“The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”  1 Timothy 1:5

Throughout this world, from small town to big city, in small rural families to single people living in urban jungles, whether simple minded or sophisticated, the same thing is yearned for. We long for purpose, and we long to experience love. Real love. Not a cultural shallow love that is defined only by emotion, but a deep abiding love that eclipses the temporal, and is rooted in the eternal. Paul shares with Timothy a truth that is vital for Timothy to take to heart. Timothy was a young man immersed in a sick and perverse culture that was looking for purpose and love in all the wrong directions.

Like Timothy, we are immersed in a decayed time where there are many people within and without the church who have forgotten our purpose, and in having lost the understanding of what our purpose is, have lost the ability to experience and extend real love to others.

Paul puts it this way, “The aim of our charge is love...” This means the whole of revelation, the reason God speaks is to accomplish a deeper love for Jesus, and a deep abiding love for others. This means that first, the Word of God reveals our purpose. What is that purpose? Back in Genesis 1:26 God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth...” In other words, God created us to have relationship with Him, and rule over and steward what He gave to us. We were created by God, for God’s good pleasure, and to worship God by obedience to His word. This is the essence of our purpose. Our purpose is to love, worship, and be in intimate relationship with the Triune God. As God speaks forth His Word, it reveals our purpose, while at the same time revealing our need to be in right relationship with Him. Because of sin we are separated from God, and can’t fulfill the purpose for which we were intended. All this works itself out in our personal relationships. If we aren’t in right relationship with God, how can we truly be in a right relationship with others? The answer is Jesus. Paul is stating that all of revelation declares our purpose, reveals our sin that separates us from that purpose, and shows us the undeserved, unearned love that comes from God in His Son Jesus Christ on the Cross! As you read God’s Word does it cause you to love Him more in light of what He has done? Does it cause you to, out of response to God’s incredible love, turn and show that love toward those around you?

My prayer is that those who call upon the name of Jesus Christ, and profess Him as Lord and Savior, would truly respond to the revelation of God’s Word by loving Jesus more, and reaching out to those around us, and love them as well. This world needs to see God’s people responding to their Great God by loving greatly as well!

To the glory of God the Father, through the Son Jesus Christ, by the Spirit of God amen!

- Pastor Matt