ITERO 2022 Fall - 1

Message Title: Loving the Lord and Loving one another - the Most Excellent WAy for us to be anything and do anything for the Organic Building up of the Church as the Body of Christ 

we are not talking about some emotional or natural love. but we need the Lord to renew us with the divine concept of love, and the deeper knowledge of this love, so that we will be convicted that we are still short. This love is the most inward essence of God. we need to be trained to know this divine love, so that we can all be those who pursue love. All this love is for the building up of the Body of Christ. 

I. Paul commended the Thessalonians by telling them that "your faith grows exceedingly and the love of each one of you all to one another is increasing"

2 Thessalonians 1:3 We ought to thank God always concerning you, brothers, even as it is fitting, because your faith grows exceedingly and the love of each one of you all to one another is increasing,

to believe in the Lord is to receive Him as life, and to love the Lord is to enjoy the very person whom we have received; faith is given to us by God so that by it we may receive Christ as our life; love issues out of such a wonderful faith and enables us to live out all the riches of the Triune God in Christ as our life. we have received the Lord as the beginning of our Christian life. Now in order to go on in our Christian journey, we need to love and enjoy the Lord Jesus. 

1 Timothy 1:14 And the grace of our Lord superabounded with faith and love in Christ Jesus.

if our faith is increasing and our love is abounding, this is the sign that the grace of Lord is with us. in this wonderful faith and by this super-excellent love of the Triune God, we should love Him and all those who belong to Him; only in this way can we become, in the current of the church's degradation, the overcomers whom the Lord is calling and desiring to obtain in Revelation 2 and 3. from the Lord's rebuking of the church in Ephesus, we can see that the root of the degradation of the church is losing the first love for the Lord. 

II. the Lord's recovery is a recovery of loving the Lord Jesus with the first love, the best love, and of loving one another for the building up of the organic Body of Christ, which is the building up of the New Jerusalem as the goal of God's eternal economy. 

Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her

the Christ whom we love is the church-loving Christ; when we love Him, we will love the church as He does. if we feel that some in the church life are so unlovable, for sure, we are not abiding in the One who loves the church and everyone in the church. 

the degradation of the church begins with our leaving the first love toward the Lord; to love the Lord with the first love, the best love, is to give the Lord the preeminence, the first place, in all thingss, being constrained by His love to regard and take Him as everything in our life. when we were regenerated, we received the eternal life of God, which is a person, the Lord Jesus. the only way to apply and enjoy this person is by loving Him with the first love. we need to freshly contact the Lord all the time to enjoy His present presence moment by moment. we can always ask the Lord, "what about this? Lord, how do you feel about this?" 

2 Corinthians 5:14 For the love of Christ constrains us because we have judged this, that One died for all, therefore all died; 

when we are constrained by the love of Christ, we will have no other choices, no other way, so beyond our own control, except to love Him to the uttermost, and to live to Him who loves us and died for us. in order to love the Lord to the uttermost, we need to be those who desire and seek to dwell in the house of God all the days of our life to behold His beauty and to inquire of God in His temple; to inquire of God is to check with God about everything in our daily life (Psalms 27:4). 

III. among the co-workers, the elders, the responsible ones, and everyone in the vital groups, love must prevail

1 John 4:16 And we know and have believed the love which God has in us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.

1 John 4:19 We love because He first loved us.

God first loved us in that He infused us with His love and generated within us the love with which we love Him and the brothers; to abide in God is to live a life in which we love others habitually with the love that is God Himself, that He may be expressed in us. our love towards others must be habitual, which means this is something that needs to be built up. the seed we receive within us is love indeed, but this love within us needs to increas and expand, and this requires us to practice this love habitually. and when we practice this, God is expressed in us. 

in order to maintain the oneness in the church, we should neither speak any reviling words, not listen to any reviling words. rather, we should speak well of our fellow believers. reviling words are opposed to the testimony of the Body. 

IV. Love is the most excellent way for us to be anything or do anything for the building up of the church as the organic Body of Christ.

while we are keeping our faith, while we are contending for the faith, our heart and our proper attitude must be love. 

if we read 1 Corinthians chapter 13, when Paul was giving the definition of love, we will realise that we do not have this love within us at all. but we have the law of the Spirit of life within us, which is the law of Christ as the law of love. the law of love must be substantiated by the law of the Spirit of life so that we may be able to bear one another's burdens. when the law of love is activated within us, we automatically and spontaneously will be shepherds who have the loving and forgiving heart of our Father God and the shepherding and seeking spirit of our Savior Christ. 

V. John 21, a chaopter on shepherding, is the completion and consummation of the Gospel of John; after His resurrection the Lord shepherded Peter and commissioned him to feed His lambs and shepherd His sheep; this is to incorporate the apostolic ministry with Christ's heavenly ministry to take care of God's flock, the church, which issues in the Body of Christ. 

there are two ministries we can see which are going on in an incorporated way: one is Christ's heavenly ministry and the other is the apostolic ministry on the earth. the main thing the Lord is doing today is the shepherding work. these two ministries are incorporated. that is how the Lord is shepherding His people through the believers shepherding one another.