Dear Friends, Let Us Continue To Love One Another, For Love Comes From God
To Love Is A Decision And An Action
1 JOHN 4:7
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”
I John 4:7 NKJV
https://www.bible.com/114/1jn.4.7.nkjv
Many have little understanding of what love actually is. They see love as a simple thought or feeling, or even a sexual desire, but love is far more
To love is a continuous selfless action of care toward another. It is being willing to help in their time of need. Jesus said, “The greatest of all the commandments is to llove.
He said, “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.””
Mark 12:29-31 NKJV
To love one’s neighbor as oneself, is to make their needs as important as one’s own.
Furthermore, “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.””
Matthew 22:40 NKJV
To love is a choice and a decision to care for others as we care for ourselves. God chose to love you and I regardless of our sinful nature, our faults and failings, and past and future sin.
He made a way where there was no way by painfully paying our debt of sin on a cross, “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. “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
John 3:16-18 NKJV
God’s whole way of life is based on love, even our enemies, to care for them as we we care for ourselves (MATHEW 5:43-48).
The truth is, “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
I John 4:8-11 NKJV
But, if we are to love our enemies, how much more must we love our fellow believers? Are we not one body in Christ of which He is the head?
Furthermore, since we are all individual parts of the same body, should we not work together in unity? Is not each part as important as the next?
“But now indeed there are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” No, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary. And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor; and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty, but our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honor to that part which lacks it, that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.”
I Corinthians 12:20-26 NKJV
My brethren, love is the greatest of all gifts and we must operate in it.
One doesn’t gossip about those he loves, nor does he let him hunger or thirst or suffer.
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
I Corinthians 13:1-13 NKJV
All glory to God forever and ever! Amen.
