In Matthews 22:37-40, we read: “Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
God says we can put these laws on the shelf. When we look at laws, laws are telling us what not to do. And here God is telling us what to do. ‘Love me with all of your spirit.’ In these laws, God tells us that we can take these laws and put them on the shelf because if we have some sins in our life, the devil would like to try and figure out how to get these sins worked out from our lives. The devil wants to try and frustrate us with these sins that we may have in our lives. But God says to forget these laws, these sins that you may be wrestling with, don’t bother that.
How to Conquer Sin
When you come to these Scripture and God says, ‘Love God with all of your heart, with all of your soul and with all of your mind’, your understanding, God is telling us that when we learn how to do this, what we’re going to end up doing is we’re going to conquer sin.
Jesus Christ overcomes the world. How did He do that? The way He did that is He overcame sin. Jesus Christ never sinned. We don’t see Jesus sin. Why is that? It’s because sin and love do not agree with each other. When you have the love of God in your heart, there is a hatred that you have for sin. When sin comes to tempt you, the temptation means that there is something in you that wants to do that sin. What God would have you to do is to overcome temptation.
Where God Wants Us to Be
God wants you to get to the place where Jesus was, where He says, ‘I’ve overcome the world.’ He has overcome this sin. How did He do that? With love! Love hates sin. God wants you to get to this place where you hate sin. How can we hate sin? When this love inside of you grows, that love becomes so strong inside of your spirit that these sins that you used to wrestle with, you will actually hate these sins. Then you have risen above temptation from Satan. Then you can overcome this world like Jesus Christ. We can do that by what the Scripture tells us: Love the Lord your God with all of your heart.
Romans 5:5 says: “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
The Love of God
When we get born again, that’s what happens. When we get saved, what happens is the love of Jesus Christ is placed within our spirit. Our flesh is not changed.Your soul is the same. Your mind has to be renewed by the Word of God. But your spirit has this love, and that love is a fruit. The fruit grows.
When we read Galatians 5:22-23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” Why is God telling us this? When we get frustrated trying not to sin, when the devil tries to get you, to try not to do these things that are messing with you, God says: You can choose the law or the love of God.’ When we got saved, the love of God had been shed across in our spirit and there was a portion of love placed within our heart. How do we know it is a portion? Because God tells us: this fruit must grow. These branches in Jesus that do not produce any fruit God takes them and throws them in the fire. But this branch that produces fruit, God prunes that branch. God is saying that when He prunes these branches, what He’s pruning is our flesh. He is pruning our mind frame, our soul that is not saved. Things that are coming against more love growing, God is going to clip that stuff. God is going to cut things out of our life. When God snips us and cuts us sometimes in our lives, when we’re going through what we’re going through, we may even think these are attacks from Satan, but what these things are is invitations for us to love more with our hearts. For when these prunings come and after they’re over with, we see ourselves with more love. We look back to this process of pruning and we say ‘I don’t mind that. Lord, if this is what’s producing this love within me.’ That’s literally hating this sin, when we don’t focus on sin and we focus on our love walk with God, this is where we win because love does not fail.
