Love God and His Children with the Divine Love Enjoyed and Experienced by us

We need to be those who love God and His children with the divine love enjoyed and experienced by us in our daily life.

The practice of the divine love is the outcome of our enjoyment of the Triune God in us; we should love God and love the brothers with God as our love, even with the love of God that we have enjoyed and experienced.

The Lord’s commandment to love one another is not a new one but an old one, but this commandment shines with new light and fresh power and energy every time we come to the Lord in His word and say Amen to His word.

It is an old commandment because we had this from the beginning of our Christian life.

However, it is also a new commandment because, in our Christian walk and living, it dawns with new light and shines with new enlightenment and fresh power again and again.

The more we come to the Lord in His word, the more we contact the Lord and pray His word back to Him, the more He shines on us, and new light and fresh power are infused into us.

As we contact the Lord and enjoy Him, He burdens us to pray for the saints.

As we open to the Lord and enjoy Him in His word, His heart is infused into us; His heart is for the Body, so we will love the Lord and love the brothers with the divine love enjoyed and experienced by us.

May we allow the Lord to shine on us, expose and remove any darkness, and bring in new light and fresh power into our being so that we may love the brothers with God as our love.

His love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit; we love because He as love is in us, and we love with Him as our love.

Our Christian life is not a life of trying to love others more or doing our best to love the Lord; it is a life of enjoying the Lord and allowing Him to do everything in us, even as He is everything to us.

The commandment that He gives us is not for us to keep in ourselves but for us to allow the Lord to shine on and through, so that new light and fresh power may be infused into our being.

This is our experience in our Christian life and church life.

If we love others with our natural love, this will lead to trouble, but if we love them with God as love becoming our love, this is for the building up of the Body.

Love God and His Children with the Divine Love Enjoyed and Experienced by us

In 1 John we see that the practice of the divine love is the outcome of our enjoyment of the Triune God as the all-inclusive Spirit (1 John 1:3; 2:3-11, 27).

We need to love God and love the brothers with the love of God that we have enjoyed and experienced.

He is moving and working within us as the anointing in the fellowship of the divine life to saturate us with all that the Triune God is, with all that He has done, and with all that He has obtained and attained.

Our love for God and for one another is the outcome of our enjoyment of the Triune God.

Many times we sense our lack of love; we do not love the Lord enough, and our love for the brothers seems to be missing completely.

What we need is more enjoyment of the Triune God.

We need to enjoy the Lord more, and something will spontaneously flow out of us: love for God and love for the brothers.

If we would experience and enjoy the divine love and have it become the love by which we love others, we need to know God experientially by continuously living in the divine life (vv. 3-6; Phil. 3:10).

We should not try to love God with our natural love, neither should we attempt to love the brothers with our natural love and emotion; rather, we need to love the Lord and the brothers with the love of God which has become our love through our enjoyment and experience of Him.

For this, we need to know God experientially, not only doctrinally.

We may know a lot of things about God, but how much do we know God experientially?

Our knowing God experientially affects our daily life. We need to have an experiential knowledge of God.

When we know God in a personal, subjective, and experiential way, we just cannot participate in the worldly enjoyment and entertainment as the others around us can. We just can’t, because we know God.

When we know God and experience Him subjectively, there will be something in us that restricts us from being involved in worldly activities or things, and also supplies us to love God and love the brothers.

There will be a sign that we are different from those around us.

Our neighbours will know and our workmates will sense that we love God and we are not like them, so we can’t be involved in the things they do or say.

In order for us to practice the divine love as a virtue of the divine life, we need the divine life that has been sowed as the divine seed into our being (1 John 3:9; 2:29).

Amen, may we be those who love God and His children, the dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, with the divine love enjoyed and experienced by us!

We can love God and the brothers because we have the divine life in us, and love issues out of our experience and enjoyment of God as our very life. We also need the divine Spirit (3:24).

The divine life is the source, and the divine Spirit is the One who actually carries out the matter of loving others.

It is tremendous to realize that something divine was sown into us; the divine seed has been planted into us, and this seed grows, develops, and is being manifested.

The more we live by the divine life, the divine Spirit in us carries out the matter of loving others.

It is not us who love others but the Lord in us who does this. This is amazing.

The love of God is the source and the Spirit carries out the love toward God and the brothers.

May we be those who love God and His children with the divine love and not with our natural love; our natural love needs to be put on the cross, and we need to love others with God as our love.

One difference between God’s love and our natural love is that it is very easy for the natural love to be offended.

When we love others with our natural love, we will be offended by them; when we love them with God as our love, we will never be offended, no matter what they say or do.

This is our experience, sadly speaking, on the negative side.

Many times in the church life some saints love a particular brother that serves or speaks with their natural love, and this spoils their experience of Christ and of the church, and it damages the church.

On one hand, natural love is easy to be offended, and on the other hand, such love is not divine, so it leads to division and dissension.

