Sunday Reading: John 13:34-35
Key Verse: John 13:34
35 By this all shall know that you are My disciples, if you have love toward one another.
Devotion:
I can remember singing this song soon after I was saved and then wondering why the world would simply not just accept the words and live by them. It is easy to love one another, but when Christ gave us this commandment He made sure that He said “As I have loved you, you should also love one another”. That is the big difference between what Christ would have us to do and what we may be willing to do. There may well be someone that upsets you all the time and those are the people that we need to extent a special love towards.
It is very easy to love people when they are special in your eyes. It is very easy to love people when they look like they do things right and treat you right. But when people start treating you in ways that you do not expect or ways that you do not want them to then we do tend to get upset with them. But getting upset with people and loving them is actually different. There is no reason why we should not get upset with others when they do rub us up the wrong way, but extending love towards them should never stop.
The love that I am talking about here is the love that Christ wants us to show towards others. True Christian love. Mans earthly ‘love’ is most often confused with plain lust because man has not known the love that Christ has shown towards us. When we get to know Christ’s love towards us then we can start to see true love in a whole new light. Man’s love is finite because it seems to have a rather short end in sight. Christ’s love is eternal and will never change. That should be our goal; to love people with the same love for as long as we live. When you start to do that you will find that your love for others grows with each day. The world cannot understand that, but when we know Christ’s love, we can begin to see how this is possible and we can ask Him to help us to love others in the same way as He loves us – without end. I am always scared that people will ask me ‘do you love me?’ because my honest answer has to be yes – but will they understand it?
Points to Ponder:
How would you describe love?
Do you know Christ’s true love?
