For this is the message you have heard from the beginning: we should love one another, 1 John 3:11 NABRE
John the author of three letters and likely the gospel of John is the love preacher. He takes Jesus’ message to love one another and emphasizes it in all his writing and likely all he lived. He leads a community of Christian followers and would have insisted it was a community of love. We can surmise these things because of the letters he has written. In the section leading up to the quoted verse John speaks about being children of God, which means they are to be righteous, to be right in the eyes of God. He contrasts this with children of the devil who are sinners from the beginning. To be children of God requires we live a certain way and act a certain way, basically to always be righteous. Righteous means we act like God; we love, we are honest, we have a pure heart and we think more of others than ourselves. After describing that we are children of God he begins to speak about loving our brothers and sisters. John makes several powerful statements about what it means to love one another. If we do not love than we are dead. If we hate a brother we are a murderer. We ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If we see someone in need and refuse to help then we do not have love in us. We must love not in word but in deed and truth. Love is a powerful element for those who are followers of God; who is love. We cannot put ourselves before those we love or it is not love.
We must always reach out and help those who are in need, and we must do all we can in our aid, even giving what is ours, even if it means we will suffer without it. Love is as heavy a burden as any Jesus challenges us to live. It never ends, it never gives up.
Do you love as Jesus asks? Do others come first in your life?
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