This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

In many ways this verse from John 15:12 is a continuation of last days post, "If you have seen Jesus!" So this morning I asked myself “How has he loved us?” The answer is in many, many ways!

His love is not like our love, not like my love! I remember the first time I heard His voice, I don’t mean His audible voice, but I knew it was Him. I was 16 at the time, and He asked me “Why are you running away from me Phil, I just want you to love for me?” In my brash 16-year-old way of thinking, I didn’t need Him for that. I felt that I had a lot of love, so I told him “I don’t need You for that do I?”

I cringe now, when I think about that. I mean life has a way of testing our love! Not that long ago someone close to me told me “I didn’t realize how selfish I was until I got married!” There is much hope for that marriage. In terms of the testing, one of the things that comes to me again and again, is that marriage is one of God’s primary tools to make us more like himself. In particular the honeymoon is over when my wants and my needs are more important than hers (his), and it tends to come far too soon!

In John 13:1 the Scripture tells us “ having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” And He goes on to take the lowest place, the place of a servant. And this is the beginning, not the end. Paul could exclaim “The son of God loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20)! And in Romans 5:7,8 he says “Perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

So if we think about the worst person we have ever known, and ask ourselves “Would I die to save this person,” I think we can see that we have a long way to go in order to love as Christ has loved us. I know I do.

Father, I have already repented of what I told You when I was 16. As the Scripture says “We love, because You first loved us” (1 John 4:19)! What this is telling me, whether we acknowledge it or not, is that You are the source of all love, and that my ability to love at all is only in response to Your initiating love. In particular I cannot love as You love without You. So help me father to abide in You, so that Your love may flow through me to this wicked and hurting world. In Jesus Name Amen