact with in the, you know, in just society at large. You know, the guy that, uh, you know, you go to the store to buy something and you buy it and it doesn't work and you're not happy with the guy and you might speak sharp words to him. The Lord says, no, even in those arenas, that's where love for me is demonstrated. It's not just the random outreach ministry. And of course to others it's not random. Some go real regular. But many people, they do one here, one there, and they're saving up their love, uh, uh, focus for giving food to somebody they don't know. The, the vast majority of your love for Jesus will not be shown in that way for most people. Now, some folks, that's what they do all day, every day. That's a little different story. But for the majority, our love for Jesus is demonstrated as people seeking to walk in the first commandment into first place. Our, this love is demonstrated in everyday relationships. I mean, literally the people that we're most familiar with. Let's go to page two. Jesus made a very important principle in, in, uh, Roman numeral three. He says, we are to love our neighbor like loving God. He said, the second commandment is like the first commandment. Now, in what ways is loving a person like loving God? Well, the obvious way is in its importance. Jesus is saying, it is as important to love people as it is to love God. Because loving people is a reflection. It is a statement of your devotion about loving Jesus. It actually is a mirror. It is a reflection of the reality of your secret devotion to the Lord. And again, don't limit loving people to outreach ministries. Loving people, think of the person in your home that maybe tests your patience the most. Loving that person is a reflection, is a mirror of your devotion to Jesus. Doesn't even mean you have to enjoy them. Because loving people, and I'm being serious, loving people in a biblical definition is not related to enjoying them. You can love your enemies and not appreciate talking to them or going on a trip with them. Some guy says, well, this particular person in my family, I just can't stand them. I go, that's fair. But you still need to love them in sincerity and in humility and in secret. What I mean by in secret, without drawing attention to the, the fact that you're doing it. Seeking their good without them knowing it. Because Matthew 6, Jesus said this over and over in the Sermon on the Mount. He said, do it in secret and God's eyes will see you. And the Lord will take it as a statement of your commitment to Him. So this is about loving God. Jesus connected the two together. He said, the two are deeply connected. They're like each other. They're joined in a deep way. You cannot separate them in the way that people commonly do. Now another paragraph A. Loving people, love for others is like loving God in that it flows from regular encounters of God's love. You want to love a person that causes you pressure. I'll just say it that way. Lock in to growing in how God loves you. Because the stirring of our emotions and the impressions of the Holy Spirit and just the activity, the subtle activity of the Holy Spirit on our heart. When we study the scripture, focus on God's emotions and God's passion for us. When we lock into this, it strengthens our emotions. I mean, they're just subtle stirrings of the Spirit. But this is the overflow of which we love other people in. This is where we get the energizing of our spirit. Paragraph B. Loving people is like loving God in, in the, it requires the, all of our heart and all of our strength. There is a emotional dynamic that happens in us when we commit to be wholehearted in love. There's something about the, you know, I've talked about this over the years that, you know, people seek to obey the Lord 98 percent of the areas of their life. But there's that one area they're saying no to the Holy Spirit in. And it's that final area that our emotional dynamics are released at a whole different level. It's the same with loving people. When we are committed in our heart before God, we're saying, we're going to walk in love, the whole definition of love from 1 Corinthians 13, and we'll get there in a moment. I really want to do this. I want to go all the way in loving, loving people. Now we love people. Now the minute you say I want to love people all the way, you're going to have a dozen folks describing to you how you should love them and the way they want better. So when I talk about loving people all of your heart, I'm not saying that you're going to give the definition of that to everybody that knocks on your door that wants you to do something for them or with them. When I talk about this dimension of all, when in the secret place of our heart we go, I want to do with all of my heart, love people in the way I love God. When those two alls come together, then there is an energizing of our spirit in love that we don't have. I don't mean that love is easy and perfect, but love has a whole different flow to it when we burn the bridge and we're going for the full definition towards God and towards people. Paragraph C, loving others is like loving God in the sense that there's a supernatural dimension. It takes the activity of the Holy Spirit. We can't live spiritually superficial with the Holy Spirit and be strong in love. That's why the, you know, in society the, the secular humanist attempts at love, and I appreciate them actually. I appreciate an unbeliever who's trying to be nice to people. I think that's cool. It's not enough, but it's way better than them being mean to people. But the definition in the culture of what it means to love that's often in the lives of unbelievers, it doesn't have a supernatural dimension that requires an interaction with the Holy Spirit. And beloved, you can't love people in the same way you can't love God without a supernatural help