Love One Another
Scripture: 1 John 3:11-15 TPT (Click link for scripture in You Version)
11 The beautiful message you’ve heard right from the start is that we should walk in self-sacrificing love toward one another. 12 We should not be like Cain, who yielded to the Evil One and brutally murdered his own brother, Abel. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s righteous. 13 So don’t be shocked, beloved brothers and sisters, if you experience the world’s hatred. 14 Yet we can be assured that we have been translated from spiritual death into spiritual life because we love the family of believers. A loveless life remains spiritually dead. 15 Everyone who keeps hating a fellow believer is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. (1 John 3:11-15 TPT)
The Beautiful Message! A few verses back, John called it “The Message of Life!” It is a Beautiful Message, you know! God loved the world (and us) so much that he became one of us through Jesus Christ his Son. He lived a human life, he understood our pain and sorrow, our happiness and joy, our frustration and weariness. He carried our sins on his own shoulders and paid in his own body the redemption price to set us free. He carried our sins away and left them where they belong and then returned alive to give us power over sin and death, inviting us to join his family as Beloved Children. He gave us his Spirit to teach us, to guide us, and to empower us to live in fellowship with God our Father, Jesus our brother, and his Spirit who is with us, within us, and upon us. That is truly a Beautiful Message!
The application of the Beautiful Message is that we walk in self-sacrificing love toward one another. “The World” won’t get that, friends! “The World” will hate the Beautiful Message and will go all antichrist against it and against us when we live that way. “The World” will fight against our way, will try to pull us off the path, and will hate what we stand for. Don’t give up, don’t give out, and don’t give in!
They’ll know we are different because their opposition doesn’t provoke us to hate. We’ll know we are on the Pathway of Life as we, more and more, love each other, love our neighbors, and even love our enemies. It will not be correct doctrines, ritual religious practices, or judgment and criticism of those whose ways are different from ours that characterizes us as followers of Jesus. It will be love!
Prayer:
Father, Thank you for the Beautiful Message of Life! May we faithfully follow Jesus and boldly live the life. In Jesus’ Name!