I am a people person! I love to talk with different people and hear their stories. It comes easy to me to reach out to people I don’t know and get them talking. But I realized several years ago that just being a “people person” wasn’t enough. It needed to be deeper than just hearing their stories.
I started diving into the New Testament. I wanted to know what this new covenant was all about and what it looked like. I wanted to know Jesus! Really know Him and know how to be like Him, so I would know how to have better relationships with people.
As I studied, I came to realize that our “New Testament Christianity” is ALL ABOUT love!!! Jesus voices the two greatest commandments in,
“And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it; You shall love your neighbor as yourself”…Matthew 22:37-40
Christianity is ALL ABOUT love!
In this article, I want to show you that our relationship with God is tied DIRECTLY to our relationship with others. Let’s look at this through 1 John.
We MUST Love Others To:
1. Walk in the light…2:9-11
“The one who says he is in the light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now. The one who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness blinded his eyes.”
If we want to walk in the light, we MUST love our brother. Not just tolerate, but love.
2. Be an OBVIOUS child of God…3:10
“By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, NOR the one who does not love his brother.”
You have to ask yourself, “What do people see in me? What is obvious about me?” Do people see your love for others?
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”
3. Be born of God…4:7
4. Know God…4:7
For us to say that we are born of God and that we know God, we MUST love one another.
“No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.”
5. Have God abide in us…4:12
6. Have His love perfected in us…4:12
To Have God abide in us and His beautiful love be perfected in us, we MUST love others.
7. Have confidence in the day of judgment…4:16-17
“And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, that we may have confidence in the day of judgement; because as He is, so also are we in this world.”
We are striving to be like Jesus. Jesus is God, and God is love.
As we look at “Excelling in Her Love for Others,” we are going to look at the importance of a GENUINE love for everyone around us. We will see ways to be like Jesus as we lay down our lives for the brethren (1 John 3:16). We’ll look at the importance of opening our hearts to others (1 John 3:17-20).
I am SOOOO excited to share with you the study I have done on striving to be like Jesus and the fact that without love, I can’t even begin to know Him!
