Living Out the Command to Love One Another
We need to express our love. We are called by Christ to live in love. They will know we are Christians by our love.
In John 15:12-13, Jesus says we can do better: "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you."
That's the type of love we are to love each other with. How does God love us? What is His love like? God's love is unconditional. God always loves us. No matter what we do or how we act or what we say God always loves us.
The Old Testament gives us ways to express our love. Proverbs 17:17. It says A friend loves at all times. How much of the time? All the time!
And Who is our best friend? God! So, how often does God love? God always loves you. You can do nothing to stop God from loving you. The highest lesson you can ever learn in this life is that God never stops loving you, no matter what you do. He loves you with an unconditional love. That is just how we must love one another. That's how we should love each other in the home.
We must allow the Holy Spirit to purge the cold from our hearts and letting the warmth of Jesus love take charge in our life. And I will tell you that if your heart has a lot of harshness in it, a lot of foulness in it, a lot of anything but love in it, you can cleanse all that if you allow the Water of Life, Jesus Christ to flow into your life and cleanse away all of the things that are in your life that ought not to be there.
Love puts others first. Real love thinks of others first. -- Love is not selfish.
- Love is slow to demand. -- Love is quick to give.
- Love is slow to belittle. -- Love is quick to appreciate.
- Love never harms -- it never controls.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Our love needs to be lined up with Jesus and then it will be the right kind of love. How can we come to church and sing songs of love and praise and then go home and with the same mouth yell out hate at each other? If that is happening to you, then you need to get your life in alignment. We do that with the wheels on our cars.
1 John 4:7, 8 states “Dear friends, let us love one another. This is almost like begging, isn't it. "let us love one another. for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
In Matthew 22:39, Jesus gives his summation of the Ten Commandments that Jesus is saying. "The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself." affection were given to the neighbors next door.
Love imitates. If you love someone you will naturally attempt to replicate what you admire. We need to imitate Jesus, as much as we possibly can.
This principle is aptly stated in 1 John 3:16. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers”.
Jesus laid down His life for us. So, what should we do? We should lay down our life. Do you see how love imitates? If you love Jesus, you find out what He did, you do the same thing. That's how it works. Love models what love respects. This is the precise reason we preach from this pulpit that the best way to have good works is to fall in love with Jesus. That's how that happens.
How should we love? As Jesus loves us, so we ought to love each other.
1 John 3:18. Dear children, let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions.
Love is:
- Slow to Suspect -- Quick to Trust
- Slow to Condemn -- Quick to Justify
- Slow to Offend -- Quick to Defend
- Slow to Expose -- Quick to Shield
- Slow to Belittle -- Quick to Appreciate
- Slow to Demand -- Quick to Donate
- Slow to Hinder -- Quick to Help
No comments:
Post a Comment