#DailyDevotion Where Does The Power To Love Originate?
1 John 4:7-16 7Dear friends, let us love one another because love comes from God and everyone who loves is God’s child and knows God. 8He who doesn’t love hasn’t learned to know God, because God is Love. 9God has shown us His love by sending His only begotten Son into the world for us to live through Him. 10This is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the payment for our sins. 11Dear friends, if that’s how God loved us, then we should love one another. 12No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God lives in us, and His love has accomplished in us what He wants. 13This is how we know we live in Him and He in us: He has given us His Spirit. 14We have seen and can tell the truth that the Father sent His Son to save the world. 15If you confess Jesus is God’s Son, God lives in you and you in God. 16And we have come to know and believe the love God has for us. God is Love, and if you live in love, you live in God, and God lives in you.
Where does our love for one another begin? It begins in God. John’s epistles talks a lot about loving one another. No doubt, Jesus’ words to his disciples on the night he was betrayed had a lot of effect upon him. John 13, 34“I’m giving you a new commandment: Love one another! Love one another as I have loved you. 35By your loving one another everyone will know you’re My disciples.” John tells us to “love one another because love comes from God and everyone who loves is God’s child and knows God.” We have been made God’s children by the Father through his will. He has revealed his love for us. If we believe God loves us for Christ’s sake then we know God. If we know God and his love then it follows we will love our fellow Christians who also know God’s love.
Where does the power to one another come from? “9God has shown us His love by sending His only begotten Son into the world for us to live through Him. 10This is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the payment for our sins.” We do not love God by our own power, reason or strength. We do not love one another from our own power, reason or strength. God loves us. We see this by his sending his son to die for our sins. That he would sacrifice Jesus to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins, to cover them so God’s holiness would not consume us show us much he loves us. The Holy Spirit uses this message of love to convert us from darkness to light, from death to life, from fear and hatred to love.
Our confession of faith, Jesus is God’s son, shows us we have the Holy Spirit because no one can confess Jesus is LORD (YHWH) without the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God and if he brings out this confession from your heart and lips then God lives in you and you in God. When John says, “and if you live in love, you live in God, and God lives in you,” he is saying the same thing when the Scripture says, “Be holy because I am holy” and “Be perfect because your Father in heaven is perfect.” What is this to mean then? I do not believe God is talking about moral perfection here, though our morals most certainly will change. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. When you believe God the Father loves you for the sake of the son then that love is going to have its way for you. You will not only love your fellow Christian but you will start loving your enemies and those who persecute you. You were God’s enemies before you receive his love. Now you are his friends. You have received his forgiveness. You will forgive others. God lives his life through you now.
Heavenly Father, may the love you have given us overcome all our sin and iniquities that we may love as you love. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.