Love Is Reciprocal! By James Lantz
All things came from God who is love and no one has ever given anything to God except they had first received it from Him. The greatest expression of love is to give, and because of God’s great love for us, He gave us His only begotten Son! Rom. 11:33-36 YLT O depth of riches, and wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable His judgments, and untraceable His ways! for who did know the mind of the Lord? or who did become His counsellor? or who did first give to Him, and it shall be given back to him again? because of Him, and through Him, and to Him [are] the all things; to Him [is] the glory–to the ages. Amen. Love started the giving and the law of giving includes receiving! As Noah worshipped God for delivering them from the devastation of the flood with burnt offerings on the alter God determined that He would never again smite every living thing as He had done. Never again, as long as the earth remains, will I curse the ground for man’s sake, because the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Gen. 8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. From here on God always connected seedtime with harvest, sowing with reaping, and giving with receiving! Jesus said give and it shall be given unto you! This is the law of sowing and reaping that God said will continue as long as the earth remains. When we plant beans we reap beans, when we sow love we reap love, when we give to those who teach us the word of God, which is spirit and life, we reap of the Spirit. Gal. 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Gal. 6:8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. This could be called the law of reciprocity! Reciprocal includes the meaning of acting in return to an action given or mutual; done by each to the other
Reciprocal Love Is Mutual, Each For The Other!
A reciprocal saw has a blade that reciprocates back and forth. Bringing all the tithes into the storehouse assures that their will be spiritual meat preached in God’s house and allows God to supernaturally reciprocate blessing to the one who tithes and gives offerings. Mal. 3:10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
The phrase, God loves you unconditionally, is basically a true statement but can leave a person with a warped view of how God accepts us through genuine faith in Christ. It is true that God loves everyone and that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world but those who refuse the Father’s love will be lost. God has plainly said, the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. Jesus expressed the Father’s love to Judas by calling him friend even while he was being betrayed by him for thirty pieces of silver. God loved Judas yet Judas is in hell today. Judas knew that he betrayed an innocent man and was sorry how it turned out but his sorrow was not such as a turning from his sin to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Mark 14:21 The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him: but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had never been born. It would be a far stretch of the imagination to think that Jesus was referring to heaven when he used an exclamation of grief (woe) and said that it would have been better for His betrayer to have never been born. The two thieves who were crucified with Jesus both mocked Him saying, you saved others but you can not save yourself. One of them recognized that Jesus was the Christ and repented and believed in Him. Luke 23:43 And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.
God fully expects us to respond to His great love for us and to love Him in return! In fact, it is the very first thing that God commands us to do. Mark 12:29&30 And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. Our covenant with Christ is a covenant of love! Jesus gave His life for us and we enter into covenant with the Father through Jesus by dying to self and giving Jesus Lordship over our life. In coming to Jesus we give up spending eternity in hell, we give up being subject to the law of sin and death, we give up our own life so that we can let Christ live in us! Gal. 2:20 ASV I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me. Jesus’ definition for love is more than talk, it is actually doing what He says! John 14:21 He that hath my
Jesus Defines Love As Hearing And Doing His Word!
commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. We must continually renew our mind with the word of God so that we can think with the mind of Christ and be thankful! Col. 1:12 ESV giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. The Father has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of our sins. We who have received of God’s great mercy and love towards us must keep our eyes on the prize and persevere through the afflictions and persecutions that satan throws at us. Hebrews 10:39 But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.
God had to find a man in the earth who was willing to sacrifice his son so He could reciprocate legally and bring Jesus, the sacrificial Lamb of God, into the world. Gen. 22:2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. Abraham’s willingness to offer God his son opened the way for God to legally bring His Son into the earth. Jesus referred to His being born of a woman as the doorway, or the legitimate way into the sheepfold. John 10:1&2 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.
Everyone who sows love will reap a harvest of love! God will see to it that you receive a harvest of love somewhere, somehow, even if the very ones you loved first refuse to respond in kind. Jesus was rejected by many of His own people but some believed and received Him! The love and mercy that God extends to fallen man, through the sacrifice of His Son, must be reciprocated back to Him in order to partake of the Spirit of life. Romans 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. Moses spoke that God would raise up a mighty prophet, who we know to be Jesus, and that everyone who refuses to hear His voice and obey His words will succumb to the law of sin and death. Acts 3:23 And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people. My pray and desire is that everyone of us will know and receive God’s love! 1 John 4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
Ps. 91:14 Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him:
I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.