of the Holy Spirit. Now you can decide to, but you can't actually follow through in terms of God's definitions of what love really looks like without the aid of the Holy Spirit. It is a profoundly spiritual thing, this thing called loving people. It's not, it's something unbelievers cannot do from a biblical point of view. They can seek to do it, but it takes the power of God in the inner man to do it in the way the Bible describes. Takes the power of the Holy Spirit. So the idea of going deep in Jesus is like critical to the foundation of genuinely loving people. The thing that you can do best to, in terms of loving people, is to go deep in Jesus. You know, I, I know that I've said this over the years to moms. I mean, there's no group of people on the earth who seek to love more than moms do. I mean, it's, I mean, all through history and all cultures. I mean, moms really want to love. And over the years of pastoring, I've had to encourage moms where they, some of them are so devoted to their children that their relationship to the Lord goes real low. And they, I mean, their heart is really good. They just want to be nearly omnipresent in devotion to their children. Thinking that more of mom, to the nth degree, means an enhanced child. But I know some of you, you could go several places with that. But actually, I'm not, I'm not being humorous on this. But what I've told these moms, you connecting with Jesus, you will give a lot more to your family if you have a spark of light in your spirit than devotion and intensity of commitment without a vibrant spirit towards the Lord. I said, you will actually do more for your children. Drawing back a little bit, connecting with Jesus, you will have a lot different, your spirit will be far different when you talk to them, when you're devoted to them. And if it's true of moms, it's true of every other group in the human race because there's nobody more devoted than moms. But moms, I just want to say this, as the chief group in the earth that seeks to love, again, there's nobody like a mom who seeks more, there's no other group, without any interaction with the Holy Spirit. You will not love well if your spirit is dull. Even though you might mean well, you won't love well. You may be there and devoted, but your spirit will be angry, depressed, and frustrated. And that's not the highest and best that God has for you if you're investing in your family. Now again, if that's true of moms, which is the chief lovers of the human race as far as I'm concerned, it's true of everybody else in every other category. We will love far better with a lively spirit. So I've talked to folks over the years and, you know, sometimes they get nervous about people spending time with the Lord, like they're going to somehow, if they run into Jesus, the fountain of love himself, somehow they're going to be callous towards people. You can't run into that burning flame, that man, without having the flame touch you for other people. I go, no, actually, push them into Jesus. They will love deeper in a far more sustained way for decades if they get that fire operating in their spirit. Paragraph D, because when we feel gratitude for how he feels towards us, and we have the joy of being loved for God, that energizes and sustains our compassion for other people. Because compassion is more than feeling sorry for somebody in pain, though there's a dimension of that. There's natural human compassion, which is good, but there's something more God has for us. It's the overflow of the Spirit's work in our life. When we have gratitude and joy, and because of the way that the Lord relates to us, our spirit is far more free and far more energized to sustain a, a flow of love and compassion to other people. Let's go to paragraph F. Now this commandment, loving God, I mean loving people as you love yourself, I mean it is searching. It's a searching commandment. I mean, I challenge you to take that before the Lord as a serious part of your life mandate, your life calling. I'm going to love people in the way I love myself, and as a statement, a reflection of my devotion to Jesus. I'm going to go all the way by the biblical definition of love. It will require a comprehensive reordering and restructuring of our felt life and our priorities. Because by nature, we despise ourself and we're consumed with our own comfort and honor. So we have two natural things that happen. People, by nature, without the Holy Spirit's help, many people, it's a very common thing to have self-rejection and self-loathing. I mean it's a problem the whole human race. You know the guy says, I just hate when I do this. Oh, I can't stand so much about myself. I go, well that's extremely a normal, common human reaction and feeling. And not only is there a natural operation in our human spirit to despise much about ourselves, self-rejection, very common throughout the human race. There's also a natural desire to be self-consumed, meaning just living for our own pleasure, our own natural pleasure and honor. So to overcome those two natural tendencies, rejection, self-rejection and the quest for self-comfort, it takes the work of the Holy Spirit. But when we say before the Lord, Lord we're going to do this. We're really going for this. Because we love you, we really want to be wholehearted lovers of God. We want to go after this thing with all of our heart. This is a statement of loving Jesus. This is not just trying to be a better person, though I think it's cool to be a better person. But I mean this is a direct reflection of your pursuit to love and encounter God in a deeper way. I'm going to go after this. I'm going to love people in the overflow of how I love you as a reflection of it. And I'm going to do it by the help of the Holy Spirit in the same intensity that I love myself. Of course, the minute you go on that journey