Love One Another

⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ 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.¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. – 1 John 4:7-12

Those who are quick to condemn you for judging them are also quick to pull out verses 7 and 8.  Their argument is that we are reading verses that state obvious wrongs in their life but by doing so we don’t love them.  We should be loving them first.  If we loved them we’d accept them even with their sin (and quit holding them to be responsible for it!).  At least, this is my understanding of it.  We then are called hypocrites for saying one part of the Bible but not living another in their minds.  The funny part of this whole argument is that it is often done by someone who professes they don’t believe in God.  Yet, we are the hypocrites!

This stance by those who work to slither out of the unmovable conviction of God’s Word can be corrected if only they’d read the verses following.  How did God show His love among us?  “He sent His one and only Son into the world”.  What did the Son do?  He loved everyone by giving God’s Message to them.  What did they do to Him for doing this?  They killed Him.  Yet, He died, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven so that those who killed Him would have another chance to choose God. 

There is a key element in this that is too often overlooked.  It should be noted that He did not change His Message.  Even though those who refused His message killed Him, He followed God’s plan whether they accepted it or not.  God said to Moses, “I AM”.  God is and so is His Word.  No matter how much some people might not like it, It is. 

Verse 11 tells us that we are to love one another the way God loved us by giving His Son as a sacrifice for us.  Applying verse 7 which tells us to love one another, we can then surmise that we are to love one another in a sacrificial manner.  That means putting the other’s needs or even wants above our own and being willing to sacrifice our wants or preferences.  This is love in action.  We may not want to confront one another over the other’s sin or to hear of our own sin, but if we love one another sacrificially, then we’ll do it.  Our love is made complete by our willingness to be nothing so those we love might be more.  

If all Christians loved in this way, the world would see God in us.  Verse 12 tells us that God’s love is made complete in us when we love in this way.  Seek to love others even when it is uncomfortable and even hurts.  Seek to love them even when you have to confront them and they refuse you.  Seek to love them when you are confronted.  See their spiritual needs and urge them, thereby loving them, so they might find the source of love, God Himself.