A Devotion from Jon Bloom

Resolutions are good things. They’re biblical: “May [God] fulfill every resolve for good” (2 Thess. 1:11). So things like New Year’s resolutions can be very beneficial. A year is a defined time frame long enough to make progress on difficult things and short enough to provide some incentive to keep moving. A resolve is not a vague intention. A vague intention is, “One of these days I’m going to get that garage cleaned,” or, “I want to try reading the Bible through this year.” They are vague because there are no clear plans for accomplishing them. Resolves are intentions with strategies attached. You don’t just hope something is going to happen; you plan to make it happen. To be resolved is to be determined. But resolves can be rooted either in our selfish ambitions or in the love of God. We must think them through carefully. So whenever we make resolutions, God wants them all to serve this one great end: “Pursue love” (1 Cor. 14:1). Pursue is a purposeful word. Paul chose the Greek word diōkete, and it is a verb with intensity. It means to “seek after eagerly,” like a runner in a race seeks eagerly to win a prize, or a hunter eagerly chases his prey. The RSV’s translation of this phrase is clearer: “Make love your aim.” It has a sense of single-minded focus. The NIV falls short: “Follow the way of love.” It has no edge. It sounds like a platitude that polite company could smile and nod to without feeling unnerved. It does not convey Paul’s intensity. No, Paul chose an aggressive verb. In fact, diōkete can mean to “pursue with hostile intent.” That’s why in the New Testament this word is frequently used to mean “persecuting” or “harassing” someone. That sounds like Paul, the former persecutor who became the persecuted. What he is saying to us is that we should pursue love with no less fervency and determination than he once pursued Christians to Damascus—only our aim is not to stop love but to unleash it and be captured by it, or I should say, by him (1 John 4:8). Let this be the year that we pursue love. Let this be the year that we stop talking about love—that we do less regretful moaning about how little we love and how much we need to grow in love—and actually be determined to love more the way Jesus loved (John 15:12). Let this be the year we actually put into place some strategies to help us love. Each person’s situation is so unique that we can’t craft strategies for each other to grow in love. It’s something that we must each do with God, though some feedback and counsel from those who know us best are helpful. But here are some of the Bible’s great love texts to soak in as we prayerfully think through plans to pursue love: • 1 Corinthians 13: Soak in or memorize it and let each “love is . . .” statement in verses 4–7 search your heart. With whom can you show greater patience, kindness, and more? • Hebrews 13:1–7: Take one verse per day and prayerfully meditate on what you might put into place to grow in each area of loving obedience. It may be one thing or ten things. • The Two Greatest Commandments: Take two to four weeks and simply meditate on the two greatest commandments according to Jesus (Matthew 22; Mark 12; Luke 10). Look and look at them and pray and pray over them. You will be surprised at what the Lord shows you. • John 13–15: Soak in or memorize these chapters. Ninety-five verses are very doable. You can memorize them in three to six months and be transformed. • The first epistle of John: Soak in or memorize it. You can do it! Forcing yourself to say the verses over and over will yield insights you’ve never seen before. You get the idea. Our strategies don’t have to be comprehensive or complex. Start with a couple of clear strategies and begin. And as we meditate, letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly (Col. 3:16), the Holy Spirit will guide us in creating other or better strategies. Our goal is to actually begin pursuing love with more intentionality than we ever have before. But let’s also be clear: Making love our aim will demand more courage and faith than any other resolution we can make. Nothing exposes the depth of our sin like really seeking to love God with our entire being and loving our neighbors as ourselves (Luke 10:27). So we must let our pursuit of love drive us to the gospel. None of us has ever perfectly kept either of the two great commandments. Ever. Our very best efforts have been polluted by our prideful sin. And we have rarely been at our very best. We can only love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19) and sent his Son to become sin for us so that we could become the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor. 5:21). Christ has kept the greatest commandments (as well as all the rest of them) perfectly for us! So we are forgiven for our constant failure to love as we ought and are given grace to grow in love. And because of Jesus, someday we will love perfectly just as we have been loved. So let’s make our resolution to pursue love this year more than we ever have, knowing that we have been loved with an everlasting love (Ps. 103:17).