Over the past few weeks, I’ve talked a bit about how important love is in a Christian’s life. Today, we’re going to go over how important love is for a Christian’s own life, his relationship with God, and in his relationships with others. There is a lot of things regarding love that people overlook or try not to think about.

First and foremost, we need to love God. We need to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind, according to Matthew 22:37. In order to love God, we need to make sure He is foremost in our lives. We can’t put anything ahead of what He calls us to do. The Bible is full of examples of people who tried to serve both God and something of the world. Without fail, all of those people ended badly. As Jesus taught, we cannot serve two masters; we must pick one to love. We also need to obey His commandments. How can we say we truly Love God with everything we have, if we do not also obey His commandments?

Secondly, we need to love all other people. The Bible says to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Let’s be honest, most of us have a overinflated view of ourselves; we see ourselves as much better than we really are. We should love others with the same view that we have on ourselves. Even if they don’t seem to deserve it or if we think that they aren’t worth it, we need to love them more than people would think they deserve. 1 John 4:20 makes it clear that if we don’t love each other, we’re not right with God. If we truly love God, we will truly keep His commandments, and because we’re keeping His commandments, we will truly love other people. Not only that, but God loved us to the point that He sacrificed His son to save us. If He was willing to do that, shouldn’t we be at least willing to love our neighbors and brothers in Christ.

In Matthew 5:44, Jesus teaches that we need to love our enemies. Even though they hate us, and would not hesitate to hurt us, we need to show them the love of God. It may seem foolish to love someone who’s hurting us, but if we don’t show them the love of God, how can we ever expect them to change? There isn’t always someone else to show them the way; you may be the only Christian in their lives. Let’s look at this a different way. If we hate them, like they hate us, are we any better than they are? We need to seriously examine our lives, and make sure there is no hatred there, and forgive those who are hurting us.

Love can be very hard sometimes. There are a lot of people in our lives that are difficult to love, and easy to hate, but we need to let go of our hate and dislike for these people, and show them the love of God. Let’s all take a hard look at our lives, and make sure that God is the center of our lives, and that we love not only our fellow Christians and neighbors, but our enemies as well.

People have a tendency to say things that they don’t mean. We say we’re sorry when the last thing in the world we want to do is apologize, we say it’s not a big deal when inside we’re fuming, and we say thank you for a gift even when we hate it. As far as the world is concerned, it’s not a big deal. As far as God is concerned, it’s a huge deal. Our words need to line up with our actions and our thoughts. If our thoughts are wrong, we need to change them rather than lying. The Bible says we need to have clean hands and a pure heart, if we have that, then our words will line up with what we do. We can’t say one thing and do or think another.

Love is probably the most repeated example of needing actions more than words in the Bible. John, in 1 John 3:16-18, says that we need to show love in our actions, not just in words. Words without actions are meaningless. He uses the example of Jesus showing His love for us by dying for us. How many of us would be willing to die for someone we loved? It’s a cliché question that’s very easy to say yes to since most of us will never be in a position like that, but seriously think about it. Could you?

Not only are our actions supposed to match up with our words, but our thoughts are sometimes more important than our actions. Jesus teaches that if we hate someone in our hearts to the point we want to kill them, it’s the same thing as murder. He taught that lust in our heart was the same thing as adultery. John teaches in 1 John 3:10-15 that if we hate a fellow Christian, we’re living in darkness and we’re a murderer. These are all pretty strong statements, we need to be very careful about what we think. If there is someone that we hate, we need to talk to them; to work things out, rather than building up resentment. The more we dwell on how much we hate something or someone, the more likely we are to slip and sin. It’s never alright to hate a person. We’re all sinners, saved by grace. If they’re doing something wrong in their lives, we need to pray for them, and be there for them, but never hate them. How about us? Is there someone in our lives that we’re mad at? Someone who did something wrong towards us? We need to forgive them, let go of our hate or anger, and move on.

It’s difficult to change our thoughts . It’s difficult even more sometimes to show the actions that go along with what we claim to believe. But, with God’s help, we can do it. Is there someone in your life that you’ve not been kind to because you were mad at them? Is there someone that you told you loved them, but you haven’t shown it? If so, pray, and go change the way you’ve been doing things.

In today’s world, we are surrounded by books, how-to guides, and speakers who all talk about how you can know God. They lay out plans and multistep programs, all based on their personal knowledge or what they say they believe. While some of these guides are right on the money, most of them are distortions of Christianity at best. They over-complicate things, knowing God, according to the Bible is very simple. John lays out a simple list of ways to find out if you’re close to God in 1 John 2:3-11.

The first question we need to ask ourselves to find out if we know God, is if we keep His commandments. If we truly know and follow God, we’re going follow His laws. How can we say we follow God and know Him if we ignore His commandments? Or worse, how can we say we follow God if we don’t know His commandments? If we truly want to know God and follow Him, we need to not only study His Word so that we know what He wants us to do, but we need to do it as well. Like John says, if we say that abide with Him, we should walk as He did.