How dangerous it is for us to love with our natural love in the church life!

Such love is easily offended and can split the church life in half based on a simple disagreement.

May we come to the Lord again and again and enjoy Him, experience Him, and partake of Him, so that His love becomes our love and we love the Lord and the brothers with God as our love.

May we be those who do not love the saints with our natural love but with the divine love enjoyed and experienced by us in our daily life.

Lord Jesus, we want to love You and love the brothers not with our natural love but with the love of God which we have enjoyed and experienced. Amen, Lord, thank You for regenerating us with Your divine life. Keep us living by this life day by day. We don’t want to live in ourselves or do things for the self. We turn to You. We love You, dear Lord. We open our hearts to You. We want to know You subjectively. Be so real and subjective to us today. Infuse us with Yourself as love. May the divine Spirit mingled with our spirit be the One loving God and loving the brothers in us for the building up of the church as the organic Body of Christ.

Living in the Love of God toward one Another to be Perfected in Love

We need to love others with the love of God we have experienced and enjoyed.

We need to realize that, yes, we do have our natural virtue of love, but it is natural, fallen, empty, and spoiled.

We need to know God subjectively and allow Him to work Himself into us as love so that our virtue of love would be filled with God as the reality of love.

Even as God loved us, so we need to love one another; in ourselves, it is impossible to do this, but the divine Spirit in us can love others with the divine love.

Such love, the divine love enjoyed, experienced, and expressed by us, will never cause trouble.

When we subjectively know and experience God as love, we will live by this divine love, and love will be perfected in us.

If we want to experience and enjoy the divine love and have it become the love by which we love God and others, we need to know God experientially.

When we take God’s word, keep it, and receive His supply, the love of God will be perfected within us.

On one hand, we have the divine life within us, and on the other hand, we have the word of God outside of us.

We need to keep God’s word, receive His supply, and enjoy and experience god as our love in our daily life.

We must know God so that we may love God and the brothers; such knowledge is subjective knowledge.

When we keep God’s word, when we say Amen to His word and welcome it, we will receive His supply of life.

Then, the love of God will be perfected in us.

The love of God is God Himself, and love is in God; however, the love of God may not be in us, and we may not be perfected in His love.

The love of God is perfect, but in our experience, the love of God needs perfecting.

Our living in the love of God toward one another is the perfection and completion of this love in its manifestation in us (1 John 4:11-12; 2:5).

How can the love of God be perfected in us? It is by loving the Lord and loving the brothers with God as our love.

The more we exercise to turn to our spirit, know and experience God subjectively, and take God as our love, the more we will love others with the divine love, not with our natural love.

When we love others with the divine love that we have enjoyed and experienced, the love of God will be perfected in us.

The love of God must be perfected in our experience, and it gets perfected by our enjoyment and experience of God as love.

The more experience of God as love we have, the more enjoyment of Him we have, and the more the love of God is perfected in us.

The more the love of God is perfected in us, the more it dawns in us day by day, repeatedly, scattering all the night and infusing us with fresh light and power.

To be perfected means to be completed, to accomplish, and to finish.

The love of God is perfected and completed in its manifestation by our experience and enjoyment of God as love in our daily life.

Little by little, day by day, meeting by meeting, we need to enjoy and experience God as love, and the love of God will be perfected in us.

The result will be not only that we love God and the brothers but that we ourselves become love – love becomes us and we become love. Hallelujah!

Lord Jesus, may Your love be perfected in us. We give ourselves to You, dear Lord, to enjoy and experience You as love in our daily life and in the church life. We refuse to love others with our natural love; we exercise our spirit to enjoy and experience Christ as our love. Amen, may the love of God be perfected in us in our experience. May we know God subjectively to the extent that we love God and the brothers with the divine love we have enjoyed and experienced. We love You, Lord. Keep us in fellowship with You and with the saints. We want to keep Your word, be supplied by Your life, and express Your love toward others so that we may be perfected in Your love.

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ted W. in the message, and portions from, Life-study of 1 John, msgs. 18, 27-29, 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 6, entitled, The Lord’s New Commandment Given to Us – that we Love One Another.
• Further reading on this topic:
  – To maintain the sweet communion, / Brotherly love; / Fellowship and healing union, / Brotherly love. / Love believing for the brothers, / Hoping all things for the others, / Suffering all with one another, / Brotherly love. (Hymns #1277 stanza 2)
  – When love, in one delightful stream, / Through every bosom flows; / When union sweet, and dear esteem, / In every action glows. / Love is the golden chain that binds; / The saints Thy grace thus prove. / And he is glory’s heir that finds / His bosom glow with love. (Hymns #867 stanzas 4-5)
  – Built up in love together, / Not one would criticize; / To perfect one another, / We all would exercise. / Each one from self delivered, / The natural life forsakes; / In grace each trained in spirit / The Body-life partakes. (Hymns #867 stanza 4)