Love
Psalm 86:15; John 3:16; Romans 5:8; 1 John 4:7-19
Love is love. Love is blind. Falling in love. Love makes the world go round. All you need is love. And so on. We say so many things about love. But do we know what love is?
Atheists and secular thinkers observe what they consider to be expressions of love through behaviors like acts of kindness, emotional expressions, and long-term commitment. But they believe such behavior arises from complex neurochemical processes which include:
They believe such behavior occurs as evolutionary adaptations to increase the likelihood of reproduction and survival.
A more common, popular view of love is that it is a feeling of belonging, connection, pleasure, and personal satisfaction we experience, almost passively, by default – it just happens or comes over us – such as romantic feelings, falling in love, and so on.
But is this what love is – a neurological, evolutionary response to our environment? Or a feeling of pleasure and satisfaction that comes over us?
To be clear, we must acknowledge that there is some truth to these observations about love. Love does affect our mind and emotions, does motivate certain actions and behaviors, and does bring deep satisfaction. But these are all secondary, surface effects and experiences which may or may not come from genuine love.
Consider how a young man feels when he meets a young woman whom he finds attractive (or vis versa). After some initial interaction of various kinds, he may experience certain neurochemical responses, emotional feelings, and may even make promises and commitments to her, ranging from saying, “I love you,” to, “Will you marry me?” But if he or she believes these feelings, responses, and statements of commitment are themselves love, then what will their relationship be like months or years later when feelings, responses, and statements are challenged or change? Will he conclude that his love for her no longer exists? This is what the vast majority of popular music gets wrong – portraying love as some sort of combination of these secondary, surface things.
Where does love actually come from? Does love come from an evolutionary process, neurochemical processes, personal relationships and experiences of pleasure? Or does it come from somewhere else?
What is love exactly? Is it the sum of these secondary, surface things or something else instead? Today we will either be reminded or shown for the first time that true love comes from God and that God shows us himself what love truly is. Apart from a close relationship with God, we cannot understand or experience true love, and we cannot love other people well, either.
God is the ultimate source of love.
1 John 4:7 says plainly that “love is of God,” or as other translations say that “love comes from God.” This can also be translated more creatively but accurately as “love flows out from God” or “God is the source of love.”
Does this mean that all forms and expressions of love are from God? The simple answer is yes. Just as everything good comes from God (Jam 1:17), so everything that is love comes from God, too. Even non-Christians, nonbelievers can express love to other people to some degree, and their love can be quite generous and noble at times. We call this common grace – the ways that all people experience and reflect the nature of God because all people are made in God’s image and all people exist in God’s world.
But such general love, though a very nice thing, is not specifically what John is speaking about here in 1 John 4:7. Here he is speaking about the most genuine kind of love, the kind of love which God himself exhibits and expresses to people. After examining this passage of Scripture, Gary Burge concludes “that love is connected to an ongoing awareness of who God is.”
So, because love comes from God, then we must become very familiar with who God is and how he expresses love. To illustrate why this is important to do, we should consider how American culture dilutes and diminishes genuine things.
Chew on some strawberry Starbursts for a few minutes, then eat some fresh strawberries afterwards. You can tell the difference! American culture has done to our concept of love what we do to everything else. Our popular, prevailing view of love is to genuine, godly love what Taco Bell or Taco John’s is to genuine, authentic tacos.
We mainstream and popularize it by manufacturing and promoting an artificial, fake, and watered-down version which both resembles the real thing but is very inferior. Since love is from God, we need to know him to understand love.
God is the perfect example of love.
God is not only the ultimate source of love, but he is the perfect example of love, too. John says twice that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8, 16). By saying this, he is saying that if you want to know what love is, look at God – see who he is and how he behaves.
He is also saying that love is more than one of God’s attributes or actions – it describes all that God is and all the God does. Everything about God is loving, everything that God says is loving, and everything that God does is the loving thing to do. This means that the kind and generous things God says and does are loving, and that the hard, painful, and terrifying things God says and does are loving, too.
