1John 4:19(NLT) says, “We love each other because he loved us first.” This is such an important verse to our relationship with God. 1John 4:16 tells us that God is love. He’s the Originator of perfect love, and this perfect love can only come from Him. As human beings, we are incapable of giving each other and giving ourselves real love if we do not accept God’s love. We’re His children, and He tells us to depend totally on Him because He is the Source of all good things, and He will provide for our every need. We are to honor Him as our Heavenly Father, and the greatest way to honor Him is to be a conduit of His love through Jesus Christ. This means we are to share it with others in the same way that Jesus Christ did when he carried forth God’s mission in the earth.

Sharing God’s love, more than any other thing we do in life, is the occupation that will bring us the greatest amount of joy and fulfillment in this earth experience. If we miss this, we will miss a whole lot. Galatians 2:20(NLT) tells us, “My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” When the Word talks about the “old self”, it is referring to the person we were before we accepted the salvation that Jesus Christ offers. Before we made him Lord and Savior over our lives, we didn’t know his love, and therefore, it was impossible for us to give it to others.

John 3:16(NLT) declares, “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” God sent Jesus Christ to earth on a mission. This mission was to give up his life as a sacrifice for our sins so that we could live and not be destroyed by satan and his kingdom of darkness. As we look around at the world, we can clearly see that most have not chosen God’s love, but are living in darkness, blinded from the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 2Corinthians 4:4(NLT) tells us this. It says, “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” Every living person can come out of that darkness and be transferred by Christ into God’s Kingdom of love and life, but this is a choice. It’s a choice to trust in what God has done for us through Jesus Christ, and it’s all up to us.

1Timothy 2:4(NLT) says that God “wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth.” He wants every person to know His love. Why? Because He wants us to be with Him, and we can only be with Him if we accept His love through Jesus Christ. Then we can begin to live through His love and become like Christ.

There is no darkness in God’s love, there is only light, and He has given us the extreme privilege and responsibility to share his love with those who do not yet know Him. 1John 3:10,14(NLT) tells us, “10 So now we can tell who are children of God and who are children of the devil. Anyone who does not live righteously and does not love other believers does not belong to God. 14 If we love our Christian brothers and sisters, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead.” Accepting the salvation that Jesus Christ offers means that we come alive to God, and the perfect love of God that we share IS that liveliness!

1John 3:16,19(NLT) says, “16 We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. 19 Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God.” To give up our lives for our brothers and sisters means that we should take notice of our span of influence among those we love and see every day. We should understand that God has strategically positioned each of us to impact the lives of those in our homes, work environment, and in our faith and social communities. We have a duty and responsibility to help them by showing them God’s love. If we know that they have a need, we should help to take care of it in any way that we can. This proves that we are God’s children because we are behaving the way ambassadors of Christ should.

We can’t just merely say that we love each other, there has to be some action behind those words. 1John 3:23 says that God commands us to believe in the name of Jesus Christ and to love one another. Loving one another is how we show that we love God with all our mind, heart, soul, and strength. It’s one of the ways we remain in fellowship with God and live abundantly through Jesus Christ. God tells us in 1John 3:22(NLT) that when our hearts are to please Him in this way, “we will receive from him whatever we ask because we obey him and do the things that please him.” ■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. 

“Loving One Another”, written for Springfield Fellowship © 2022. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.