Walk in Love

(Ephesians 5:2)

The highest point in our walk with Christ that all Christians are or should be aiming for is to walk in love as Christ walks in love.

God is love and He is perfect, and as we are instructed im Matthew 5:48, “You MUST be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

To be perfect is to be perfected in love and without sin. Jesus has done the work to already set us free from sin through His death, but to walk in love is to learn all He gave to us and to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ by the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Walking in the Spirit

Walking in love is walking as Christ walked, reflecting and showing the love of God in all we say and do.

There are several types of “walking” mentioned in the Bible, and to give a comparison I will look at two of those “walks.”

Firstly, we are told to walk in the Spirit at all times.

Walking in the Spirit is the way in which we overcome the passions, lusts and desires of our own flesh. It is by walking in the Spirit that we gain victory over the sinful nature that exists in the heart of all mankind.

Walking in the Spirit enables us to keep our heart and mind set on the things of the Spirit and the things of God, rather than the things of the flesh. It is the means by which we can take every though captive to obey Christ. It is also the means by which we are able to walk without condemnation.

There are many ways that we can walk in the Spirit, such as, praying, speaking in tongues, bible study, singing or listening to Christian songs, and so on. Walking in the Spirit is all about what we set our minds on and what we think about, and specifically it is doing these things when the passions of our flesh rise up to try and overtake us to lead us into sinfulness.

It is by walking in the spirit that we gain control over ourselves.

So walking in the Spirit is very much an internal thing. It is about how we relate to God within our inner selves.

Walking in Love

By contrast, walking in the love is not internal but is external. Walking in love is about how we relate to others and show the love of God in our relationships to everyone we have contact with.

Walking in love is about how we treat other people, not taking advantage of them but helping, supporting and lifting them up.

Walking in love is the epitome of keeping or living the commandment of God to “Love thy neighbour.” There is no higher requirement of God than to show brotherly love and to love thy neighbour, except to love God. And it is in loving our neighbours that we show the love of God is in us.

In fact Jesus spoke about the greatest of the commandments in this way:

35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:35-40)

The whole of the law and all the laws given by God to Moses are summed up in these two commandments: To love God and to love your neighbour.

This is the fullness of walking in love.

But what is walking in love?

The best definition of walking in love, specifically the love of God is seen in 1 Corinthians 13. It is not the only place we see aspects of walking in love defined, but it shows us a clear pathway to understand what walking in love should look like.

4 Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

This is a good description of the kinds of things we can see about what love is. It is by no means complete, but there are sufficient clues in these few lines to show us the pathway to love like God.

The first thing we see in these descriptions is that this is not a mushy, romantic type of love. It is not about emotions and feelings.

Rather, this love is about action. It is about what we do and how we behave towards other people. It is also about how we think and respond to different situations and circumstances.

These are the things we need to be doing ALL of the time if we are to be walking in love. When we walk in love we emulate these things for these are part of the nature of God.

Thought before action

Now, one of the key things to remember here is that every action is preceded by a thought. We think, and then we do.

We see in the description of what love is in 1 Corinthians 13 that some of these things exist within us, such as faith, hope, and so on.

So in order to walk in love, we need to start from a place within us. We need to have control of our thoughts and emotions to be able to walk in love.

And that is where walking in the Spirit comes into play. As I mentioned above, we need to use the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives to capture every thought to obey Christ. We use the power of the Holy Spirit to strengthen us when we are weak and when the flesh wants to cause us to do what is wrong. Walking in the Spirit works on our thoughts and our hearts and is internal.

So to walk in love in an effective way, we also need to first learn to walk in the Spirit. We cannot truly begin to love others without gaining control over our own thoughts and passions.

So walking in the Spirit is an enabler for walking in love. When we are able to gain control over our own passions and lusts, then we can look at others differently and treat them as we would wish to be treated, which is the essence of walking in love.

So consider these things: how to first walk in the Spirit and then to apply this to walking in love.

All the gifts and the works of God are connected. They are not random and are not disjointed in any way, but they all work together to transform us into the image of Jesus Christ who is the image of God the Father who is love.

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