You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth. (Psa 86:15)
There is never an instance or moment in which God ever acts or speaks with anything by love. Whatever God is, whatever God says, and whatever God does is love. There is never an instance when God could act or speak in a more loving way – for whatever he says or does is always the most perfect example and expression of love for that person in that moment in that situation – all things considered. Because God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, he is always able to say and do the most loving thing possible, all things considered. And because he is perfectly holy, righteous, and just, his love is always right.
Now that we know the source of love – where love comes from – we need to ask what love is, and we can see this by familiarizing ourselves with the primary way that God expressed or revealed his love to us.
His love reaches to the farthest extent. (4:9)
1 John 4:9 says, “In this the love of God was manifested towards us.” This means “here is how God revealed his love to us.” How did he do this? “He sent his only begotten Son into the world,” (1 Jn 4:9), and “He sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10). (Propitiation means to satisfy God’s just wrath towards your sin by the payment of a costly price: in this case, God willingly satisfied his own wrath by sacrificing his own Son in our place.) These statements remind us of two other special statements by God.
God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. (Jn 3:16)
God demonstrates [extends, stretches out] his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom 5:8)
From this action by God, we can learn several important features of genuine, godly love.
In love, God did the most costly, extreme thing possible. He sent his own Son to suffer the most excruciating death to satisfy his wrath towards sinners. So, from the source of love himself, we see that love is primarily a choice and commitment to care for and do what is best for another person, even at great personal cost.
His love precedes all other love. (4:10, 19)
Not only does God’s love move him to the farthest degree, but his love also moves him to act first, not waiting for us to ask or somehow earn his favor. This is another dominant feature of God’s love as John describes it to us.
With these statements, John is pointing out how God’s love motivated him to send his own Son to die on the cross for our sins even though we were not asking for him to do this, nor were we exhibiting any signs of love towards him beforehand. We did not ask him to do this, we did not somehow merit or earn him doing this, either. He loved us and he loved the world in this way because as God, he is love. It’s who he is and what he does – always, no matter what.
So, from the source of love himself, we see that love is primarily a choice and commitment to care for and do what is best for another person, even at great personal cost, and even when the other party does not deserve it. How can it be that anyone – especially God himself who knows how much of a failure and sinner I really am – love me this way?
Our shallow, selfish view of love today leaves many people spiritually and emotionally malnourished. Popular culture, through media, music, and social platforms, glorifies love as a shallow, romantic experience—quick to ignite, quicker to fade, and centered on personal gratification. This superficial view and experience has formed a culture where relationships are often transactional, discarded when hard or inconvenient, and driven by fleeting feelings rather than enduring commitment. As a result, individuals crave the profound connection and selfless care that godly love provides but find themselves trapped in a cycle of unfulfilling, disposable interactions, yearning for a deeper, more meaningful experience.
How can we experience this difference? John answers this question in two clear ways.
We must receive God’s love for ourselves. (4:15-16)
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. (1 Jn 4:15-16)
Jesus said a similar thing in John 3:16, as well.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (Jn 3:16-17)
Though God loves all the people in the world enough to send his own Son to die for their sins, this does not guarantee all people will receive that love for themselves. Many, in fact, will deny or reject God’s love, refusing to accept Christ as their God and Savior and refusing to agree with God that they are sinners in need of salvation. Many will try to earn God’s favor or add to what he has done for them by contributing good works of their own.
But according to John – and according to Jesus himself – we must confess and believe to receive God’s love and salvation. To confess means to “say the same thing as God.” It means to agree with God about your sin and about Jesus Christ. It means to admit honestly and openly that you are a sinner in need of God’s salvation. It means to depend completely on Christ as your God and Savior, trusting his life, death, and resurrection – God’s greatest act of love towards you – as the sole, complete source of your salvation.
When you believe on Christ in this way, you will know and experience God’s love for yourself. You become God’s child, a part of God’s family, and should no longer fear God’s judgment (1 Jn 4:17-18). What a marvelous thing it is to know that God loves you. For people who crave the profound connection and selfless care that godly love provides but find themselves trapped in a cycle of unfulfilling, disposable interactions, yearning for a deeper, more meaningful experience – this is the beginning of the change they desperately need. And once this has occurred, they have an opportunity to experience and express God’s love in a new and meaningful way.
