The Love of God and Man

     The love of God is not natural to us.  We must be born from above to experience the love of God and loving our neighbor.  That work is the work of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.  We will never love God and our fellow man in Christ if we have not been born from above.  We cannot change our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh.  It takes a supernatural work of the Lord to make us willing to love God and our neighbor in Christ.  When the Father and the Son give us the Spirit of the Word of God, we have a spiritual blood-stream for the things of God.  When we speak of being born again or born from above, we speak of a new heart given to us by God.  We are born in spiritual death and bondage under sin and Satan, but when He quickens our souls, He makes us alive in a spiritual sense.  He gives us a new disposition and inclination to God.  He takes out the heart of stone and transforms us into a heart of flesh.  The transformation is radical; from death to life; from darkness to light; from evil pleasure to pleasures at His right hand; from Satan to God.  Before regeneration we were hostile to God and at enmity with Him, but now we are drawn to Him with much transforming love.  We become a new person in Christ and through Christ.  This radical transformation is grounded in our hearts.  We ought to learn about God and we would gain a greater love toward Him.  He is a great God and the only true God.  The greater degree we love God the greater degree of obedience we will have toward Him.  Regeneration does not pass away but it means we grow in Christ.  No regenerate person will not grow, but every born again person is born again.  Do you love God with your whole entire heart?  All of us are called to love Him with our whole hearts.  We must nurture our new hearts in Christ Jesus.  We must feed upon the Word of God and love it with great unwavering passion.  We ought not to neglect our new hearts because they can grow hard at times.  The new heart will not become as it was but it will continue to be what it never was; that is, no new heart will be stone again but grow though sometimes hardened.  As the Spirit is the Spirit of creation, He is the creation of our new hearts.  He causes us to have fruit.  The fruit comes because the Spirit of God lives within us.  He will see us through and there is no chance that we will fall away in an utter sense, because the Spirit keeps us unto eternal redemption.  No stony heart will yield fruit but every good tree yields good fruits.  The Spirit gives us the ability to repent of our sins in short accounts with Him.  The wonderful doctrine of sanctification is a situation of the heart.  We have an intimate fellowship with our Heavenly Father to keep His commandments by His Son through His Spirit.  So, then, the love of God and man comes from the Spirit of the Father and the Son so we may live rightly before God and our fellow man.  Amen.