Let us turn to 1 John 4. We will read verse 19:
We love, because He first loved us.
Now turn to 1 Corinthians 8:3:
But if any man loveth God, the same is known by Him.
Lord, we thank You and praise You. Give us another chance to gather before You.
Lord, we thank You and praise You because You indeed love us, and for us You gave Yourself. Lord, we hope that we can love You. But we know that love is not something that we have merely by talking. We need You to inspire us with Your own love, so that we can indeed love You.
Therefore, we put this time this morning in Your hands. We look for Your Spirit to pour out the love of God in our hearts—the love that You so desire and so deserve. In the name of the Lord Jesus, amen.
This time we gather together before the Lord, what we are hearing about is brotherly love. But from the first day we said that brotherly love is not something that comes by chance. We cannot merely talk about love among brothers. From the beginning, we have to go back to the source of love.
So, at the very beginning, we said that God is love. In 1 John 4:7-8, we read:
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God;
and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God.
He that loveth not knoweth not God;
for God is love.
Here it shows us very clearly: love is of God. He who has love is born of God and knows God. He who loves not does not know God, for God is love.
When God created man, He made man according to His own image. God is Spirit. Therefore, when He made man, He gave man a spirit.
Man’s spirit is not God’s Spirit. Man’s spirit is a capacity which God has given to man. It is a vessel through which we can receive the Spirit of God, so that God’s Spirit can dwell in our spirit and, in the spirit, we can be one with the Lord.
God is life. Therefore, when He made man, He gave man life. The Bible tells us that God breathed into the nostrils of man, and man became a living soul. In other words, man now had a created life.
But this created life is not God’s life. God’s life is uncreated life. Yet, by receiving this created life, we have the opportunity to receive the uncreated life of God. Therefore, in life we can be one with God.
God is love. When God created man, He also created in man the capacity to love. But this love in the creature is not God’s love. It is a reflection of God’s love.
Because God has given man this capacity to love, we are able to receive God’s love, that His love may fill us.
So, dear brothers and sisters, the fundamental thing we need to know is that God’s love is not something we had when we were created or in our natural life.
As regards true, genuine love, only God is real. God alone is the reality of love. Truly speaking, besides God’s love, no other love is real.
That love is something we did not have at the beginning. Therefore, it says here that he who does not have love does not know God, while he who has love is born of God and knows God.
The commandment from God to man is only one. The requirement of God to man is only one: He wants us to love Him with all our heart, all our soul, all our understanding, and all our strength. He also wants us to love others as we love ourselves.
Because God Himself is love, what He requires of us is only love. But inside of us there is no such love.
When God gave man the Ten Commandments, or the law, the Ten Commandments actually declared God Himself. The Ten Commandments were His testimony.
But when this law, when the Ten Commandments, came into our hands, it became the law which we had to observe. Through law and commandment, God expresses Himself; but to us, it became law and statute.
There came a difficulty, because the love that God wanted, we did not have. Therefore, the law condemns us.
But thank God. In Galatians 3, we are told that the law is like a tutor. It brings us to Christ, so that we can receive from the Lord this love.
Now that we have this love, we can love our God with all our heart, soul, understanding, and strength. Therefore, when we believe in the Lord, there is a great change within us.
Originally, we were dead in sins and transgressions. Originally, we were going along with the course of this world, submitting to the evil power in the air, indulging our own life, and walking according to our own purpose. We were children of wrath.
But thank God, because of His mercy, He gave us grace. He gave us His own Son so that we could receive this grace.
When we receive this grace, it is through grace and through faith. Romans 5 tells us that when we were still sinners, Christ died for us. When we were still weak, when we were still enemies, Christ gave Himself for us.
Here God displayed His love to us. It is not that we loved God, but that He loved us first. Because He loved us first, He planted this love in us. Then we can begin to love God.
I believe, brothers and sisters, that we can all reflect on how we were saved. We were helpless, weak, and under His wrath. We were His enemies. We had no heart for Him, no compassion. We feared Him; we even hated Him.
But thank God, salvation came upon us who were not worthy. God’s love was displayed through His Son, Jesus Christ. We believed in the Lord Jesus; we believed in His love. When we received the Lord, we received His love.
Often I feel that the greatest sin on the earth is to refuse the love of God. There is no sin greater than this. He loved us so much, yet we could refuse Him. That condemned us.
But we thank and praise our Lord. We were constrained by His love. We accepted what He had prepared for us in His love. We accepted the Lord Jesus as our Savior. The Lord came into us; love came into us.