We must love him and one another in return. (4:11, 19)
It is one of the most amazing facts in all Scripture that just as God’s love involves his giving of himself to make us happy, so we can in return give of ourselves and actually bring joy to God’s heart. (Wayne Grudem)
This is what John urges us who have experienced God’s love to do for one another. First, if we have experienced God’s love by believing on Christ for salvation, then we not only should but will love God in return.
We love him because he first loved us. (1 Jn 4:19)
This does not mean that we will merely have more favorable, happy, acceptant thoughts about God, but that we will love him in an increasingly similar way to the way he loves us. In other words, we will increasingly and regularly choose and commit to care for and do what is best for his name and his glory, even at great personal cost. Jesus himself described it this way:
If you love Me, keep My commandments. (Jn 14:15)
And John repeats this teaching here and later on in the same letter when he says:
Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. (1 Jn 5:1-3)
So, here’s the fascinating reality. According to John as well as Jesus Christ himself, you are a genuine believer and child of God if you take Christ’s commands and teaching seriously, but you may not be a genuine believer and child of God if you resist Christ’s commands or feel like they are a burden and somehow legalistic.
Joining together, gathering together, and serving together as a church is one such command of Christ. Yet, how we view these God-given expectations says a lot about our faith. If we are genuine children of God who have experienced and live in full awareness of God’s love to us through Christ, then we will not only look accept, not only look forward to, not only plan to, but will commit to – at personal cost if need be – gathering and serving together with our church.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 Jn 4:11)
Then hear the words of Jesus Christ himself about this ultimate command:
This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12)
Do your affections and actions to one another in the church reflect the kind of love that God showed to us on the cross? Are you giving and spending your life this way for one another because of his great love for you?
In a world that is starving to experience genuine love, they should be able to find among the people of God’s family, in the church – a place where people are freely, gladly obeying Christ by worshiping God together and serving one another in regular, inconvenient ways that reflect and reveal the love that God showed on the cross.
When we reflect on these things, our thoughts can easily wander in the direction of church hurt. We think and say things which reveal that our experience in the church has fallen short of these expectations. We can point to ways we have experienced difficult things from and within the church. But this is not the kind of thinking that godly love encourages.
We love God because he first loved us, so this is how we are to love one another. In other words, when we realize how God loved us when we were unlovable, we realize how we are to love one another. When we love one another this way within the church, that’s when God’s love can then flow into our homes and our communities in a more compelling way. So, can you see why it’s important to understand the love of God? Only then – only when you know that God is the ultimate source and example of love in this way – can you be free to love one another. Are you caring for and doing what is best for one another, even at great personal cost and even if you feel that such love is undeserved? That’s how God loves you.
Unlike the shallow, fleeting notions of love in our culture, God’s love is unwavering, sacrificial, and transformative, calling us to receive it through faith in Christ and to reflect it by loving Him and one another in return. As we acknowledge God’s love, we are empowered to obey Christ’s commands, to serve one another selflessly within the church, and to extend this genuine love into a world starving for genuine love. Let us, therefore, commit to living out this love, choosing to serve one another at personal cost, just as God first loved us, so that His love may flow through us to transform our homes and communities, as well, as they experience God’s love in action through us.
Love is love. Love is blind. Falling in love. Love makes the world go round. All you need is love. And so on. We say so many things about love. But do we know what love is?
Atheists and secular thinkers observe what they consider to be expressions of love through behaviors like acts of kindness, emotional expressions, and long-term commitment. But they believe such behavior arises from complex neurochemical processes which include:
- Oxytocin and vasopressin (feelings of bonding and trust)
- Dopamine (feelings of pleasure and reward)
- Serotonin (regulating mood)
They believe such behavior occurs as evolutionary adaptations to increase the likelihood of reproduction and survival.
A more common, popular view of love is that it is a feeling of belonging, connection, pleasure, and personal satisfaction we experience, almost passively, by default – it just happens or comes over us – such as romantic feelings, falling in love, and so on.
