This month, I have been asking God to show me what it means to truly love others. At its most basic level, what does it really mean to love others? How do I do that? God’s response was to lead me through the book of 1 John. Chapter 4 had the most impact on me. In verses 7-21, John discusses the ideas of God’s love for us, our love for God, and our love for each other. These three ideas are inseparable. We cannot love God until we understand what love really is. Neither can we love God and hate our brother.
So where to begin with this difficult idea of love? I started looking at God’s love at its most basic level. God is love. God shows us what true love is. 1 John 4:9-10 captures the essence of God’s love for us:
“This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
In this passage we see that God’s love is sacrificial. God gave. God sent His Son into the world to rescue us before we ever loved Him. In fact, we were incapable of loving God first. He had to make the first move to bring us back to Him. He had to love first.
Did you get all of that?
God
loved
first.
This is our key to loving others. John follows the verses above with this, “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” Because God loved us, we can love others. We are to follow God’s example of love. We must be the ones to love first, regardless of whether or not we are loved in return. Yes, it is much better to be loved in return, but God asks us to love regardless. That is what Jesus did on the cross. That is what God is still doing today. That is how we are called to love each other. This is a huge challenge for me.
Sometimes it is hard to love those who seem unlovely. Sometimes I flat out don’t feel like it. In these times, I think the issue lies not with the other person but with me. My heart is the unlovely one. When we try to operate out of our own love and not God’s love, it becomes difficult to love others. It is only when God’s abundant love is overflowing in our lives that we can love and continue loving, because God’s love never ceases. I encourage you, in the times when you find it hard to love, to run straight back to the Father and cry out for His love to fill your heart once more.
Let Him search your heart.
Let Him root out the weeds.
And let Him fill you to overflowing with His abundant love.
