As 1 John 4:19 simply puts it, we love as a response to God's love for us. This is the channel of the Gospel and what we as Christians confess. Love is the root of our works and it underlines all of our actions and words, hence the phrase, "speak the truth in love." Paul also is renowned for emphasizing love throughout his letters, specifically the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians. Here we see Paul define God's love for us as "patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." We also hear in reply how we are to live in love, that without it, we are "nothing," according to Paul.
As heartwarming as these words can be, they are also convicting. As I'm writing this on Valentine's Day, alone in my apartment, I am reminded how important it is that Christians have love in their lives. Not explicitly romantic love, but the kind of love Paul talks about, the kind of love Jesus talks about. Love of neighbors and enemies, simply the love of people.
There have been few quotes that has changed my perspective on ministry more than this, "the Christian life cannot be lived alone." We are called to love because it is the basis of Christian community. We are called to receive people because we need to be received. It's so important that churches and Christian circles have love as their center because we, in practicality, cannot function without it.
As a church worker, it's easy for me to actually feel left out from my congregation. Most families and individuals have lives outside of the church, whereas I don't most of the time. I see that my congregation does well with loving each other, but hardly stops and asks if the pastor or myself have been shown that same compassion.
We, speaking as all Christians, need to love one another because we need to be loved. We need a community to hold us up and encourage us. We need to have love in our lives. A life without feeling loved is hopeless and depressing. We see that Paul's anthologies on love convicts us of not loving enough. We find ourselves not caring enough, not speaking in love, or maybe even acting in hate. The Gospel in those lines is that God has loved us in all the ways we can't love ourselves. The sacrifice of Jesus was an act of compassion "because God so loved the world."
So, even if we're alone or lonely, and even when our Christian community fails to come through for us, we have a God who loves us perfectly. He loves us without end, so nothing, "neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
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