Love is what you do not what you feel
There will be times a-plenty when you do things not because you feel you should but because you know that is what Jesus would do. Remember how John has been saying that the deeds show where the heart is? Life choices reflect heart condition. Our sins are atoned for, but we remain in the body, but not the new one of Christ, so we struggle.
When you set aside powerful, inner inclinations and do what Christ would, that is godliness. If doubts of love for others have you trapped then look to your deeds. Are you doing things a certain way because Jesus would? Look to those and recognize that you have passed from death to life.
Now, this implies that one has entered into a relationship with Jesus by accepting his gift of atonement. Even the ungodly can manifest good deeds. Those do not save them any more than our good works save us. Only Jesus does that, but having accepted Christ’s offer of salvation some people will be bowed down under worry about their salvation. Look to deeds of love. That is how you can know that you have passed from death to life.
The connection between hate and murder
15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. (1 John 3:15–ESV)
Hating and murder; lust and adultery: these are deeds of the heart. When you hate someone what thoughts enter?
- Harm will come to them
- Ruin financially
- Ruin in their family
- Humiliation
- Ultimately death, removal from the world.
The thoughts of God expressed themselves in the creation of the world. Life came from God’s heart. He spoke into being the intricacies of the world we live in.
Love creates. Hate extinguishes.
When hateful thoughts are given safe harbor, when they are not taken captive and handed over to God bad things happen. While those bad things may remain in our mind they nevertheless gain some credence, some reality in our imagination. Imagination has some very intimate connections with the deed. That is where hate can live, where murder can roil and foment. The negative energies of the heart and soul that happen when nursing on black thoughts have a reality of their own: harmful for the person and those around them.
That is how things like these intertwine.
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