meditations for an everyday relationship with Jesus

Love as first and foremost

John 13:34-35 “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

John 15:17 This is what I command you: Love one another.

Any time a command is repeated frequently in Scripture it is being repeated for a purpose, suggesting importance and urgency.

The command “to love one another,” is an example of this. In the New Testament this shows up at least 20 times which means that it is a recurring theme and demands to be acted upon.

I have said often that God never asks us to do anything that is not practical or does not make sense. He is a God of simplicity and purpose. Loving one another is both simple and purposeful … but, it is harder to follow than it sounds.

Perfected in us

1 John 4:7-12 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us.

If we cannot love and live in a manner that honors love above all, then we are harboring evil. If we cannot love then the heart is dark and is dying.

We love because God loved us first and showed us how. He did this in a final act through Jesus. Jesus loved in a way that was larger than the flesh, wider than our imaginations, and more mysterious than the cross.

Love won on the cross because the flesh of all men was finally crucified … once and for all flesh. No more flesh will ever be required because in His love God crucified Himself. That was pure love.

The best way to honor that final sacrifice is to love one another and to be the “evidence of things unseen.”