Possessing Love Is Picking Up Your Cross (Colossians 1:3-8).

Class Outline:

Thursday July 9, 2026

 

COL 1:3-5

We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints; 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel …

 

Love: agape

 

Define agape: The quality of warm regard for and interest in another. Esteem, affection, regard, love [Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, Danker and Bauer]. 

 

Agape love is never founded on attraction or the personal pleasure received from liking someone. The clearest manifestation of agape love is God sending His only begotten Son to die on the cross for His enemies. Hence, agape in us becomes our own cross. 

 

“You have” (COL 1:4) - divine love is your possession by grace.

 

The great essence of God that moved Him to do His greatest act was somehow given to His enemy. 

 

1JO 4:7-12

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. 

 

The Father is the origin of love. The Holy Spirit is the agent of wisdom and understanding love so that it may powerfully flow in us and through us (COL 1:8). 

 

The love of God is the greatest virtue that man can  hold - and it is a gift by God’s grace. Divine love is your possession by grace (“which you have”). 

 

In case we are tempted to define it in any other way, the word of God is clear. 

 

1JO 4:9 

By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we [His enemies] might live through Him.

 

Love is a great gift God has given to you and it is a gift that will cost you everything. Love endures all things. 

 

MAT 16:24-25

Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.  25 "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

 

You give yourself, your life in obedience to your Father when He wills - obedient to the point of death. That is divine love. 

 

If I don’t have it - I am no disciple of Christ.

 

A Christian life without love is powerless:

 

1CO 12:31

And I show you a still more excellent way.

 

The Corinthians were graced out with spiritual gifts, but they lacked love. 

 

1CO 13:1-3

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. 

 

All the gifts and knowledge combined are powerless without love. Why? Christianity is a life within a community [Abraham, Israel, body (church), Trinity]. 

 

The love known by the world is selective. Christian love is unconditional. 

 

MAT 5:46

“For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?”

 

1CO 13:4-8

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,  6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails;

 

God’s love is not a natural ability.

 

COL 1:8

and he also informed us of your love in the Spirit. 

 

GAL 5:22

But the fruit of the Spirit is love

 

So how do you turn on the love? It is supernatural. You have to be a new creation (salvation in a moment of faith); have then Jesus and the Holy Spirit within you (salvation gift), and then wisdom and understanding. 

 

COL 1:9-10

For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord,

 

Wisdom: faith in the first principles of Scripture (fear of the Lord, i.e. not going to alter them or take them lightly). 

 

PRO 9:10

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,

 

Understanding: ability to apply the principles of Scripture to all of life’s situations. 

 

EPH 5:1-2

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; 2 and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. 

 

Faith that this is true and must (MUST) be your life (though it is not, or might not even be close yet) is wisdom. 

 

Read through the chapter to see the application of that love to life - that is understanding.