But is this what love is – a neurological, evolutionary response to our environment? Or a feeling of pleasure and satisfaction that comes over us?
To be clear, we must acknowledge that there is some truth to these observations about love. Love does affect our mind and emotions, does motivate certain actions and behaviors, and does bring deep satisfaction. But these are all secondary, surface effects and experiences which may or may not come from genuine love.
Consider how a young man feels when he meets a young woman whom he finds attractive (or vis versa). After some initial interaction of various kinds, he may experience certain neurochemical responses, emotional feelings, and may even make promises and commitments to her, ranging from saying, “I love you,” to, “Will you marry me?” But if he or she believes these feelings, responses, and statements of commitment are themselves love, then what will their relationship be like months or years later when feelings, responses, and statements are challenged or change? Will he conclude that his love for her no longer exists? This is what the vast majority of popular music gets wrong – portraying love as some sort of combination of these secondary, surface things.
Where does love actually come from? Does love come from an evolutionary process, neurochemical processes, personal relationships and experiences of pleasure? Or does it come from somewhere else?
What is love exactly? Is it the sum of these secondary, surface things or something else instead? Today we will either be reminded or shown for the first time that true love comes from God and that God shows us himself what love truly is. Apart from a close relationship with God, we cannot understand or experience true love, and we cannot love other people well, either.
God is the ultimate source of love.
1 John 4:7 says plainly that “love is of God,” or as other translations say that “love comes from God.” This can also be translated more creatively but accurately as “love flows out from God” or “God is the source of love.”
Does this mean that all forms and expressions of love are from God? The simple answer is yes. Just as everything good comes from God (Jam 1:17), so everything that is love comes from God, too. Even non-Christians, nonbelievers can express love to other people to some degree, and their love can be quite generous and noble at times. We call this common grace – the ways that all people experience and reflect the nature of God because all people are made in God’s image and all people exist in God’s world.
But such general love, though a very nice thing, is not specifically what John is speaking about here in 1 John 4:7. Here he is speaking about the most genuine kind of love, the kind of love which God himself exhibits and expresses to people. After examining this passage of Scripture, Gary Burge concludes “that love is connected to an ongoing awareness of who God is.”
So, because love comes from God, then we must become very familiar with who God is and how he expresses love. To illustrate why this is important to do, we should consider how American culture dilutes and diminishes genuine things.
- Compare Dominoes and Little Caesar’s pizza to bona fide Italian pizza.
- Compare McDonalds nuggets to real chicken and Big Macs to real hamburgers.
- Compare Taco Bell to genuine Mexican food.
- Compare Snickers candy bars to genuine, gourmet chocolate.
- Compare genuine fruit juice to frozen concentrate or artificially flavored alternatives.
Chew on some strawberry Starbursts for a few minutes, then eat some fresh strawberries afterwards. You can tell the difference! American culture has done to our concept of love what we do to everything else. Our popular, prevailing view of love is to genuine, godly love what Taco Bell or Taco John’s is to genuine, authentic tacos.
We mainstream and popularize it by manufacturing and promoting an artificial, fake, and watered-down version which both resembles the real thing but is very inferior. Since love is from God, we need to know him to understand love.
God is the perfect example of love.
God is not only the ultimate source of love, but he is the perfect example of love, too. John says twice that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8, 16). By saying this, he is saying that if you want to know what love is, look at God – see who he is and how he behaves.
He is also saying that love is more than one of God’s attributes or actions – it describes all that God is and all the God does. Everything about God is loving, everything that God says is loving, and everything that God does is the loving thing to do. This means that the kind and generous things God says and does are loving, and that the hard, painful, and terrifying things God says and does are loving, too.
- God is loving when he whispers and is loving when he roars.
- God is loving when he corrects and is loving when he comforts.
- God is loving when he punishes and is loving when he forgives.
- God is loving when he says yes and is loving when he says no.
- God is loving when he gives and is loving when he takes away.
