#DailyDevotion Let God’s Love Thoroughly Abide In You
1Jn 4:11-16 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (12) No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. (13) By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. (14) And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. (15) Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. (16) So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him
This John the apostle talking not John Lennon. How did God love us? By sending his son to the be the propitiation for our sins, i.e. the Son, Jesus, bore the wrath of God for our sin for us and gives us eternal life for free.
So if God loves us in this manner, we ought to love one another in like manner. Instead of holding grudges and resentments we place those on Jesus on the cross and let Jesus take our wrath on them for us (because, well, he already paid the price for those sins against us anyway). John goes into that we have never seen God, but if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. What is John getting at? Just this, each person you meet is made in the image and likeness of God. How you treat those people is exactly how you would treat God if that person was God. If you show hatred and contempt for someone, you are showing hatred and contempt for God’s image and consequently to God. If you show love towards the person you have seen, then you are showing love to God’s image and likeness and consequently to God. When you show love to other people, particularly your enemies God’s love is perfected in you that is made complete, because that is how God loved and has loved you. Remember what Paul said:
Rom 5:6-10 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. (7) For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— (8) but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (9) Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. (10) For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
John has given us two signs to let us know we are in God and God is in us. The first is that we love other people with the love God has shown us in Jesus. The other is we confess Jesus Christ is the Son of God come in the flesh. In that flesh, God has shown is great love towards us. Now let us show this world the love God has for us by showing that love to the world. Let his love abide in you and let is live its life out from you and so abide then in his love.
O almighty and abiding Love, so thoroughly let your love have its way with us, that we may love those made in your image and likeness as you have loved us that we may be complete in your love and abide forever in your Son Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.