“This is my command: that you keep on loving each other just as I have loved you. No one has greater love than a person who lays down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you” (Yochanan (Jhn) 15:12-14). Loving like Jesus loved is to love God and to love all people. Just to love people so much that there is no doubt of our love for them because there is no doubt that Jesus loves us. What is that kind of love? “Beloved friends, let us love one another; because love is from God; and everyone who loves has God as his Father and knows God. Those who do not love, do not know God; because God is love. Here is how God showed his love among us: God sent his only Son into the world, so that through him we might have life. Here is what love is: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the kapparah for our sins” (1 Yochanan (1 Jo) 4:7-10). Jesus loves us enough to live a perfect life of love that ends in His own death for us. A death for us that conquers sin and death.
Too often folks our job, our calling, our gift is to judge the world. BUT our calling, our job, our commandment is to love. What is that kind of love? “I may have the gift of prophecy, I may fathom all mysteries, know all things, have all faith — enough to move mountains; but if I lack love, I am nothing. I may give away everything that I own, I may even hand over my body to be burned; but if I lack love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful, not proud, rude or selfish, not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not gloat over other people’s sins but takes its delight in the truth. Love always bears up, always trusts, always hopes, always endures. Love never ends; but prophecies will pass, tongues will cease, knowledge will pass” (1 Corinthians (1 Co) 13:2-8). Love is the most important thing because God is love. The sacrifice of our life means nothing if it is done without love. Everything we do is to be filled with the love that Jesus showed to us by living a life of love. Living a life that was patient and kind like God. If many of us were in the place of God, The Bible would end on page one. Once Adam and Eve disobeyed, there was no need to continue the story. BUT God had a plan that was patient and loving. And where we deserved to not exist, He gave us a chance to love Him and walk with Him and be part of His plan. Nothing I do is ever going to be deserving of that chance. He gives me that chance whether I want it or not, whether I choose to use it or not. The patience and kindness of God is only surpassed by His love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only and unique Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may have eternal life, instead of being utterly destroyed. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but rather so that through him, the world might be saved. Those who trust in him are not judged; those who do not trust have been judged already, in that they have not trusted in the one who is God’s only and unique Son” (Yochanan (Jhn) 3:16-18). Trust in God by loving like God.
Grace and Shalom to your home. The Kingdom of God is now!
I love you. I forgive you. Have a blessed and abundant day!