Showing The Love
Everyone got real quiet…Jesus was about to say something important…something very important. The entire Jewish law was about to be condensed into two simple commandments. “First of all,” Jesus said, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength.”
“Yes,” the crowd thought. “Yes,
everyone knew that one.” There
was certainly no Jew who had not recited those words…knew them by heart as
much as we Christians know John
But there was more. “The second
is like the unto it…you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Now this one was different…new…something Jesus himself had added.
“Loving God? No problem.
Loving your neighbor as yourself? Well…………….”
At least one man had enough guts to say what everyone was thinking.
“And, may I ask, just exactly who is my neighbor?”
But that’s another devotional!
First Corinthians 13 says love is the greatest.
The first fruits of the spirit…love.
And now here Jesus sums up our faith with two commandments and the
common word?…love. But more than
that, Jesus is saying that loving each other is right up there with our love
for God. He is saying to love God
means to love each other.
Our greatest joy in Christ is to love others.
Our greatest service to Him is to love others.
Our greatest channel to bring others to Christ is through love.
“Thou I give all that I have to the poor and I am burned alive for
preaching the gospel…but have not loved, it is useless.”
And it is showing our love as
Christians that makes a difference in the world.
It is so easy to say, “I love you.”
It is quite something else to show that love.
As Christ grows in us, the result is an outpouring of love out of our
lives into the lives of others…we cannot love Christ and do otherwise.
The world will “know we are Christians by our love.”
I think of tomorrow and the opportunities we will be presented…the people we
will meet… the needs, the voids, the emptiness, and the loneliness.
Each of us has the chance to show the love of Christ to someone else by
the way we live our life. What an
opportunity!
Thanks be to God.