Living out Love

God Love to Us 

Discussions about God’s love can quickly become disengaged as we talk about it so often. However, the truths of the Bible are good, true, and continually fruitful in our lives. Looking at God’s love for us is a good reminder of the greatest miracle of our lives! God’s love for us, known as agape love, is the greatest love the Bible tells us about. God’s love for us is sacrificial, unconditional, and intimate. 

• Romans 5:6 tells us “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (ESV). Earlier in this passage, Paul writes that we probably would not die for someone, even if they were righteous. God’s love, however, is sacrificial and unconditional. He took the initiative in our redemption not requiring anything of us, but sending His own Son to die so that we might be reconciled to Him.
• 1 John 3:1 says, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (ESV). God’s love goes beyond a saving love and invites us into His family. God loves us intimately and establishes a deep relationship with us. 

Our Love to God

Seeing God’s perfect, immense love for us, how are we to respond? The Bible tells us how God wants us to love Him. 

• 1 John 5:3 tells us that we love God when we keep His commandments. When we have genuine love for Jesus, it will be demonstrated in our obedience to Him. 
• Mark 12:30  says we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Every aspect of our lives are to be lived in love for God. What are some practical steps you can take today to use your heart, soul, mind, and strength to love God?
• Revelation 2:2-5 warns us of the danger of living without love for God. God speaks to those who work hard doing good things, but they have forgotten their first love. It is not enough to do good works or have good intentions. The foundation of our lives must be love for God.

Our Love to Others

The Bible instructs us often in how we are to love others. If our love for God is shown in our obedience to His commands, then our love for God is shown in how we love others.

• Colossians 3:12-14 tells us that because we have been made new in Christ, we are to put off our old ways and to put on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and forgiveness. By loving those around us in this way, we imitate Christ and show our love to Him
• Romans 13:8 “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (ESV). Our obligation is to love others. This fulfills the law, as the law can be summed up in the two greatest commands to love God and others.
• 1 John 4:20-21 conveys the importance of our love for others. If we do not love others, our love for God is not genuine. John goes as far to say that if we do not love others, we cannot love God.

Embracing and Reflecting God’s Love Every Day

This season, let’s look at love in a renewed way. Let’s receive God’s sacrificial, unconditional, and intimate love and rejoice in it! Let’s respond to the magnificence of God’s love by loving Him through obedience, with all we are, and by founding all we do in love for God. Let your love for God be shown in your love for those around you. Put on the ways of Christ and ask God to help you to love others like He does! Let’s make Faith West Academy a place where we experience the love of God, continually learn to love Him, and show our identity in Christ by loving each other.