Keeping the Lord’s Word and being Perfected in His Love by Expressing it in our Living

As believers in Christ, we need to keep the Lord’s word and be perfected in His love by expressing it in our daily living, that is, by habitually loving one another.

We need to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect by being perfected in His love; when we abide in the Lord’s word and practice loving one another by living by the divine life in us, the love of God is perfected in us and we are perfected in the love of God.

Hallelujah, our heavenly Father is perfect, and we shall be perfect even as He is perfect!

And the way we are being made perfect is not by our efforts but by our being infused with what and who God is.

The element of perfection is not in us – it is in God.

God is perfect, and the only way we can be as perfect as God is, is by being infused with God, constituted with God, and living out God.

Both in the Old and in the New Testament we see that God’s intention is not that we do things for Him or obey His commandments in ourselves, but that we spend time with Him to be infused with Him so that He in us may do everything that He requires of us. This is amazing!

If we see this, our whole Christian life will change, for we will stop our trying and we will cease from our vain efforts and we will just open to God for HIm to come in and be everything to us and do everything in us!

Some may say that there is the law of the ten commandments in the Old Testament and that God expects us, His people, to keep them.

But even before God gave these commandments, He spent time with Moses to infuse him with what He is.

The emphasis throughout the Bible is not that we do our best to do what God requires us to do but that we need God to come into us and do everything in us and for us.

In our daily Christian life, we need to realize that it is God who operates in us both the willing and the working, and we simply need to cooperate with Him.

We simply need to open to Him, keep His word by praying and reading His word with much Amen and adequate prayer and let Him live in us to fulfil in us what He requires of us.

And throughout the day we can turn to Him again, maintain our constant fellowship with Him, and let Him do everything in us.

May we be proper Christians who are made perfect even as our heavenly Father is perfect by contacting Him, allowing Him to infuse us with Himself, and letting Him do everything in us and for us.

May we experience the God who operates in us both the willing and the working for His good pleasure.

In ourselves, we are not able to keep the commandments nor meet the requirements that God has for us; only God can fulfil what He requires.

This is why He became a man, so that He may fulfil what He requires, and then He became a life-giving Spirit to come into us and live the same kind of life that fulfils God’s purpose in us. Hallelujah!

Keeping the Lord’s word to be Perfected in His love and be Perfect as our Father

May we be those who are being perfected in the love of God so that we may be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (1 John 2:5; 4:12, 17-18).

How can we be perfect even as our heavenly Father is perfect? It is by being perfected in His love. How can we be perfected in His love?

If we keep the Lord’s word, the love of God is being perfected in us (2:5).

The word of God – including both the Old and the New Testament – is not just for us to read, understand, or memorize, but for us to keep.

And we keep the word of God by pray-reading the word.

The word says that we should not hate our brother; we should not try to do this but rather, keep this word by eating it, masticating it, musing on it with much prayer, and opening to the Lord so that He in us would fulfil this.

To keep the Lord’s word is to open to the Lord in prayer with His word, to enjoy the Lord in His word, and to receive the life-supply in His word with the exercise of our spirit so that this word may be fulfilled in us.

When we eat the word of God in such a way, this word will be sweet in our mouth but bitter in our stomach, operating in the inner parts of our being.

The word of God is living and operative, and we can keep the Lord’s word by praying and reading His word and saying Amen.

The love of God denotes our love toward God, which is generated by His love within us. God’s love is what He is, His inward essence.

The Lord’s word supplies us with the divine essence, with which we love God and the brothers.

When we keep the divine word, the divine love is perfected through the divine life, which is God Himself and by which we live.

May we have an uplifted experience of pray-reading the word of God.

May we not merely formally read the word, saying amen, and that’s it.

May we break down the word and masticate it, just as we do with the food.

May we say Amen to the word of God, masticate it, mix it with our faith, say amen to it, lift up our hands to it, and internalize it in prayer.

Many times our reading and praying over the word of God is not full of enjoyment; we may just do it as a routine, and we don’t get any food or nourishment from it.

We need to eat the word of God slowly, mixing it with our prayer, and absorbing it.

Only when we keep the Lord’s word by pray-reading it and opening to the Lord are we perfected in His love.

The Lord’s word contains His essence, and when we pray and read His word with the exercise of our spirit, we receive more of what God is, more of HIs life.

When we receive the Lord’s word in a living way, His word becomes spirit and life to us, and this imparts God’s inward essence into us, thus perfecting us in His love.

When we keep the Lord’s word, the divine love is perfected in us through the divine life by which we live.

The more we pray-read the word, the more we will live not in ourselves but in Christ, and our living will be His living in us.

When we live by the divine life, we are perfected in His love, and His love is perfected in us.

This means that His love is shown and manifested in our living as we live by the divine life.

