Most of my life, I have heard it taught that God loves us and when His Spirit comes within us, He enables us to love and live rightly. In order for us to live this lifestyle, we need to discipline ourselves and to force ourselves to learn to love and to live according to the laws that were written in the Old Testament.
But that is not what I believe.
I believe that God loves us. When He comes into our lives via His Spirit, we experience that love. As we live within that love, we learn what love is. His love invades our hearts, our souls, our very being and as His love spreads through us, we start loving. We first learn to truly love ourselves, then that love spread to others.
As we start loving others, we start treating them rightly. As we interact with others from love, we have no need of law, because we will naturally do the things that the law wants us to do. So that even though we are not under the law, we fulfill the law. That is why, I often say that it comes down to living loved and loving others.
As we experience this love and how it causes us to act rightly toward others, then we become less demanding of others living up to what we picture the law requiring. We start treating everyone with this life changing love.
As I read the Bible, I see Jesus (Who is the direct representation of God The Father) interacting with others in this way. It was said of Him, that He loved being with tax collectors and sinners. When the religious leaders of Jesus' day (who demanded everyone to live according to the law and to traditions) approached Him, Jesus told them to learn what it meant that God prefers mercy to sacrifice and if they had known this then the religious leaders would not go around condemning the innocent.
This is how and what I believe at this time.
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