TEXT: JOHN 13:34-35 (CSB) – ““I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
We started this short study on the Mark of a Christian yesterday by seeing that this verse spoken by Jesus was a command – not a suggestion. And then another thing we should note about this text is that Jesus says here that when we obey this commandment – when we love one another –we PROVE that we really do have a RELATIONSHIP with God.
Verse 35 says, “By THIS all men will know that You are My disciples.” I think the reason Jesus said this is because God is the SOURCE of all pure or genuine love.
As I John 4:7-8 says, “…love comes from God….for…God IS love.” Someone once put it this way, “Love flows from God as light radiates from the sun.” Note that this text doesn’t say, “God is loving” as if it were one of many divine attributes of God….like His patience, His power, or His wisdom.
No…it states, “GOD IS LOVE.” In other words, the very essence of God’s being is LOVE. Love pervades and influences all of His attributes and activities. When He creates, He creates in love. When He rules, He rules in love. He even judges in love. Love never is and never can be absent from His being.
For example, we know that one of God’s characteristics is His holiness. Hebrews 7:26 says, He is “undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens.” As a holy being, it would be perfectly understandable for Him to view all sinners with the utmost of contempt. But since God is love, then His is a holiness that REACHES OUT to sinners with salvation for them – His holiness is the antithesis of aloofness or indifference.
Oswald Chambers writes, “God is love, not, God is loving. God and love are synonymous.
Love is not an attribute of God, it IS God; whatever God is, love is. If your conception of [God’s] love does not agree with justice and judgment and purity and holiness, then your idea of love is wrong.”
Once, while riding in the country, Charles Haddon Spurgeon saw a weathervane on a farmer’s barn, and on the arrow, the words: “God is Love” were inscribed. He turned in at the gate and asked the farmer, “What do you mean by that? Do you think God’s love is changeable; that it veers about as that arrow turns in the wind?” The farmer said, “Oh, no! I mean that whichever way the wind blows, God is STILL love.”
Well, since God IS the source of all love….then it follows that the best evidence that a person truly knows God is whether or not he or she loves in a godly way. It is as John-the Apostle of Love-writes in his epistle: “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God.” (I John 4:7-8)
In other words, a stranger to love is a stranger to God. Love is the proof of a regenerate heart. Only true Christians are capable of Christlike love
If my daughter Joy were here, you would see a close resemblance to me. Our characteristics clearly indicate our shared family heritage. We got our genes from the same pool! One look at us will leave no doubt in your mind that we are closely related.
And in this text, Jesus is saying that our Christlike love for each other clearly indicates our relation to God. When we love as only Christ can love people will recognize us as the children of God.
Bishop William C. Martin once said, “Love is the one attribute of character- the only one about which we are able to say, ‘If a man has this, it proves unconditionally that he is a Christian. If he does not have love, no matter what else he has or does, it proves that he is not a follower of the Lamb of God.'”
Today, muse over this concept that God is love. And, if He is, and we are to be mirrors of Him to a lost and dying world, do we show this kind of love to others? Would someone see the relationship in us?
No comments:
Post a Comment