The second question, in 1 John 2:15-17 is how we view the world. If we love the things of the world rather than loving God, we don’t abide with Him. God should be the focus of our lives, not the world. The world is going to pass away, while God is going to exist forever. Where should we put our focus? On the things that don’t last, or the thing that does last? More and more, Christians are putting more of an emphasis on the world, making comments about not ready for God to come back because they’re not ready to leave their lives here. That is not right, this world is not our home, we’re just here till Jesus comes back. Yes, life here be good, and we can do a lot for God here, but, we never should put a greater emphasis on the world than we do on God. How about us, do we sometimes push God off to the side so we can do stuff in the world?

The final question, in 1 John 2:22-23, is how we view Jesus. If we deny that Jesus is the Christ, we’re denying God. We can’t deny Christ, and still have God. A lot of cults teach that Jesus was just a good man, or that He wasn’t God. All of these cults, by that single belief alone, prove that they are not of God.

So, to know God and abide with Him, we need to obey His laws, love Him more than anything, and accept that Jesus is Christ. Sounds much easier than following multistep guides and full-length books, doesn’t it? Man complicates things of God. Let’s look at our lives, can we say that we know God?

It’s very easy to lie to ourselves. In a lot of ways, it’s easier to lie to ourselves than it is to lie to other people. We tell ourselves that we’re doing fine, we tell ourselves that we’re not sinning, we even can tell ourselves that we had no choice in the matter. But, no matter what we tell ourselves, lying to ourselves is just as wrong as lying to someone else.

One of the major lies that we can tell ourselves is that we can sin and live in darkness while we’re still following God. John, in 1 John 1:5, plainly states that we can’t do that and that we’re deceiving ourselves. God is light, there is no darkness in Him. If we’re living in sin or darkness, how can we say that we’re walking with Him as well? We can’t live in sin, and live for God, the two are mutually exclusive. It’s easy to say sometimes that everyone is doing it, or it’s not a big deal, but if we’re Christians, knowingly and repeatedly sinning is completely unacceptable. If we are truly walking with God, we’re going to change the way we live. How about us? Do we do “little” sins habitually, and not think that it’s not that big of a deal? If we do, we need to pray for God’s help to stop, sin is sin and sin is always wrong.

John goes on to say that if we say that there is no sin in our lives, than we’re deceiving ourselves even more. Everybody has sin in their lives. We may not want to admit it, but we all have something we do that’s wrong. We need to ask God for the strength to stop sinning, and for forgiveness for our sins. John says that God will forgive us if we ask and clean us. However, we need to ask Him to do it, we can’t do it ourselves, and pretending that we don’t sin just makes it all worse.

In closing, John details the worst lie that we can tell ourselves. It is telling ourselves that we have not sinned. This is worse than the others because it makes God a liar. The Bible says repeatedly that everybody has sinned. God sent Jesus to die for all of our sins. If we say that we’ve not sinned, than Jesus didn’t have to die, and the Bible is not infallible. We all have sinned. If you say you haven’t, then you’re just lying to yourself, and insulting God’s sacrifice. Is that really the best choice?

Lying to ourselves is easy; none of us like thinking that we’re in the wrong. But, we need to be honest with ourselves. We all have sinned, but with Jesus’ help, we can be forgiven and made better. So, let’s look at our lives. Is there any sin in our lives that we’ve been trying to ignore? Are we really walking with God the way we should?

As time goes on, more and more people drift from the teachings of Christ, and start to follow after false teachers and false doctrine. A more common term than “false teacher” would be cult. These cults promise much, whether it is happiness or eternal life or even vast material possessions. This is not a new problem, it’s been a problem since the beginning of time according to the Bible.

Peter strongly condemns cults and false teachers in 2 Peter 2. He says that these false teachers say and teach things that even the angels would not dare to say. Let’s stop and think about that for a moment. Even the angels would not make blasphemies like what some of the false teachers do. Peter says that these teachers speak on things that they do not understand. Most of the cults make all sorts of wild promises and use pretty insane doctrine, they just string together things so that it looks good, but means nothing.

An interesting thing about these false teachers is that for a short period of time, they get what they think they want. They get all the pleasure they could possibly want out of this life, but when they die, they have their condemnation. Peter says that they have a special darkness for them after they die. I could keep repeating what Peter says, but I think we can just read the chapter individually to get a feel for precisely how depraved these teachers are.

So, what can we do about false teachers? First and foremost, we need to make sure that everything we’re taught lines up with the Bible says. When someone tells you that the Bible says something, look it up for yourself, and check the context of the verse. People can pull some very twisted doctrine out of the Bible if you don’t look at what the context of the verse is. Another thing to do is make sure that the focus of what you’re being taught is God and Jesus. If the focus is more on the preacher or the teacher, and how much they know, be wary.

We also need to be careful of the people we lead to Christ. New believers are especially vulnerable to false doctrine. If we lead them to Christ, we need to stay by them, and help them grow. False teachers and cults go after new believers and the unsaved; the people that aren’t firmly grounded in the faith. The people we lead to Christ are our responsibility. Have we made sure to keep in touch with them? Or have we drifted away from them?

False teachers and cults are a major problem these days. They’re everywhere in the news and in the world around us. Most people don’t fully understand the danger that they represent to us, but we need to be sober and vigilant.