You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth. (Psa 86:15)
There is never an instance or moment in which God ever acts or speaks with anything by love. Whatever God is, whatever God says, and whatever God does is love. There is never an instance when God could act or speak in a more loving way – for whatever he says or does is always the most perfect example and expression of love for that person in that moment in that situation – all things considered. Because God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, he is always able to say and do the most loving thing possible, all things considered. And because he is perfectly holy, righteous, and just, his love is always right.
Now that we know the source of love – where love comes from – we need to ask what love is, and we can see this by familiarizing ourselves with the primary way that God expressed or revealed his love to us.
His love reaches to the farthest extent. (4:9)
1 John 4:9 says, “In this the love of God was manifested towards us.” This means “here is how God revealed his love to us.” How did he do this? “He sent his only begotten Son into the world,” (1 Jn 4:9), and “He sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10). (Propitiation means to satisfy God’s just wrath towards your sin by the payment of a costly price: in this case, God willingly satisfied his own wrath by sacrificing his own Son in our place.) These statements remind us of two other special statements by God.
God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. (Jn 3:16)
God demonstrates [extends, stretches out] his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom 5:8)
From this action by God, we can learn several important features of genuine, godly love.
- Genuine love is a committed choice, not just warm affections and thoughts. In these statements we see that God sent, he sent, he gave, and he demonstrated his love. In other words, he did something significant.
- Genuine love is a costly choice, not just a convenient or comfortable one. In these statements we see that God his only special Son into a hostile world, he sent his Son to be a propitiatory sacrifice, he sent is Son to die for us on the cross.
- Genuine love is a compassionate choice, one which acts for the benefit of another person not just oneself. His love is “revealed to us,” “for our sins,” directed “towards us,” and done “for us.”
In love, God did the most costly, extreme thing possible. He sent his own Son to suffer the most excruciating death to satisfy his wrath towards sinners. So, from the source of love himself, we see that love is primarily a choice and commitment to care for and do what is best for another person, even at great personal cost.
His love precedes all other love. (4:10, 19)
Not only does God’s love move him to the farthest degree, but his love also moves him to act first, not waiting for us to ask or somehow earn his favor. This is another dominant feature of God’s love as John describes it to us.
- 1 John 4:10 says, “Thus is [real] love, not that we loved God [first], but that he loved us [first]…”
- 1 John 4:19 says, “We love, because he first loved us.”
With these statements, John is pointing out how God’s love motivated him to send his own Son to die on the cross for our sins even though we were not asking for him to do this, nor were we exhibiting any signs of love towards him beforehand. We did not ask him to do this, we did not somehow merit or earn him doing this, either. He loved us and he loved the world in this way because as God, he is love. It’s who he is and what he does – always, no matter what.
So, from the source of love himself, we see that love is primarily a choice and commitment to care for and do what is best for another person, even at great personal cost, and even when the other party does not deserve it. How can it be that anyone – especially God himself who knows how much of a failure and sinner I really am – love me this way?
Our shallow, selfish view of love today leaves many people spiritually and emotionally malnourished. Popular culture, through media, music, and social platforms, glorifies love as a shallow, romantic experience—quick to ignite, quicker to fade, and centered on personal gratification. This superficial view and experience has formed a culture where relationships are often transactional, discarded when hard or inconvenient, and driven by fleeting feelings rather than enduring commitment. As a result, individuals crave the profound connection and selfless care that godly love provides but find themselves trapped in a cycle of unfulfilling, disposable interactions, yearning for a deeper, more meaningful experience.
How can we experience this difference? John answers this question in two clear ways.
We must receive God’s love for ourselves. (4:15-16)
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. (1 Jn 4:15-16)
Jesus said a similar thing in John 3:16, as well.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (Jn 3:16-17)
Though God loves all the people in the world enough to send his own Son to die for their sins, this does not guarantee all people will receive that love for themselves. Many, in fact, will deny or reject God’s love, refusing to accept Christ as their God and Savior and refusing to agree with God that they are sinners in need of salvation. Many will try to earn God’s favor or add to what he has done for them by contributing good works of their own.
