Saturday, December 10, 2011

Who loved you first???

On this last day of the week of love I decided to really focus on the biblical word and meaning of love. When I began searching for scripture and sources online I came across the same chapter of 1 John that I wrote about earlier but this time instead of focusing on our love, human love I am writing about spiritual love, the love of God the father and Jesus the son.
1 John 4:9-10
New International Version (NIV)
9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Some theologians say this is how God showed or demonstrated his love for us. Love is revealed through actions. It is not just a feeling you have when you first begin dating someone, it’s not just the feeling you get when you hug your child, parent, spouse, friend etc. Love is something you do. In the birth of Jesus, in this human being, the revelation of God’s love was revealed as being real and authoritative and personal. God makes his love aware to us through the season of Christmas and because of Christ. Christmas is love animated and breathing, dynamic and alive!
Jesus is the way God shows his love for us. He came and lived as a demonstration of who God is. The bible tells us tells us that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God.”( Colossians 1:15) and says “For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body.”( Colossians 2:9) As Jesus lived he showed us how God loves us. He spent his time healing the sick, including the excluded, and setting free the oppressed. Not only was Jesus, his Father, God, in human flesh form, but also in the way he lived his life.. displaying mercy, kindness and compassion.
1 John 4:11-12 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
As God has proven, in the life and death of Jesus, His great love for us. If He can do this for us, surely we can demonstrate his love in everything we do and say (this is the motto of the church we attend). As Christians, God calls us to be witnesses and ambassadors for Him. We demonstrate the reality of God through the active ways we love.
We have never seen God but we have seen His work, all around us, all the time. It’s in the beauty of the sunrise, the gentle rain that falls. It is in the first smile of an innocent baby and in the laughter of happy, excited children. It’s in everything we have, in everything we are. He lives in each of us through our talents and His love is made complete in each and every person.
People always talk about the spirit of Christmas, the spirit of giving. We work at teaching others, through our actions, about acts of kindness, giving and not receiving, giving to the needy, helping, sharing…giving the gift of our joy and happiness to the world at large. People are always seen smiling and saying Merry Christmas or (cringe) Happy Holidays. But Christmas shouldn’t begin and end in December – it should saturate every part of our life all year round. The entire thing of God loving us first and giving His Son Jesus so that we can have eternal life and know Him needs to be demonstrated in our life at every minute. As God loved us we should go and do the same in every minute of every day.

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