Lord Jesus, we need to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect by being perfected in His love! We love You, Lord, and we want to keep Your word with much pray-reading of Your word. We love Your word. We lift up our hands to Your word and muse on it. Supply us with spirit and life as we read and pray over Your living word. Amen, Lord, may the love of God be perfected in us as we keep Your word and live by the divine life. Fill us with Yourself. Dispense more of Your inward essence, your love, into us so that we may be perfected in Your love and express this love in our daily living. Lord Jesus, we love You and we love Your word!

The Love of God is Perfected in us when we express it in our Living

If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us (1 John 4:12).

Here His love denotes God’s love within us that becomes our love toward one another, and it is with this love that we love one another. It is His love, not our love; His love is being perfected in us.

In God Himself, the love of God itself is perfect and complete, but it needs to be perfected and completed in us in its manifestation.

How is the love of God being perfected in us? It is by us loving one another and expressing the love of God.

God’s love was manifested to us in God’s sending of His Son to be both a propitiatory sacrifice and life to us (vv. 9-10).

We have seen the love of God, His love was manifested toward us, and we love Him as a response to His love toward us.

This love is perfected and completed in its manifestation when we express it in our living by habitually loving one another with it.

We need to be perfected in His love and the love of God needs to be perfected in us by our expressing the love of God in our living as we love one another.

Our loving one another needs to be habitual, not periodic or sporadic.

We need to love one another not in a natural way but by our living by the divine life, for the divine life being expressed in us loves the brothers.

May love be habitual among us; may we make love the first thing as we meet and do anything.

When we see the brothers, we should just love them, even before chatting with them about how are they doing.

We need to practice living by the divine life so that we may express the divine love and be perfected in His love in our daily living.

In our living in God’s love, others can behold God manifested in His essence, which is love.

The Greek word translated “perfected” means to complete, to accomplish, to finish; the love of God is perfect in Him, but it needs to be perfected in us.

May the love of God be perfected in us and completed in its manifestation by our expressing it in our living as we love one another habitually.

Even as He is, so we are in this world (4:17); Christ lived in this world a life of God as love, and now He is our life so that we may live the same kind of life today.

In such a perfected love there is no fear, for perfect love casts out fear (v. 18). Fear is not in the love.

This fear refers not to the fear of offending God and being judged by Him (1 Pet. 1:17; Heb. 12:28) but to the fear of that we have offended God and will be judged by Him.

And love refers to the perfected love, the love of God perfected in us by which we love others.

When the love of God is perfected in us, there is no fear – we are filled with love, and perfect love casts out any fear. He who fears has not been perfected in love; he who fears does not have the love of God perfected in him.

Perfect love is the love that has been perfected in us by our loving others with the love of God; such love casts out fear and has no fear of being punished by the Lord at His coming back (Luke 12:46-47). Amen!

1 John 4:12 and 17 speak of God’s love needing to be perfected in us, and verse 18 speaks of us being perfected in His love; this indicates that we and the divine love are mingled.

On one hand, the love of God is perfected in us, and on the other hand, we are perfected in His love. In this process, the love of God becomes us and we become the love of God.

Through the dispensing of God into us, we become love in the sense of being constituted with God as love.

As we are being perfected in His love and His love is perfected in us, we become beings of love – we love God and we love one another.

Habitually, in our daily living, we love the brothers, for the love of God is being perfected in us.

Others will see that we are the Lord’s disciples because even as He was, so are we in this world, expressing the divine love no matter the outward circumstances.

Lord Jesus, may the love of God be perfected in us as we love one another habitually in the church life. Keep us abiding in You and may You abide in us so that Your love may be perfected in us. May Your love be perfected in us by being manifested and expressed in our daily living. Thank You, Lord, for coming to be both a propitiatory sacrifice and life to us. What kind of love is this! Thank You for pouring out Your love into our hearts. May we be perfected in the love of God and may the love of God be perfected in us so that God may be manifested through us and His love may be expressed through us. Amen, Lord, may we have the perfect love that casts out any fear. Dispense more of Yourself into us. Constitute us with Yourself as love!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Minoru Chen in the message, and portions from, Life-study of 1 John, msgs. 15, 34-35, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Loving the Lord and loving one another for the organic building up of the church as the Body of Christ (2022 fall ITERO), week 7, entitled, Being Perfect as the Heavenly Father is Perfect by being Perfected in His Love.
• Further reading on this topic:
  – Now my love for the brothers abounds more and more / By saying Amen to God’s Word. / And I’m being related as never before / By saying Amen to His Word. (Hymns #1219, stanza 5)
  – In the church of Jesus there is love for you, / Love most pure and tender, love most deep and true; / Why should you be lonely, why for friendship sigh, / When the church of Jesus has a full supply? / In the church of Jesus there is life for you, / Warm as summer sunshine, sweet as morning dew; / Why should you be fearful, why take anxious thought, / Since the church of Jesus cares for those He bought? (Hymns #1278 stanzas 1-2)
  – Blest be the tie that binds / Our hearts in Christian love; / The fellowship our spirit finds / Is like to that above…./ From sorrow, toil, and pain, / And sin we shall be free; / And perfect love and oneness reign / Through all eternity. (Hymns #860 stanzas 1, 5)