Jesus’s journey on this earth illustrated the many ways God Incarnate loves each of us.  I have been going through the Book of Matthew intentionally pealing away the dialogue and sermons, for the purpose of looking at the actions Jesus took.  My framework is this:  Jesus is God, and God is love, and therefore Jesus is Love.  It follows that in everything He did, every interaction that took place, He manifested love.

Join with me as I meander through Matthew, often using the words of the Message, highlighting the actions  Jesus took.  Every action he did is an act of love.

Following that discovery, I then asked myself two questions: What was the result of that specific act of love?   How might I apply that discovery to my own life?

 1.  Jesus’s Act of Love (from Matt. 3:13-14) was directed to John the Baptist.  Jesus called him to do the uncomfortable, to do what didn’t make sense.  Jesus sought John out right where the Baptizer was, comfortably knee-deep in the Jordan, and asked to be baptized himself.  John, recognizing Jesus as the Son of God, protested.

But Jesus stood up to his cousin’s reluctance, and said, “Do it.  It’s God’s plan.”  By overriding John’s wishes, Jesus showed love by insisting on the implementation of God’s Higher Plan.  Jesus did not let John give in to his preferred, comfortable and acceptable way.

We think of loving someone as accepting the person right where he is, but sometimes love demands that we see a bigger picture.   Love asks us to propel our beloved forward, higher, towards something confusing and uncomfortable, if it is God’s will.  Jesus did this with John the Baptist.

 The result of this act of love, calling John to do something out of his comfort zone,  was an extraordinary manifestation of the Spirit of God.  God’s spirit, in the form of a dove, descended on Jesus for all to see.  The crowds heard the Father say, “This is my son with whom I am pleased.”

The application of this act of love was the monumental shift from the ways of the Old Testament under John the Baptist to the ways of the New Testament with Jesus.  From that point forward in history, John decreased and Jesus increased.  Baptism by water was soon replaced with baptism by the Spirit.  For me personally, this act of love means the Spirit may well ask me to do the uncomfortable in order to achieve God’s will.