Perfect God's Love

Living in Covenant

A Heart-felt Covenant

Live in the light of God (Isaiah 2:5) 

Jesus Teaches about Right Attitudes

1 John 4:7-21 The Message

God Is Love

7-10 My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.
11-12 My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
13-16 This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.
20-21 If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.

For Reflection

Whenever we see things that offend our sense of justice, our first response often times is to make more rules and create incentives for following them.  But Jesus has shown us that there is no rule ever created by God or human that cannot be manipulated for untoward ends.  When the world places its faith in human determination, it collapses upon itself as we rationalize success and ignore the detrimental consequences of our incapacities.

The prophets warn us of the power of false prophecy and teaching by those who would twist God's will to fit personal ends. How can we say that we love God and act in immoral ways toward each other? How can we say we love Jesus and ignore those on the margins of well-being?

Rules are important, but having the moral will and skill to administer them wisely requires a divinely inspired love of all of the human race friend and foe.

Pray

Pray so that you will be more able to love as God loves.

Note: Dyed silk banner by students at the Presbyterian Association of Musicians, Montreat, NC, 2019
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