The letter to the Romans says that the Holy Spirit pours out the love of God in our hearts. From that moment on, there was within us a heart to love God very naturally.
When one receives the Lord Jesus, very naturally there is in him a heart that loves God. If he has not received Jesus Christ, he may say with his lips, “I love God,” but in him there is no such thing.
This love begins to move within us. This love is none other than God’s love. God’s love begins to work in us.
From that day on, we begin to live the Christian life, because the Christian life is a life of love. It is a love relationship between us and God.
The first time we believe in the Lord, I believe, brothers and sisters, we all have this very pure love within us. We all have this very single love.
We have love that is willing to abandon all things. We even have a heart to suffer for the Lord because we love Him. That love in us at that time was indeed living and true. That is what we call the first love.
That first love is indeed love at the beginning, in terms of time. It is the love we have when we first begin to have a relationship with God.
This love does not come from us naturally. This love is born into us. This love is none other than God’s love.
The nature of that love is the same as God’s love. God loves us singly; the way we love God is also single. God loves us without condition, and we love Him without condition. God loves us absolutely, and we love Him absolutely. God loves us without self, and we love Him without self.
If we can abide in that love, we abide in God. That love leads us to walk forward.
But besides this love, we see that there is another love within us. That love was given to us when God created us, and we can call it natural love.
This natural love has become a corrupted and fallen love. It has become a selfish life. It has become a love which is not absolute, a love which is divided, and a love that changes.
There are two different kinds of love within us. One is natural love, given to us when we were created. Because of sin, that love has fallen.
But on the other hand, when we believe in the Lord, we receive love from God Himself. We call that supernatural love. This supernatural love is God Himself and has the nature and character of God Himself.
The will of God is for us to abide in that supernatural love. In other words, we must let that supernatural love lead us forward. Whether in our daily life or in service, we need to abide constantly in this love.
In other words, we need to maintain and keep that first love. That first love should continually grow.
We know that life grows. Whenever life stops growing, death comes. Therefore, this love also must grow continually.
At the very beginning, in our first love there may be more emotion. Whenever we mention the name of the Lord, our tears come down. We truly have compassion for our Lord.
But when this love grows, that love deepens. To a certain extent, we can say that this love becomes one with God in our will.
We can see this in the Song of Songs. The Song of Songs is a love story. There is a virgin who has tasted the love of the Lord, and she finds His love so sweet.
She is stirred up in her love, and she cries out, “May He kiss me. I want to be closer to You. I really need to be beside You.”
Because of such compassion for the Lord, the Bridegroom brings her along. When we come to the end of the Song of Songs, we see that the Shulamite and Solomon are completely one.
At that time, her love is completely one with the Lord in her will. Therefore, even when we speak about the first love, it does not mean that first love merely remains as it was at the beginning. This first love is living, and the more you love, the deeper it becomes.
When time goes on, you know the Lord more. But regrettably, because there is already natural love within us, and because of our ignorance, we are not able to distinguish natural love from supernatural love.
From the outside and from the appearance, you are almost unable to distinguish these two loves. But we know that these two loves come from different sources. Their natures are different, and their fruits are different too.
Because we are ignorant in spiritual things, when we were first saved our love toward the Lord was indeed that first love. If the Lord had any requirement of us, we would answer yes without thinking.
At that time, we were willing to suffer for Him, and we did not feel the pain because we knew the Lord was with us. But oftentimes this period is not long.
If such love could be maintained until we see the Lord, how good that would be. But oftentimes we gradually stop depending on the first love and come back to using our natural love.
We use our natural love to love God, and we use our natural love to love our brothers and sisters. We think that we love God and that we love our brothers and sisters very much, but we do not realize that we have used the wrong love.
In appearance, you cannot tell the difference. This needs enlightenment from the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, we are deceived.
On one hand, we have fallen away from that first love. On the other hand, we have come back to natural love. In the past, we used natural love to love worldly things; now we use that same natural love to love God.
But the Word of God tells us that the love God requires of us toward Him is the love of Himself.
There is no place in Scripture where God asks us to love Him with our natural love. He asks us to love Him with that first love.
If we love Him with natural love, not only can we not please God, but that love is condemned by God.
For example, in Old Testament times there was Saul. After he became king, Saul was zealous, and he killed the Gibeonites.
When the Israelites entered Canaan for the first time, God commanded them to destroy the seven tribes in Canaan. But the Gibeonites used a trick, and the Israelites did not seek the will of the Lord. They made a covenant with them.
