Today’s devotion is based on the Message: Love Revealed (Watch Here)
A little word makes a big difference.
“Jesus wants us to love everyone.”
Sounds good doesn’t it?
I would have to agree.
However the context of this statement has to be carefully considered. In recent years, I have heard this phrase used often in a conversation where there is a discussion of a behavior that while it might be accepted and maybe even legal, it butts up against God’s moral law. The phrase is thrown out, “Jesus wants us to love everyone, doesn’t he?” and it seems like the “moral ace card” has been played and the one opposing the behavior has to fall silent because who could disagree with the statement, “Jesus wants us to love everyone”?
The sentence sounds good.
Jesus in John 13:34 said, “A new command I give you: Love one another.”
All too often Scripture is used as a convenient cover for tough and challenging conversations or even revelations that counter the culture or the accepted norm.
To be sure, Jesus wants us to love everyone.
To be sure, we cannot disagree with Jesus’ command to love one another.
However, where we must pause is the very next word: “As…”
John 13:34 continues, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
Sometimes the smallest words make the biggest difference.
With this word, Jesus qualifies what our love of others is to look like. It is to look the same way he has loved us.
With this word, Jesus challenges us to understand how he has loved us.
With this word, Jesus turns us away from the world’s definition of love, how I think love should be practiced, or how the people around me wish love would be defined.
One cannot ignore the point Jesus is making. In the same way Jesus has loved us, so we are to love others.
So, that takes work. But it is work that is worth undertaking.
Before we get into a discussion about “loving everyone” or before we start making up our own definition or determination of what Jesus meant when he wants us to love one another, we must turn to Jesus to see how he actually did love us. What happens in our search is to realize that every teaching, every interaction, every action which is recorded about Jesus is an opportunity to ask, “How did he love me in this situation?”
Consider a somewhat random passage from Matthew 5:1-2. With these words, Matthew introduces the next three chapters.
5 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them.
Jesus loved these people enough to teach them about life in the kingdom of God, where blessing was to be found, what the law of God said, nuances of sin they may not have thought about, relationship issues, heart issues, and much more.
Why? Because just as a parent takes time to teach their child about life, relationships, faith and more because they love them, so Jesus did as well.
There is much more that we will delve into the next couple of days to better understand how Jesus loved us. And the great thing is, Jesus taught and modeled love throughout his ministry so that we would know not just a general idea, but very specifically what love is to look like when we love one another…and for that matter, love everyone.
Because one little word makes a big difference!
Apply: Read through Matthew 5-7. Make a list of all the ways that Jesus loved us in the various teachings he gives in his Sermon on the Mount…you may need a couple of pages!
Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for loving everyone with a perfect love. Help me grow in all the ways you have loved me so that I might truly love all around me JUST AS you have loved me. AMEN!