Wednesday, September 21, 2005
LOVE ONE ANOTHER
1 John 4:7-8 Dear friends, 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.
Why the exhortations to Christians to love? Doesn't everyone know that we need to love one another? Yes, but for all the talk and trimmings, the only love that comes from within our human nature is a self-serving love of self. If we truly love one another, actually considering the other person's interests as more important than our own, that is a gift of God. If someone truly loves you, they are a gift from God. This kind of Love not only considers someone or something a treasure, but such a treasure that one is willing to suffer in order to take care of that treasure. Self-love is not willing to suffer unless it can see some profit returning, perhaps the admiration of others, even of God, and the forgiveness of past sins.
1 John 4:9-10 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Have you ever received a new car as a gift? If God went shopping to find something to show His love, He didn't find any bargains. It cost Him His one and only Son, whom He loves dearly, to get this undependable, rusted-out vehicle for His praise! Yet He loved you and me so much that He reached down deep and paid the price for every one of us! Seeing this, how could we fail to treasure His treasures?
The Scottish poet Robert Burns once wrote about what a wonderful gift it is to see ourselves as others see us. God grant us the gift of seeing ourselves as those whom Jesus loves.