in truth, the thing that happens in our hearts, and many of you know this because you're on that journey. Others of you, you think, well I kind of love. I never think about it specifically, but I must love. I mean I'm a Christian. I mean surely I am. I mean I like people. Is that what you mean? And loving others as you love yourself is more than a general like of cool people. It really is about humility and servanthood. We're going to look again in a minute that the definition of 1 Corinthians 13 verse 4 to 7, it lays out what what we're talking about here. And to love people in that kind of standard. I mean as I search to do that, seek, reach to do that in my spirit, the thing that becomes obvious is that I fall short. And when Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those that are poor in spirit. We have poverty of spirit, and we see our spiritual condition in a very dynamic way. Paragraph J. This commandment, this radical commandment to love others as we love ourselves as the overflow and a reflection of our love for God as an expression, the theater of how we love God is how we love people according to 1 Corinthians 13 definitions, those attitudes. This radical commandment, it touches the core of our being. And it exposes our weakness and our failure. Now when when I draw back from really reaching for this, I don't see my need and my depravity so much. But when I make it my true heart standard to love Jesus by loving people in this way, my depravity comes to light. It exposes my significant need, which creates humility. The Lord says, you keep reaching for it. But here's another thing. I mean that's, that's, that's actually a positive thing when we see our need in that way. But it also, the reaching with all of our heart to walk in love in this way, it changes our emotional dynamics. Again, I mentioned this point earlier. When we go for a hundred percent, we're really going to do this. There is an enriched dynamic in our heart that is, really changes the way we think and feel. Many believers, when unbelievers, of course unbelievers as well, are so diminished and so stuck on the inside because they're so self-consumed. And the answer to being self-consumed, we're born self-consumed. And we typically get more self-consumed the older we get, instead of less. But the way out of that prison is to act in the opposite spirit by loving others as we love ourselves. The very reaching for it breaks open the prison doors when we do it in relationship to the Holy Spirit. The very reaching for it does this. Top of page three. Love is the source and the goal of the Law and the Prophets. And the Law and the Prophets, when Jesus talked about the Law and the Prophets hang on these commandments, the Law and the Prophets means the whole purpose of God. The whole purpose in God's heart, from creating Adam and, in the garden and Eve, right through to the new Jerusalem in eternity, the whole thing hangs. Meaning, it's, it's, think of the, you know, in the ancient world, the bucket in the well hanging on the rope. The rope is sustaining that bucket and it's the source of strength and it's the, it's the support system of it. What Jesus is saying is the whole support system, everything that God's purpose hangs on, is this dream in God's heart that people would love God and love one another forever. Everything is built on that premise. Everything is built from that paradigm, from God's point of view. Paragraph B, not only is the source of all of God's plan and the support system of God's plan love, it is the fulfillment of everything in the Word of God as well. Romans 13, now this is Paul talking. He says, he that loves another has fulfilled the Law. And they talk about all the commandments in the Bible are fulfilled by God. By seeking to love people. Because even the Law, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart. I mean, the ultimate Law is fulfilled in loving people. Because you can't love people in truth except, except reaching to love God and asking for the Holy Spirit's help. And so Romans 13, Paul tells us two times actually in this passage, he emphasizes it. Everything God is about is fulfilled in this passion and this reach of the heart. Even loving God, the ultimate Law, the great Law is fulfilled as we walk this out towards other people. Paragraph C, Paul says in 1 Timothy 1 verse 5, the goal of the commandment, the purpose of the whole Word of God is that it would ignite and motivate and energize loving people. This is what was in God's mind all along. Not just that we would walk in love for one another, but this is what energizes the whole purpose of God. And so he says the purpose of the commandment is love. And it gives three different dimensions of how we love with excellence from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. And on the notes I give a sentence or two for each one of those. Paragraph E, now Matthew chapter 7. If you have your Bibles and you want to follow along in Matthew chapter 7 verse 7 to 12, you can do that. Look, because it's a, a larger passage here instead of just a one-off reference, Bible reference, it's a entire passage. It's in the Sermon on the Mount. Now it's verse 12 that we're looking at. Jesus is calling them in the Sermon on the Mount to love people. He says, therefore whatever you want men to do to you, do it to them. And in this way the Law and the Prophets are fulfilled is the essence. He's talking about loving people. But here's the point I want you to see. The word therefore in verse 12. He is linking the commandment to love people. He's linking it to the passage right before. So verse 12 is a logical connection to the principles of verse 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. And it's very significant that the call to love people, the golden rule as it's been known to be referred to, is in context to the