Walking In Love Towards Others - Part 2 by Apostle Michael Orokpo: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Completing the Series on Love

This teaching rounds up the full series on love, which covered three major dimensions:

• How to love God, the blessings of loving God, and the danger of not loving God
• How to receive the love of God, and the blessings of walking in God's love
• How to love others — loving one another — which is the focus here

All three dimensions were dealt with carefully from scripture. But love requires wisdom for its expression. If you love without wisdom, you will be destroyed by your own love. So this teaching answers the difficult questions — and presents 40 critical love questions, because as you walk in love, you will find that discernment is not optional.

Ten Reasons Why Walking in Love Is Critical

1. Love Is the Nature of God

   1 John 4:8,16: "God is love. He that dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him." When you are walking in love, you embody and express God's nature. There are people who are very expressive about their conviction of knowing God — yet they demonstrate aggression, harshness, and contempt toward others. Love is not peripheral to knowing God. It is the definition of God's nature.

2. Love Is the Proof of Discipleship

   John 13:34–35: "By this shall all men know that you are My disciples — that you have love one for another." You cannot claim to represent Christ while being characterized by strife, bitterness, and contempt. The world's test of authentic Christianity is not doctrine, not miracles, not tongues — it is love.

3. Love Is the Foundation of Genuine Authority

   God does not entrust significant authority to loveless people — because a loveless person will weaponize that authority against the very people they were sent to serve. God checks the love quotient before granting empowerment. The reason is that authority in the hands of a loveless person becomes destruction.

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Apostle Michael Orokpo
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4. Love Is What Makes Gifts Valuable

   1 Corinthians 13:1–3: tongues without love — sounding brass. Prophecy without love — nothing. Faith to move mountains without love — nothing. All goods given to the poor without love — nothing. Love is the currency that gives every spiritual gift its kingdom value.

5. Love Provokes Enlargement

   The areas where God enlarges a person are directly proportional to the measure of love that person walks in. Love for God provokes increase in authority. Love for people provokes increase in territory. John 21:15–17: Jesus tested love before He expanded Peter's commission.

6. Love Fulfills the Law

   Romans 13:10: "Love is the fulfillment of the law." Every commandment — toward God and toward man — is a particular expression of love. Walk in love and you walk in the fullness of God's moral requirement.

7. Love Covers Multitude of Sins

   1 Peter 4:8: "Above all things, have fervent love among yourselves, for love shall cover the multitude of sins." Love creates the environment where mistakes are dealt with redemptively rather than destructively — where people can grow, fail, be corrected, and be restored.

8. Love Is the Bond of Perfection

   Colossians 3:14: "Above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfectness." Love binds all the virtues together into a coherent, complete whole. Without love, the virtues remain isolated and incomplete.

9. Love Casts Out Fear

   1 John 4:18: "Perfect love casts out fear — for fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love." A person who walks in love has no need for fear — because love orients life around the faithfulness of God rather than the threats of the enemy.

10. Love Is Eternal

    1 Corinthians 13:8: "Love never fails. But whether there be prophecies, they shall fail. Whether there be tongues, they shall cease. Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." Every gift, every office, every function ends. Love does not end. What you build in love outlasts everything else you do.

How to Express Love Toward Others — With Wisdom

• Discern genuine need from manipulation — Love that cannot discern between the genuinely hurting and the chronic manipulator will be exploited. Wisdom protects love from being a liability.
• Love people toward their destiny, not their comfort — True love is not agreement with every choice. It is the commitment to see people become what God created them to be. Sometimes love says the hard thing.
• Maintain boundaries in love — Love does not mean absorbing abuse, enabling dysfunction, or sacrificing your calling on the altar of others' demands. Loving others well requires that you remain whole yourself.
• Express love through virtue — Galatians 5:22–23: joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance. These are the tangible expressions of love toward others — not just feelings or words.

Walk in love. Walk in it wisely. It is not a weakness — it is the greatest force in the kingdom. And it is the nature of the God who made you.