A Word in Season: Abounding Love (1 Thessalonians 3:12)

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I doubt that many of us are tempted to think of the Apostle Paul as too mushy or sentimental.

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In fact, we may have the opposite problem. We may be inclined to think of him as a little bit intellectual, a little bit cold and hard, a clear thinker, yes, but not a particularly affectionate man.

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But to think of him like that would be to mistake and to misunderstand him almost entirely, for one of the things that breathes through his letters is his love for God and for God's people.

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In 1 Thessalonians 3, from verse 11, the Apostle is saying to the

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Thessalonians there how earnestly he wants to see them again. And he prays,

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Paul has an eager appetite to be with these beloved Christians, and his prayer for them is that they may increase and abound in love to one another and to all, just as we,

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Paul and his companions, do to you. The sense there is not just that their love may dribble out a little bit more quickly.

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Paul has already spoken about the love that they have, but he wants the love that they already possess to increase and abound.

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He wants it to be overflowing, abundantly gushing forth. He wants them to be marked by this almost extravagance of love to one another and to all.

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He wants the church in particular to be characterised by this kind of profound, sacrificial affection for one another.

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He wants them to delight in one another. He wants them to esteem one another. He wants them to be eager to see and minister to one another.

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He wants them to be taken up with the possibility of being able to do one another good.

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And he wants them to have that disposition toward all. Certainly, I think he has in mind there all other believers, that whether they're in Thessalonica or passing through there, or indeed in some other place, the

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Apostle has this very broad sense of the church of Jesus Christ as it is established in different places.

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And he wants each of these places to have a regard for the others, to know something about the ones that are nearby, to be able to make proper investments of prayer or financial assistance or whatever it may be.

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And there may even be a broader sense than that, that outside of the church of Jesus Christ, whether that's considered in its most local and immediate sense or in its broader understanding, that there is a love that we ought to have for others also, a church that is marked by a real regard for others made in the image of God, that thinks highly of people, that isn't a sneering and a disdaining and a distant church, but really is concerned for the souls and the bodies of those who are around them.

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And Paul says that your model in that kind of love can be me and my friends.

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I want you to increase and abound in love to one another and to all, just as we do to you, that our love, our

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Christlike affection for you ought to be the model for the love that you have then to others.

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Now is this the kind of thing that characterizes us as God's people? Do we have this appetite to be together and to minister to one another?

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Do we have this high esteem and regard for each other? Does our love just trickle or does it truly gush?

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Is there anything Godlike and Christlike in our disposition, both to those who are nearer at hand and those who are farther away?

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It can actually be easier to at least testify to this love for the people that we don't have to deal with week by week and day by day.

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The love that a Christian has is a love first of all to one another in the immediate sphere and then it spills over toward those who are further away and even those who are outside of the kingdom.

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A different degrees of love, different expressions of love, different concerns in that love, but a characteristic love for other people.

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And one of the effects of that is to establish the heart blameless in holiness before our

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God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. So these are things that we should be praying for ourselves and for others and actively cultivating that our love may increase and abound.