Because of that, the Gibeonites remained among Israel. Saul was zealous and thought that all the seven tribes in Canaan should be eliminated. So he rose up and killed the Gibeonites.
For that reason, suffering came to Israel. When David became king, God showed that Saul’s action had not pleased Him, because Israel had disobeyed their covenant. God is One who keeps His promise, but they had violated that covenant.
We also see Saul in relation to the Amalekites. Through Samuel, God told him to destroy Amalek because, when the Israelites came out of Egypt and were weak in the wilderness, Amalek rose up to attack and destroy them.
The Amalekites became enemies of Israel for generations. The will of the Lord was to eliminate them and blot out their name.
When Saul was king, God ordered him through Samuel to eliminate the Amalekites—not only the people, but also the animals.
Again, Saul used his natural love to love God. He killed the weak animals but spared the strong ones, intending to use them as sacrifices to God. He also spared Agag, the king of Amalek.
When you love God with your natural love, not only are you unable to obey the will of God, but you also sin against Him.
In the New Testament, we also have Saul of Tarsus, Saul the Pharisee. We see that he loved God very much and wanted to serve God.
Therefore, he thought that those who followed Jesus were against the faith. So he rose up to persecute them. He took them and put them in prison, condemned them, and caused them to die. He thought he was serving God.
But when he served God in this way, he was serving God with his natural life. Such service not only could not please God, but it damaged the kingdom of God.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us see light in this matter. Today we live before God, and today we serve and work on this earth. Do we use our natural love, or are we acting according to supernatural love?
How many times have we thought that certain things would please God, and therefore we did them without first seeking His will? We use natural love to serve God. We use our own cleverness, our own time, and our natural strength.
We want to serve God and love Him, but such love, the more you use it, the more damage it causes. To use natural love to love brothers and sisters produces the same result: the more you love, the more problems you cause.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have to learn a lesson before God. This natural love has to be placed under the cross of Christ.
Our life and our service are often mixed. This natural love must be put to death by the Holy Spirit.
When our Lord was on earth, He said:
He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me;
and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.
Why does our Lord have such severe requirements? Because the Lord knows that if we truly want to love Him, our natural life has to be dealt with by the cross.
It is not to say that we should not love our parents. The first commandment with promise in the Bible tells us to honor our parents. Neither does it mean that a husband should not love his wife. The Bible tells us that a husband should love his wife as Christ loves the church.
But the Lord shows us that, if we want to live a life of love, this natural love must be dealt with.
When natural love has been dealt with by the cross, then we can love God completely according to supernatural life. Then we can love our parents, our husband or wife, and even our own life according to this supernatural life.
In such love there is no self and no selfishness. Oftentimes, when we say that we love, actually we love ourselves. But when our natural life is dealt with, then we can speak about truly loving the Lord and truly loving our brothers and sisters.
Our relationship with our Lord is completely a relationship of love. For this reason, God has planted His own love in us.
The Bible tells us clearly that this is the love God requires of us. God does not ask us merely to do this or that for Him. God wants us to love Him with the love that He gives us.
But it is easy for us to leave that first love and fall back into the natural life. For example, Peter loved the Lord.
When the Lord said that He would suffer and that the disciples would leave Him, Peter said, “I love You. I will die for You. These other disciples may leave You, but I will not leave You.”
Was this love false? When Peter said this, was he dishonest? No, he was honest. He indeed loved the Lord and wanted to die with the Lord. But he did not realize that this love was from the flesh, because he depended on his natural love.
So the Lord allowed him to deny the Lord three times, so that he would see that when he was mindful of the flesh, he would leave the first love.
After the Lord was raised, in John 21, the Lord asked him, “Simon, lovest thou Me more than these?” The Lord used the word agape: “Do you truly love Me absolutely?”
Peter, because of his failure, dared not depend upon himself. He said, “Lord, Thou knowest that I have affection for Thee.” That was all he could say.
Thank God. When Peter knew that he did not have the love, God’s love was poured into his heart. In his old age, he gave his life for the Lord.
How can we leave that first love? Oftentimes, when we love the world, we leave that first love.
1 John tells us that those who love the world do not have the love of God in them. When we first loved the Lord, when this first love was in us, we truly saw the world as dung. The world was no longer attractive to us.
But brothers and sisters, unknowingly, gradually the world enters our hearts again: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
These things begin to enter us, so that our love toward the Lord is divided. A divided heart is a dead heart.
