By Rev. Becky Hand
Pastor, Faith Fellowship
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and He in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world.
1 John 4:12-14
These verses are from the “God is Love” passage in 1 John. These verses tell us that God lives in us to show his love to those around us (i.e. our world), and God sent Jesus to show his love to the world. God’s love for us is, then, at least partially, for the purpose of loving the world.
This sounds simple and do-able. We can be loving toward other people. This is easy … except when it isn’t. It is not easy to show love to others when someone hurts our feelings, or cuts us off in traffic, or gets in front of us in line, or looks different from us, or speaks differently, or is rude, or intimidates us or, or, or … Let’s face it, the difficult-to-love people can outnumber the easy-to-love people.
It’s interesting how often we depend on God’s forgiveness of our sins, but how often we fail to be forgiving of others. Has not the Father’s love extended mercy to us? Has not the Father loved us without fail? Has not the Father given us his Spirit so that we can love others?
The Father has loved us on our most unlovable days. Yet we prefer not to show his love to others on their most unlovable days. God loves us, comes to us, and saves us in our most unlovable state. So perhaps, he loves you, sent his Son to save you and his Spirit to guide you so that you can show HIS love to your world. And he loves the unlovables, including you and me. He calls us to extend kindness to the rude, insensitive, intimidating, bad driving, people who act differently than we do. This difficult task is God perfecting his love in us.
Take heart, God loves you more than you can imagine, even when you are most unlovable. Since he loves you, he will help you love your neighbor, because he loves them, too.
