God Is Love

 

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” 1 John 4:7.

 

“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.” 1 John 4:16.

 

I have a biography of Andrew Murray that is titled, Apostle of Abiding Love. As I ponder that title I can’t think of a better testimony, for Murray’s life was centered in the love of Jesus Christ; embracing Christ’s love, loving Christ, and loving others with the love of Jesus Christ. Could someone write that of me? Of you? Of us as the People of God?

 

This in turn reminds me of sisters Betsy and Corrie ten Boom, prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp for hiding and assisting Jews during WWII. Corrie, the younger of the two, asked Betsy, “How long will we be here?” Betsy replied (I’m relying on memory for this quote), “Until they can be taught to love. If they can be taught to hate, then they can be taught to love.”

 

At first Corrie thought Betsy was referring to their fellow prisoners, but then she realized that she was talking about the cruel guards.

 

Jesus says that the world will know we are His people by the love we have one for another, a love that is to be exactly like His – in fact, it is to be the very same love flowing through us to one another and to the world.

 

Is this how the world identifies us?

 

What are we substituting in place of love for our identity?

 

Jesus is clear in John’s Gospel that we are to have two identifying marks, our love and our unity. How are we doing with that?

 

Note that both our love and our unity are communal – they are both a “one another” proposition. If we aren’t living in community we can’t demonstrate these marks, we can’t grow in them, we can’t learn from them, we can’t be transformed by them and in them. These marks are to be our Way of Life.

 

How are we doing?

 

O that we might receive the love of God, live in the love of God, and give the love of God to others.

 

Who shall we give the love of God to…today?