Therefore, the Lord says that he who loves the world does not have the love of the Father in him.
Even when Paul was in the Roman prison before he was martyred, one of his co-workers, Demas, because he loved the world, left Paul and went to Thessalonica.
Oftentimes, we leave the first love because we begin to be mindful of our flesh. Sometimes we leave that first love because we begin to love this world. Even a Christian may love sin to such an extent that he leaves the first love.
When we see the church at Corinth, that was their condition. They were well endowed in gifts, lacking nothing. They had eloquence and knowledge, but the church fell into sin.
They even committed things that could not be found in the world. The church did not seem to care about sin. Brothers went to court against brothers. Even before they broke bread, some became drunk.
Where was the initial love?
When Paul wrote the first letter to the Corinthians, in 1 Corinthians 16:22, he said:
If any man loveth not the Lord, let him be anathema. Maranatha.
The word Paul used was not agape; it was phileo. You do not even have affection for the Lord. Agape love cannot even be mentioned here. “Anathema. Maranatha.” It is to be accursed. The Lord is coming.
Dear brothers and sisters, can we leave the first love to such an extent? The church at Ephesus was a church of life.
The reason Paul could pour out the mystery of God to the church was that this church loved the Lord. To know the Lord is not merely in the mind; to know the Lord is in our hearts. Because they loved the Lord, the Lord could reveal Himself to them in great measure.
At the end of the letter to the Ephesians, Paul said, “Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruption.”
The Ephesian church was a church that loved the Lord. But after about thirty years, when our risen Lord gave the message to the church at Ephesus through John on Patmos, the condition had changed.
In Revelation 2, we read:
I know thy works, and thy toil and patience,
and that thou canst not bear evil men,
and didst try them that call themselves apostles, and they are not,
and didst find them false;
and thou hast patience and didst bear for My name’s sake,
and hast not grown weary.
And verse 6 says:
But this thou hast, that thou hatest the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
For thirty years, this church was able to maintain certain conditions. They had labor, endurance, and discernment. They could not bear evil. They labored for the name of the Lord and did not grow weary. They hated the works of the Nicolaitans, which the Lord also hates.
On the surface, everything was good. But the Lord said, “I have somewhat against thee.” This is a very severe word. The Lord said, “Although you have so many good works, I am against you.”
Why? Because you have left the first love. You must repent. You must remember from where you have fallen. You must rise up and do the first works.
Where did the Ephesian church fall? They fell at the point of first love. Outwardly everything was the same, but inwardly the fire had diminished. Outwardly they could still be busy for the Lord, but inwardly there was no longer love for the Lord. Outwardly there was knowledge, but inwardly there was no heart for the Lord.
From the first day when the Lord put His first love in us, He wants us continually to have a relationship with Him in that love. External things cannot satisfy His heart.
These outward things originally flowed from first love. But when those things remain while the source has died down, such things are empty in the eyes of God.
How did the Ephesian church fall from first love? The Bible does not tell us. Possibly, because they loved the Lord, the Lord revealed much to them, and they also labored for the Lord. Unknowingly, pride came into their hearts.
We call this spiritual pride. In fact, if you are proud, you are not spiritual. But this is so-called spiritual pride. They thought they were higher than other churches and higher than other brothers and sisters.
Because of this pride, they fell from the first love. There is one essential quality in first love: humility.
Dear brothers and sisters, I often look to the Lord and ask Him to shine upon us, because I cannot see myself.
I may think that I love the Lord, but it is not necessarily so. I may think that I do not love the Lord, but that is not necessarily so. I do not know myself.
I ask the Lord to shine upon me: “Lord, have I left that first love?”
For more than sixty years, since the Lord saved me, He has put that love in me. He attracted me. He showed me that He gave Himself and bled for me. He called me to follow Him.
I have not been faithful to Him. Oftentimes, outwardly it seems that I am serving Him. But when I come before Him, I feel that I have left the first love.
I ask the Lord to forgive me. I ask the Lord to restore that first love. I have not been faithful to Him. I have been mindful of my own flesh, and outside of Him there have been other things that drew me.
As though He were not enough to satisfy me, I knew it in my heart. I did not know it clearly, but the Lord knows. The Lord says, “Repent. Do the first works.”
Indeed, we think that what was done at the beginning should continue, and these things are not wrong. What is wrong is that there is no first love in us. We do these things not because we love Him. We labor, but not because of love for Him.
Oftentimes, we work for the sake of work. We do not have the fire of love burning within.
