Galatians 5:13-14 – For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

THEME OF THE DAY. SAVED TO LOVE. If I were to sit down with you and ask, “Why did God save us?” I am sure we would dialogue along answers such as; to display His grace and glory, to make us like His Son, to show the world God’s love, to free us from His wrath, to forgive us our sins, and to take us to heaven to enjoy His presence forever. Those are legitimate Biblical answers to why God displayed His amazing and saving grace in His plan of salvation. However, I think there is a reason above all of these. Yes, I know the chief end of all things is the glory of God, but what I am about to share accomplishes this end and does so more than anything else we may do in the Christian life.

The primary reason why God would create a new family in His Son was to enable us to love; first and foremost to love Him, and love people. In the great love chapter of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul ends it with these words, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). When sin entered the world, we were destroyed. Sin brought death to us; spiritual and physical. In the spiritual realm, sin destroyed our ability to love God and love people the way He designed. Sin produced the ugliness of self-love. Even in our closest of human relationships, it cannot achieve the type and level of love God intends because of sin. Sin ensures every human act is tainted with sin and particularly the sin of self-love. But then salvation comes and God sheds His love in the heart of the believing sinner (Romans 5:1-5). From the moment of new birth, we are empowered to love as God intends. Obviously, it won’t be perfect this side of heaven, but it may be sincere and properly motivated without self-love getting in the way. So, if salvation is primarily to enable us to love, what does it take for us to go from knowing this truth to living this truth? Let’s consider two things.

First, we must believe and live the truth of our union with Jesus in His death – “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). The number one hindrance to loving God and others as salvation enabled us to do is our constant tendency toward selfishness and self-love. And the only place those two hindrances are removed is at the cross of Christ. Unless we learn to live out our union with Christ, we cannot love as we ought.

Next, if we are to live out salvation’s purpose of loving God and others, we must do spiritual battle against the most difficult area of spiritual struggle in our lives; self-denial. The most intense area of spiritual warfare is not fleshly lusts or worldliness. It is denying ourselves for the sake of Christ and others. We need not go far in evaluating how many times we allowed personal desires, personal ease, and personal comforts override the call of sacrificial, costly self-denial to love Christ and others. Beloved, to love as God intends is costly and inconvenient. If it isn’t both of those, it isn’t Biblical love. The Apostle Paul told us clearly that when the love of Christ controls a person, their lives reflect self-denial for the sake of Christ and others – “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).

So, why did God save us? There are a lot of good reasons for Him doing so, but the chief one is to enable us to love – Him and others. May He help us see salvation isn’t really about us. It is about Him and others.

PRAYER: “Lord, help me to see that You saved me in order to enable me to love – You and others.”

QUOTE: “We are saved to serve and this service is sustained, motivated, and empowered by Christ’s love.”