We Love Because He First Loved Us
All week long my church has been doing Vacation Bible School for the kids in our church and in our community. The theme was Live it Out, and we talked about living out the love of Jesus towards others. It’s a great thing for us all to think about, but I’ve seen a lot of Christians struggle with loving others because they start from the wrong starting point.
See, a lot of us hear that the Bible says we are to love other people, and so we just get busy trying to do things for other people. Again, doing things for others is a great thing to do, but we only have so much love for other people in and of ourselves.
When we just get busy doing loving things for people, we either get worn out or we become prideful. It’s a great way to justify ourselves and gives us something to form an identity around.
But if we are going to really serve people well, do it for the long haul, and not do it to get something out of it for ourselves, we must begin from the right starting point.
FOCUS ON HOW MUCH GOD LOVES YOU
Madame Guyon, the seventeenth-century mystic, said, “If you really want to love the world, fasten your attention on how much you are loved.”
The starting point for loving others is fastening your attention on how much God loves you.
WE LOVE BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED US
“We love, because he first loved us.”
(1 John 4:19)
Before we start doing loving things for other people, we must know and turn our attention to how much God loves us.
God is love, and if you are in Christ, you are in His love. You are filled with His love. You can’t get more of it. The fullness of His love dwells in you.
When the apostle Paul shared what he prayed for the church at Ephesus, it was all about how they would know and experience God’s love.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-20)
When we understand how much God loves us, we can rest in His love. We don’t have to do loving things in order to be loved by God or others. When we keep our eyes fixed on His love for us, then we can make ourselves available to Him to have His love poured out of us!
LOVE POURED OUT
Oswald Chambers wrote, “You mind the journey inward, and God will see that rivers of living water will flow out of you.”
Many of us get that backwards. We think that we have to make sure the rivers of living water flow out of us and then we would be acceptable. But that’s not it. Focus on the fullness of God in you, and love will come pouring out of you.
In John 15, we are told that Jesus is the Vine and we are the branches. We are receivers. His life and love are passed through us and poured out onto others. Our job is just to look to the love in the Vine that we are connected to and allow it to flow out of us.
Living out the love of Jesus is first realizing how much you are loved by Him and then allow His love to pour out of you towards others. Then people experience His love through you. Real, self-less, sacrificial, agape love that produces eternal impact.