My daily prayer is: “Lord, I put myself on the altar. Burn me with Your holy fire.”
Dear brothers and sisters, what God wants of us is only one thing: He wants us to love Him with that first love.
Let us not be occupied with external things, thinking that when we have these things, that is enough.
How do we keep that first love? The Lord says, “Abide ye in My love.”
How do we abide constantly in His love? The Lord says, “If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love.” Whatever commandment our Lord gives us, we should submit to it. Then we can keep that first love.
Obedience is better than sacrifice. In our daily life, when we obey the anointing of the Holy Spirit within us, we can abide constantly in love.
May the Lord have mercy on us, that we may abide in His love and, by His grace, keep that first love.
May the church of God, His house, abide in first love. If we do so, when He comes, we can see His face with boldness, because as He is, even so are we in this world.
Lastly, to love God is not a matter of lips or words. It must be in truth. It is not merely that we say, “I love the Lord, I love the Lord,” and therefore truly love the Lord. We must have real action.
What is the mark of loving God? First, when we love God, we long for Him.
Psalm 42 says:
As the hart panteth after the water brooks,
So panteth my soul after Thee, O God.
When a deer has been chased by a hunter and runs to exhaustion, it comes to a brook so that it may drink water and regain its strength. When the deer drinks of the water, it sees its own face.
Dear brothers and sisters, if we truly love God, there is a longing heart in us. We are willing to be close to Him and to draw near to Him.
Actually, what God wants is nothing but this. It is not that you do something for Him; it is that you long for Him Himself. It is not that you long for His gifts. You love Him and long for Him alone.
Daily, you have fellowship and communion with Him in the hidden place. You fear that you cannot see His face.
There was a time when I prayed, “Lord, I want to see Your face. If I cannot see Your smiling face, let me see Your face of anger.” There must be a longing for the heart of the Lord.
A mark of loving the Lord Jesus is to draw near to Him. John leaned upon the bosom of the Lord. Mary sat at the feet of the Lord, hearing His word. This is the mark of loving Him.
Are we willing to draw near to Him? If, when we leave Him and are not by His side, we feel that we have lost something, then we know this love.
We remember Mary Magdalene. Because of the grace the Lord had shown her, on the day the Lord was raised, Peter and John went to the tomb. They saw that the Lord was not there, and they went home.
But Mary Magdalene had no home to go to, because the Lord Himself was everything to her.
The mark of love is the willingness to put forth everything for the Lord.
Mary, the mother of our Lord, was told by the angel that she would conceive a child. She said, “I have not yet gone through marriage. How could I have a child?”
The angel told her, “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God.”
For Mary, this was a request that one could hardly answer. If a woman received a child without marriage, she would be considered to have committed adultery. Her fiancé could have been the first to stone her, and her life could have ended.
Yet she said:
Behold, the handmaid of the Lord;
be it unto me according to thy word.
Dear brothers and sisters, if today we truly love God, are we willing to put forth everything for His sake? Oftentimes, we have reservations.
We are not like Mary, the sister of Martha, who broke the alabaster cruse and allowed the fragrance to fill the house. Even the disciples said, “This is wasted.”
But the Lord is worthy of all. Dear brothers and sisters, do we have that mark?
For the sake of the Lord, Paul did not consider his life. He counted all things as dung. From the day the Lord appeared to him on the road to Damascus, his testimony was, “I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.”
That is the mark of loving God. Paul told the Galatians:
From henceforth let no man trouble me;
for I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus.
The cross was imprinted upon the body of Paul. He was faithful unto death.
Lastly, 1 Corinthians 8:3 says:
But if any man loveth God, the same is known by Him.
Throughout the generations, there have been so many who loved the Lord. There were those whom men did not know; we know only a few.
We do not know whether those whom the world considers to be loving God are truly loving God. Whether we truly love God, only God knows.
There are so many who are not known to people, but they are known to God. It is sufficient if God knows.
Dear brothers and sisters, whether you love God, nobody may know. But God knows. That is sufficient.
Our Lord, You loved us so much. You gave Yourself for us. Your love cannot be measured.
You love us so much—without condition and absolutely. Not only have You saved us, but You have also put Your love in us so that we can love You in the same way.
But Lord, oftentimes we change. We have other thoughts. We have appearance, but no reality. You know, Lord.
This morning, we want to open ourselves to You so that You can shine in our hearts. If we have left the first love, show us.
Lord, we are willing to repent before You, that we may be restored. From this day on, may we please You. In the name of the Lord Jesus, amen.