Summary of Love
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.
