Transcript 4/23/2024
God is love, said John, and that means Jesus’ followers should love. Would that it were so.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the fourth chapter of First John (1 John 4:7-21). If you’re familiar with this particular book of the Bible, this is also probably the section that you have been waiting for.
This is the place in the Scriptures where it says that God is love. Jesus didn’t say it. Moses didn’t say it. None of the prophets wrote it. The apostle Paul didn’t write it. Here it is in the First Letter of John.
John wrote that God is love to say that God loved us first, and because God loved us we also ought to love one another.
Loving one another is one of the two great themes in First John, the other being the importance of faith in Jesus. Jesus himself did have something to say about loving one another: He told his disciples to do precisely that. “That is how people will know you are my disciples,” he said, “if you love one another.”
How I wish that that were true in our present day.
All too often, however, people identify Christians not by their love, but by their hate, by their self-righteousness, by their judgment. All too often Christians are identified by what would make Jesus weep.
If you can do anything in this life to help at least one person realize that Christianity’s commitments are to love and compassion and care, then you will have done a great thing, partially because yes, it would be good for people to know that these are the Christian commitments — to love one another, to love the world — but also, of course, because you will have followed Jesus’ commandment. You will have loved someone else as Jesus loved you.
God loved us first. Let us love one another.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below; I’d love to hear from you.
