Love is the Lifeblood

Love is the lifeblood of the body of Christ. Every person who places faith in Jesus as the redemption from their sin is uniquely positioned and enabled to be a contributing member of the body of Christ. In order for all of the individual "parts" to function as a whole there has to be a unifying power. Ultimately it is the Holy Spirit that provides the power to believers, and the Holy Spirit enables us to love one another in a way that we would never have been able to do apart from Him. Without love toward each other in the body, the parts will not move in sync with each other and will pursue their own goals.

I think it is especially worth noting in this passage that knowledge is special and that, as followers of Christ, our endgoal is to pursue spiritual maturity so that we are able to discern truth from fiction. Yet in the admonition to be strong in truth and doctrine, the summation is that the body will be "built up in love", not "built up in knowldege." Knowledge, doctrine and teaching is central to our faith, but without love it is vainless grasping for the wind.

Love is the lifeblood of our faith. It is the reason God made man, the reason God created marriage, the reason God sent Jesus to redeem us, the reason the Holy Spirit came to empower us to live lives full of meaning and power through our relationship to the Creator.

Created over 2 years ago