Joyful Mirrors of God's Love

Church Family:
As the Church, we can do no less than be joyful mirrors of God’s love (1 John 4:7-8). When we manifest the love of God, we show that we have been born of God and that we truly know God. Love is equally a sign of the new birth as righteousness. There is no such thing as a loveless Christian.

The world is saturated with the messaging of love, but where the world says “love is love,” God says He is love (1 John 4:8). In contrast to the subjective love of the world, God’s love is objective, inseparable from His nature. The love of the world rejects limits, affirming without correction, yet God’s love rejoices with truth (1 Cor. 13:6), as it corrects and disciplines. The self-fulfilling love of the world withers when held in the light of God’s redeeming and holy love. God is inescapably, essentially, and eternally love. Love is His divine nature.

Have you pondered the endless delights of God’s love this very day? Rejoice in God’s sacrificial love: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son” (John 3:16). Savor His generous love as He gives you physical and spiritual blessings: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above” (James 1:17). Cover yourself in God’s saving love knowing that your sin has never stopped His love for you (Rom. 5:6). Accept with open hands God’s adopting love into His family, being made an heir of His kingdom. It was "in love" that He "predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will” (Eph 1:4-5). Delight in God’s eternal love as He has loved you since "before the ages began" (2 Tim. 1:9). Enjoy God’s irrevocable saving love: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?" (Rom. 8:35). Thank God for His disciplining love: "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son" (Heb. 12:5-6).

As God is spirit, as He is light, so He is love and He wants you to experience His perfect love completely every day. The world should know the love of God because of our love for one another in the body of Christ.

I love you, see you Sunday: Steve