Only Love

1 John 4:20-21 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
 
ONE thing we should remember about the New Testament epistles is the reason John, Paul, Peter, James, Luke and the unknown Hebrews author wrote them. They were teaching the early church congregations how to live in Jesus’ resurrection. These two verses on love God, love your brother/sister in the church is repeated many times. Why again?
    A good pastor will preach to an issue he sees in the church. Likely, there were Christians not living in love. John reminded the church again of their primary response to God, who is love.  
    This is still a problem. Too often, God’s love is dramatically absent from his church. We in the church show little desire to truly fellowship with others in God’s love.
    We have looked at fellowship in 1 John 1:3 to learn, “Fellowship is a very personal, active relationship with God the Father, Son and Spirit. We serve God and serve one another with spiritual gifts of help, mercy, love, forgiveness and prayer.” Pastor and author Rick Warren says in “The Purpose Driven Life”: “Fellowship is sharing together, serving together, belonging together and suffering together.” He writes of how forgiveness, humility, time, honesty and commitment are needed to build true fellowship. Then he writes, “The best use of life is love. Life without love is really worthless.”
    Do you get this? Fellowship in Christ demonstrates Christ’s love, to one another. John holds you to this. You cannot say, “I love God.” and then ignore his people. If you do so, you are lying when you say, “I love Jesus.” Think of that!
    Love for God and love for others is why Jesus asked Peter three times in John 21:16-17 “Simon, do you love me?” When Peter affirmed, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Then Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.” Peter’s love – not his hard work, not his passion, not his leadership, but his love for Jesus qualified him to minister to the church. He would go in love of the Savior to love God’s people into the gospel. In fellowship with the Savior, Peter and the others went to make disciples who loved God and loved one another.
    This was their purpose. It is to be yours, too.
 
Life Thought: Be loving to serve, share and suffer with those who belong to your church.