Love First

Love one another. This direct and simplistic command is meant to encompass the born again believer. Every part of his or her life should be driven by God’s love for them. The scriptures are pregnant with the word love. Knowing that he first loved us is where we all are to start in loving one another.

1 John 3:10 In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.

This verse shows us how we fallible creatures can better tell who is of God and who is of the devil. There are signs for us. We won’t know ultimately who is in Christ, only God knows that, but we can infer by certain actions who may be a child of God.

Those who are of the devil do not do the righteous things laid out in God’s law. Being righteous in the biblical sense is practicing righteousness or doing those things which God commands. They, the children of the devil, practice unrighteousness.

Practicing righteousness is obeying God’s commands. We need to know his word in order to be obedient and to know how we are to live and love one another. Like Psalm 1 says, we are to delight in it. Reading God’s word is not something we do begrudgingly or just out of habit. It is an intentional and deliberate work. The righteous man will have a desire for God’s word, he will be consumed by it. It will differentiate him from the world. And it will ultimately drive him to love.

God’s word will drive us to love. To love even the people we may not want to love in the church.

1 John 3:11 For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

The message from the beginning, love one another. Leviticus 19 lays out the beginnings of loving one another. And John uses them in his gospel as well.

John 13:33-35 Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you. A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

Loving one another should be a basic thing for all Christians to do. To everyone. Saved or unsaved.

To the unsaved person we have a general love for them. We want them to be saved as we are so we extend our love to them with the truth of God’s word in the hopes that they will come to be saved.

When we love our brothers and sisters in Christ it is a deeper love. We long to see each one grow in their sanctification and strive to help them in their walk.

We are to love one another, full stop.