On Becoming Love, Part VI – Dan Mohler

Your first impression of someone should be their potential and destiny through the cross. Your first impression shouldn’t be “I don’t like them.” That’s judgmental; that’s actually the fall of man. Nobody talks openly about that; we just think it’s normal, but it’s prideful, it’s judgmental, it’s presumption. “Well they just kind of bother me.” Well, they don’t bother Jesus: He hung on a cross and shed His blood for them.

There are some things in their life that need to be refined, fine-tuned, but don’t let people be repulsive to you. You judge no man according to the flesh. It’s the love of Christ that compels us (2 Cor. 5). Why does the love of Christ compel Paul in that chapter? He says because he judges something: if one died, all died.

Come on! That’s amazing! When you say “well some people sure need to die” you’re missing the point. You have to see them through Christ. Now that Christ has come and died, if one died, all died.

Not everyone has made the transition yet, but Paul says those that are living no longer live for themselves, but for Him that died, therefore we judge no man any longer according to the flesh. It says we don’t even judge Jesus that way anymore; we’re relating to life through Christ.

Why are you not judging any man according to the flesh any longer? Because God doesn’t want you to judge a book by its cover, its face value, outward observation. God wants you to see the man’s potential, his destiny, what he can look like if Christ is inside of him. The cross empowers you to do that.

If we keep growing in intimacy with God and keep seeing how God sees us, it will change our view of how we see one another.

It’s an easy thing to love other people: it’s actually not something you’re trying to do. No! You BECOME love. God doesn’t DO love, He IS love.

I want to become love! I want to become one with His heart so that I look through His eyes and see what was always there.

I promise you, you aren’t going to do this listening to a sermon about it! We’ve got so many sermons, books, and CD series! We’ve got so much of the word of God, it’s a blessing. Or, it can be a detriment!

If you don’t pursue knowing Jesus from a personal relationship with Him, you’ll be judged by your [head] knowledge of Him.

Look, it is very possible to have everything Christian around you and not interact with the living God. It is very possible to live your life in what looks like faith without having intimacy and a relationship with the Lord. It’s dangerous, and will deceive you. It’s love that edifies.

Knowledge can puff up. You can let your knowledge about God replace knowing God. You can actually hide behind that and have people think you really know the word. You can find your spirituality through knowing what the Bible says. (I’m gonna go with this thing – it’s in my heart.)

Knowing Him isn’t revealed by your talking about Him. Knowing God is revealed by the life you live. You can tell when someone really knows Him by their life, not their words.

The Bible says if you don’t love, it’s because you don’t know God. It doesn’t say it’s because you don’t go to “church” or you don’t do your daily devotions, or you don’t read your Bible every day. You don’t love because you don’t know God!

What He’s saying in First John 4 is you don’t love because you don’t know God. He’s actually saying it’s impossible to know God and not know love.

You can move in giftings and not know Him. Seriously, you can base your identity in the way God moved through you and the way God used you; then you press to be used again and you think you’re doing “good” if God used you a certain way.

You’re doing “good” when you KNOW God, when you have an open-face relationship with Him.

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That is the sixth segment of my partial transcript/excerpts of a series of four videos of Dan Mohler posted on YouTube entitled “Being Transformed into the Image of Jesus Christ.” This segment is from “Part 2 of 4″ – modified somewhat for readability (segment 2:31 – 10:00).