Keep on loving

Keep on Loving

The Weekly Walk

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God." - 1 John 4:7

If obeying God's command to love one another depended on me, I'd be in a bad way. You would be too. But happily, we're not the ones who are doing the loving. First John 4:7 gives me hope: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God."

"Beloved, let us love one another." Literally the verb tense in the original language means, Let’s keep on loving one another. Let's don't do it for an hour or for a day. Let's don’t do it for a week or for a month. Let's do it until the day we die. God's kind of love goes on and on. We're not perfect, but God is changing and growing all of us. God's kind of love builds history together. Let's love . . . wait, let’s keep on loving one another.

"Beloved, let us love one another." What a great exhortation. What strife cannot be stalked by love? What pride cannot be pummeled by love? What conflict cannot be crushed by a supernatural, sent-from-heaven love? That’s why the verse says, "For love is from God." Chemistry is good, but that's not what God’s love is about. We all need true friends, but God's love goes farther than that. His love is a supernatural love, a love that you and I are not capable of doing ourselves. Love does not come naturally to us. What's natural is to hate when you're hated, to attack when you're attacked, to hurt others when you yourself have been hurt. But to love is to give back something different than what you receive in these situations.

Have you observed how often God puts opportunities right in front of us that call us to do what's not natural? I've got the natural thing down, but loving deeply requires God. A genuine conversion experience always precedes a supernatural love. We just don’t have that kind of love ourselves. How great that we are God's.

James MacDonald