“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. …Since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
1 John 4:10-11
Love does not come naturally to us. We get it supernaturally. We learn to love when we are born again out of the inexhaustible love that God has shown us in Christ. A child can’t help but look like its parents. Even babies reflect the features of their mother and father. So it is with spiritual children. If God is our Father—and God is love—it follows that any child of God will display the love of their heavenly Father.
Believing true things about God is hugely important. Yet that is only one part of having a true faith which knows God. To know God is to be loved by Him, and out of that love we ought to love God and others. It cannot be otherwise. “Show me a flame that has no heat, and I will show you a Christian that has no love. Just as the sun cannot help but light up the world, so, too, a child of God cannot help but look like the God who fathered them, the God who is love” (C. H. Spurgeon, 1883).
Do your brothers and sisters feel the heat of your love? Does your love light up their lives? Let it be so!
Believing true things about God is hugely important. Yet that is only one part of having a true faith which knows God. To know God is to be loved by Him, and out of that love we ought to love God and others. It cannot be otherwise. “Show me a flame that has no heat, and I will show you a Christian that has no love. Just as the sun cannot help but light up the world, so, too, a child of God cannot help but look like the God who fathered them, the God who is love” (C. H. Spurgeon, 1883).
Do your brothers and sisters feel the heat of your love? Does your love light up their lives? Let it be so!
Scripture Focus
1 John 4:7-21
Insight
“God is love. Therefore, love. Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love.” (Henry Drummond, 1892)
Bible In A Year
- Deuteronomy 11-12
- Psalm 85
- Acts 8
