John 13:34-35
I give you a new command: Love one other. You must love one another as I have loved you. All people will know that you are my followers if you love one another.
1 John 4:7-11
Dear friends, we should love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has become God’s child and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed His love for us: He sent His one and only Son into the world so that we could have life through Him. This is what real love is: It is not our love for God; it is God’s love for us in sending His Son to be the way to take away our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us that much, we also should love one another.
Devotion
Last weekend, Pastor Rick kicked off a new series called A New Community. During this series we will discover what God desires Christian community to look like. In the New Testament, we see a vivid picture of what this new community should look like as we examine the 59 different “one another” commands. Last weekend Rick focused one of the most critical “one another” commands in Scripture: to love one another.
This commandment is central to the Christian faith for several reasons. First, love is one of God’s prevailing attributes. We see this in the book of 1 John where we read, “God is love.” If this is true, then it makes sense that God’s children would reflect His attributes. One of the prevailing attributes in the Christian community ought to be love. One of the biblical words translated as “love” is the Greek word agape. This word is usually used when speaking of God’s love toward us. This word carries the meaning “to value or hold in high esteem.” So, in the Christian community, every member should be valued because God equally values every child in His spiritual family.
Second, God demonstrated His love toward us by sending His Son into the world to die a sacrificial death, that we might be reconciled to Himself. Jesus did not just talk about God’s love. Jesus embodied God’s love and modeled what it meant to love others. We see this not only in his death, but in the way He interacted with others. Jesus met with those who were rejected by society and was able to communicate God’s love in tangible ways that often brought Him criticism from the religious leaders. So, we love one another because of Jesus’ example.
Last, we love one another as a way of showing the unbelieving world that we are Jesus’ disciples. In this world, people are loved or valued based on appearance or performance. In God’s Word, people are valued because they have been created in God’s image. When we show love for one another, the unbelieving world takes notice. The type of love that Jesus showed is countercultural. The type of love that should be present in the Christian community should cause the outside world to notice that there is something different and appealing about the community of believers.
Questions to Ponder
How do you demonstrate God’s love toward other believers? How do you demonstrate God’s love toward unbelievers? Is your life a testimony of Jesus’ love for you? In what ways is showing Jesus’ love toward others a sacrifice for you? Do you value others equally in the body of Christ? How does favoritism in the church harm the church’s testimony in the community?
Spend some time in prayer meditating on what God revealed to you today.