In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love for everyone. – 2 Peter 1:5-7 (NLT)
Jesus summed up the ten commandments into two: “Jesus replied, ‘…And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.’” Mark 12:29-31 (NLT)
In another place, Jesus said, “This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. This is my command: Love each other.” John 15:12-17 (NLT)
The love Jesus is talking about is God’s kind of love. This love originates from the one who loves not from the one that is loved. We are to love because God is Love and we are from God.
Love involves serving, sharing, and praying for one another. This love reaches beyond the Christian community to anyone, anywhere. This love seeks others’ highest good and sometimes, even at a cost to us.
A Jewish or religious expert in Luke 10:29 (NLT) asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” Jesus replied with a story of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). The story highlights how love and compassion are demonstrated in action, in this case, in an act of mercy.
One Bible commentary said the Jewish “expert” would have thought of the Jewish victim as a good person and the Samaritan as an evil one. To a Jew, there was no such person as a “good” Samaritan.
Many believers feel compassion towards others but don’t do anything about the situation. Feelings of compassion without action is not love.
A show of love and compassion should not be motivated by benefits or what we can gain from the act. It should not be motivated by class, ethnicity, race, religious belief, social-economic connections, or relationships.
Jesus demonstrated selfless love towards His disciples and to all peoples. There was no hint of selfishness in His love. He did not seek compensation or reward or deference before He expressed compassion and love to those He met.
Jesus exemplified practical love at every opportunity. This practical love ultimately led Him to the cross where He sacrificed Himself for humanity.
This is the kind of love we should have one toward another. The love that honours Christ, unites believers together and blesses the world. This love, sometimes, can be very costly.
Faith is the starting point of the Christian life and progresses and ends in love. The Apostle Paul cautioned us by saying:
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (NJKV)
Stay blessed,
LaraLex
Hills and Valleys 