Discipleship Rooted in Love

"In the twilight of our lives, we will be judged on how we loved." St. John of the Cross.

"To love yourself in the right way and to love the neighbor correspond perfectly to one another; fundamentally they are one and the same thing." Soren Kierkegaard.

"Christian perfection is loving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. This implies that no passions contrary to love remain in the soul. It means that all thoughts, words, and actions are governed by pure love. Charles Wesley. For Wesley, all God is and does is motivated and governed by divine love.

"God gave love. God bestowed love. There brothers you have the scriptures of God." Augustine. "The entire finite universe disappears like a speck when placed on the scales of value next to the love of God." Kreeft. Love has infinite value.

"It is not by ideas and programs or by conscience, duty, responsibility and virtue that reality can be confronted and overcome, but simply and solely by the perfect love of God." Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

"Therefore let us repent and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from foolishness to wisdom, from licentiousness to self-control, from injustice to righteousness, from godlessness to God."  Clement of Alexandria.

"The (Bible) is God's open love letter to humankind and thus should be read with a deep hunger for the experience of eternal love." John Armstrong describing what the Bible is. When I know love through God-given experience, I can then love as he loves. This experience of love is what leads to true discipleship. God's love is central to Jesus' mandate to "make disciples" (Mt 28:18-20). At its core Christianity teaches that following Jesus in true faith and obedience really can radically change our lives, despite how our early influences may have shaped us in less than optimal ways.

"In love, our self and another become entwined, so that sorting our benefits becomes absurd. Do good for loved ones and gratefully receive the good that comes from doing so. Give and don't count the costs, but don't give because it costs. Give because there is a love for the recipient and glory in giving." Chad Engelland. The Way of Philosophy, 2016.

"A real love for God arises out of the knowledge of what God is like. But at the same time that we begin to have this knowledge, we also come to know what being in the image of God means. We long to have that image, covered over with the muck of everyday life, restored to what it was meant to be. Then we are able to seek our own salvation not out of self-hatred, but rather out of a love of our own life. We begin to see that if God loved human beings so much that we were given the gift of the incarnation, the terrible crucifixion, and the resurrection, then no one can offer any Christian justification for despising or hating any human being, ourselves included." "It is the way God made us when God set us in creation, for creation itself is changing. The real issue is not physical change at all, but moral or spiritual change, over which we (d0) have control." Roberta Bondi.

Love functions as the goal, yet love is also the means to the goal. Love is the language of the covenant, and the basis for discipleship.The Spirit loves us and draws us into the redeeming relational love of the triune God (2 Cor 13:13).