But according to John – and according to Jesus himself – we must confess and believe to receive God’s love and salvation. To confess means to “say the same thing as God.” It means to agree with God about your sin and about Jesus Christ. It means to admit honestly and openly that you are a sinner in need of God’s salvation. It means to depend completely on Christ as your God and Savior, trusting his life, death, and resurrection – God’s greatest act of love towards you – as the sole, complete source of your salvation.
When you believe on Christ in this way, you will know and experience God’s love for yourself. You become God’s child, a part of God’s family, and should no longer fear God’s judgment (1 Jn 4:17-18). What a marvelous thing it is to know that God loves you. For people who crave the profound connection and selfless care that godly love provides but find themselves trapped in a cycle of unfulfilling, disposable interactions, yearning for a deeper, more meaningful experience – this is the beginning of the change they desperately need. And once this has occurred, they have an opportunity to experience and express God’s love in a new and meaningful way.
We must love him and one another in return. (4:11, 19)
It is one of the most amazing facts in all Scripture that just as God’s love involves his giving of himself to make us happy, so we can in return give of ourselves and actually bring joy to God’s heart. (Wayne Grudem)
This is what John urges us who have experienced God’s love to do for one another. First, if we have experienced God’s love by believing on Christ for salvation, then we not only should but will love God in return.
We love him because he first loved us. (1 Jn 4:19)
This does not mean that we will merely have more favorable, happy, acceptant thoughts about God, but that we will love him in an increasingly similar way to the way he loves us. In other words, we will increasingly and regularly choose and commit to care for and do what is best for his name and his glory, even at great personal cost. Jesus himself described it this way:
If you love Me, keep My commandments. (Jn 14:15)
And John repeats this teaching here and later on in the same letter when he says:
Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. (1 Jn 5:1-3)
So, here’s the fascinating reality. According to John as well as Jesus Christ himself, you are a genuine believer and child of God if you take Christ’s commands and teaching seriously, but you may not be a genuine believer and child of God if you resist Christ’s commands or feel like they are a burden and somehow legalistic.
Joining together, gathering together, and serving together as a church is one such command of Christ. Yet, how we view these God-given expectations says a lot about our faith. If we are genuine children of God who have experienced and live in full awareness of God’s love to us through Christ, then we will not only look accept, not only look forward to, not only plan to, but will commit to – at personal cost if need be – gathering and serving together with our church.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 Jn 4:11)
Then hear the words of Jesus Christ himself about this ultimate command:
This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12)
Do your affections and actions to one another in the church reflect the kind of love that God showed to us on the cross? Are you giving and spending your life this way for one another because of his great love for you?
In a world that is starving to experience genuine love, they should be able to find among the people of God’s family, in the church – a place where people are freely, gladly obeying Christ by worshiping God together and serving one another in regular, inconvenient ways that reflect and reveal the love that God showed on the cross.
When we reflect on these things, our thoughts can easily wander in the direction of church hurt. We think and say things which reveal that our experience in the church has fallen short of these expectations. We can point to ways we have experienced difficult things from and within the church. But this is not the kind of thinking that godly love encourages.
We love God because he first loved us, so this is how we are to love one another. In other words, when we realize how God loved us when we were unlovable, we realize how we are to love one another. When we love one another this way within the church, that’s when God’s love can then flow into our homes and our communities in a more compelling way. So, can you see why it’s important to understand the love of God? Only then – only when you know that God is the ultimate source and example of love in this way – can you be free to love one another. Are you caring for and doing what is best for one another, even at great personal cost and even if you feel that such love is undeserved? That’s how God loves you.
Unlike the shallow, fleeting notions of love in our culture, God’s love is unwavering, sacrificial, and transformative, calling us to receive it through faith in Christ and to reflect it by loving Him and one another in return. As we acknowledge God’s love, we are empowered to obey Christ’s commands, to serve one another selflessly within the church, and to extend this genuine love into a world starving for genuine love. Let us, therefore, commit to living out this love, choosing to serve one another at personal cost, just as God first loved us, so that His love may flow through us to transform our homes and communities, as well, as they experience God’s love in action through us.
Recent
Archive
2025
January
February
March
June
August
October
2024
January
February
March
April
May
No Comments