prayer movement. Jesus is telling them in Matthew 7, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Everyone who asks, he's talking about the prayer life, receives. He goes on and asks the question, what man is there among you if his son asks, that man will give him bread. And then he goes on in verse 11, how much more will the Father give you if you ask? How much more will the Father give you if you ask? Therefore love one another, he says in verse 12. Here's the point. There is a very dynamic spiritual reality, even the call to prayer is linked to love one another. The reason I say that is because in our culture there are all kinds of secular movements, humanist movements. Again I'm not, certainly not against them. I appreciate them. But they get confused because they think their love is the kind of love the Bible's talking about. And there's even believers in the church that get caught into these movements and they think that love is just about doing some good deeds for some people occasionally. Give them a little bit of money, maybe go on an outreach occasionally. And love is a far bigger subject than that. And it has a far more, a greater demand on the human heart than some good deeds here and there. And the point I'm saying that it takes a spiritual vitality to walk in it. The reason I'm saying it because if I, as I seek to be a man that walks in love, I'm very aware I have to have a prayer life. I have to have a spiritual vitality and dynamic or this whole thing is just rhetoric. And I see movements in society that are trumpeting their love. And, and again I appreciate all the effort for people to be kind to people. But in my spirit I go there's more. It takes a supernatural dynamic. It takes a context of wanting to be wholehearted towards Jesus for this thing to work. Paragraph G. Now in our, in our context of loving people, it's more than just doing deeds for them. Though I want to emphasize the value of doing good deeds for people. I mean it's fantastic. It's essential. It's biblical. But people are more than, than physical. They're spiritual and they're eternal. And though I value in the Bible values giving somebody food who's hungry. That in itself is good. But it's not enough. And again the reason I'm, I'm focusing on this and connecting it to the first commandment, because I've seen believers they get content if they're doing a little outreach. And they lose the reach in their spirit for a deeper dynamic and interaction with the Holy Spirit and Jesus. And they become content. And instead of reaching to love, the more I reach for love, the more I see how much I need the Holy Spirit. But in the secular humanist paradigm of love, people reach for love and they actually become content with their love and proud and self-satisfied spiritually. It has the exact opposite dynamic in them that reaching for love is meant to have. The more I seek to love in a deeper way, the more desperate I become for a deeper interaction with the Holy Spirit. The more aware I am at my poverty, the more grateful I am to God. But the very quest for love in a different paradigm makes people satisfied with their love and proud and it causes them to boast in their heart before God, I've done good all these days of my life. And both, both groups would talk about love and helping people. I mean one of the great movements in the end of the age that will be led by the Antichrist will be a compassion movement. It will be a secular, secular humanist compassion movement that will cause people to be bolstered in their confidence that all is well because they're doing some good deeds to people in need. And so, as I see in the church again, a movement to be more active. I like this. I like it. It's, it's, it's good. But not an activity that causes our spiritual vitality in Jesus to be weakened or to be diminished. I was talking to some guys the other day and they said, well we're just going to help those guys. That's good enough in itself. I go, no. We want to give a witness about Jesus. And there's, you know, a thing going around. You've heard it. Many people. Well, no. We want to love them because it's enough to love them. We're not just being nice to them so we can preach to them. I go, what's wrong with being nice to them so you can preach to them? They're eternal beings. They will end up in the lake of fire even if you feed them every day if they don't get the truth about who Jesus is. I've heard a lot of believers over the years, you know, in the 30 years of pastoring, no, we're not just doing it to open a door. I go, that's good that we do it as a good thing in itself. But by all means, reach for every opportunity when you meet a physical need to touch the spiritual need of this eternal human being. Because no matter whatever need we meet, that person's profound need is to connect with God on God's terms. And so even in our quest to love people, we want to love by God's definition, on God's terms, in the truth that Jesus describes. In other words, it's love with allegiance to Jesus. And you're going to find, we're seeing it already, there'll be more and more compassion movements emerging in society that will spill over to the church that will get weaker and weaker on allegiance to Jesus, but more bolstered in their confidence they're doing right. I want to love on God's terms, by God's definitions, in allegiance to Jesus, in allegiance to His Word, and as an active expression of my love for Him with all of my heart. Calling on the Holy Spirit, humbling myself, when I come up short, which is all the time in love, being energized by gratitude and joy, by that which I do receive from the hand, from the hand of God, by the work of the Spirit. This is the context and the relationship of loving one another and loving Jesus with all of our heart. Roman numeral five, page four. The supreme value of love. The supreme