LOVE
LOVE:
- but Jesus makes the case for just how important love is to our christian walk and to our faith – He says
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)
- the identifier that marks us as a Christians is love.
And all the while – the world is out there with this longing ache to discover what love means! Have you noticed how much our culture is obsessed with love? it’s everywhere!
- drive anywhere in the month of June and you see rainbow flags everywhere and the popular phrase, what is it? love is love.
In fact, that’s been the message from the beginning!
- Take a look at this passage found in 1 John 4:7-10
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:7-10)
God’s love for you is undeserved, unchanging, unconditional, self-sacrificial, forever forgiving, holds you accountable, and calls you onward!
There was an old Christian leader who once said, “Christ has no body on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassionately on the world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things