Let Us Love One Another               7-23-06

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, and not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:7-12.

According to my Interpreters” One-Volume Commentary, Christian belief and Christian life are inseparably linked. As a man believes, so he lives. As a man lives, so is his real belief. The imitative is always from God. He loved first. He sent His Son to expiate our sins, to be our Savior. He has given us His spirit. So if we believe in Him, confess Him, and show our love for Him by loving our brethren, we may confidently face the coming judgment without fear. To live in love is to love victoriously over all error and all anxiety. Christian faith reaches down to the very basis and ground of life - our deepest convictions about God and about His relation to us and to the world, and the way these convictions manifest our trust, and witness to this trust, in the everyday issues of our life..

Henry and Richard Blackaby in their devotional book Experiencing God Day-By-Day wrote that the greatest truth in all of Scripture is: God is love. Understanding this will set you free to enjoy all that is yours as a Christian. Also I believe that knowing that God loves us, makes it so easy for us to pray to God for forgiveness of our sins. And being assured of God’s love for us sets us free to enjoy the many expressions of love He showers upon us each day.

My Asbury Bible Commentary points our in Living the Life of Love: The writer of 1 John does not draw the conclusion that because God loved us, we ought to love Him; rather, he declares that we ought to love one another. Love for God must show itself in love for a tangible human being. In a word, love for God will show itself in self-sacrificing love for others.

Prayer: Dear God, thank you for loving us and for helping us to love one another. Bless our Sunday School and continue to inspire our teachers in their classes. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Luther McCollum