value of love is that it's the only thing that lasts forever. The currency in the eternal city is love. The only thing you're going to bring with you, through the resurrection, is the testimony before God, I mean in your heart, that God recognizes of your love for God, and your love for God directly to God, and your love for God that's expressed by loving people. Both of them are love for God. But all that we bring with us through the resurrection, we don't bring our clothes. We don't bring our bank accounts. We don't bring our databases. We don't bring trophies. All we bring is what God sees as the truth about love that was in our heart towards Him. The direct I love you towards Him. The heart of devotion. But also the love towards Him that's expressed in denying the flesh and obeying Him. And it's expressed in loving people because you love Him. And loving people because you love Him. And loving people as we love ourself, which is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that will take crying out and asking and seeking and knocking and crying out for the supernatural provision of God. First Corinthians chapter 13, it describes a secular humanist approach to love. All the different, it says in verse 3, if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, I give my body to be burned. But I don't have love by God's definition of love. It profits me nothing when I stand before God. So you can move in the power gifts of the Holy Spirit, verses 1 and 2 of 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 13. Or you can move in the compassion, deeds towards other. But if you don't, if you're not doing it in love for God because you love God and loving as you love yourself. In other words, that's the reach of our spirit. I don't know that we ever fully attain, but that's the reach in our spirit. If we do it that way, it profits us because God remembers it forever. That's how it profits us. The people may not even receive it while you're doing it. You may show love to people. They may reject it or misunderstand it. But God remembers it. That's why it profits you. The only thing that profits you ultimately is what God remembers. What God esteems and remembers. Paragraph B, 1 Corinthians 13, verse 4 to 7. This is what love is by the biblical definition. And you can't get it, you can't fulfill your obligation in the spirit to love by going on a few outreaches. I'm for the outreaches. But you can't do a few events and there you've got love settled. Check the list. I did the love thing last month. I wrote the check to the needy person giving the appeal on the TV show. I did the love thing. No. Although that's good that you do those things, but that's not enough. Paul describes the character of love here in chapter 13, verse 4 to 7. He gives two basic definitions of love. One is passive and one's aggressive. And then he gives descriptions. But he really talks about love in two basic ways. He goes, love suffers long. That's the passive definition. And love is kind. That's the active definition. And then he gives all the other attitudes and activities that manifest those two realities. Love suffers long. And what does long suffering mean? It means you suffer long. That's what it means. It means when the person deserves a judgment, a harsh judgment, you don't give it. It's, again, to suffer long is passive. There's nothing you do. It's what you're not doing. You're not venting. And you're not paying them back. And you're not, you know, giving them what they deserve, in the negative sense. It suffers long. Now go right to your family members, or to the place you work. This is where this is worked out most dynamically, because of loving Jesus. Then there's an active definition of love. Love is kind. It's giving people what they don't deserve. So when you're long-suffering, you're holding back what they do deserve. They deserve ill treatment. But you're holding it back. And kindness, you're giving them what they don't deserve. They don't deserve that. And this is how God treats us. And then it gives all the different positives and negatives behind that. But that's the essence of God's definition of love. And this takes the work of the Holy Spirit. It takes a commitment to love Jesus, in the secret place of our heart, to do this in secret. I mean, without announcing it. Without making a big show of it. Paragraph C. 1 Corinthians 13, verse 8. It says, love never fails. And the reason, it doesn't mean that love is always effective in the eyes of man. What it means is, because God remembers love, it doesn't fail. It has a reward that goes past the grave and a remembrance. Much love that you show to the person you show it to, they don't appreciate it. They don't even recognize it as love. But it still does not fail. Doesn't mean it always changes the person. It means it's remembered and honored by God forever. In that sense, it never fails. Again, it doesn't mean it doesn't fail in the sense that it always impacts the person. God loves many and they don't receive it. They end up in hell. God's love doesn't fail. The people fail to receive it. But the love is real. The testimony of it lasts forever. That he really loved them and reached to them with all of his heart. And it goes on to tell us in verse 13 that love is the greatest. It is the greatest before God. It's the great commandment to love God, to love people, which is really two sides of one coin. It's the greatest and the highest calling. You could preach in stadiums. You could have the biggest worldwide TV ministry, whatever, whatever, whatever. The largest number of people being touched. But the greatest calling and anointing you can operate in, is the calling and the anointing of love. Love to God and love to people. Which in reality, is the same reality. Amen. For more free downloads from Mike Bickle, please visit mikebickle.com.