The Family That Loves
For Meditation (Ed satterfield)
John adds another key stroke to the painting he is creating to depict what followers of Jesus are like. The new image is that Jesus’ people are a family that love. He contrasts the family of God with everyone else by this key trait. Believers love one another. This love is one not just in words but in action and in accordance with God’s truth.
Everyone agrees that we should love each other. John makes it clear that only the family of God can truly express genuine love. Believers love because Jesus laid down his life for us. As we receive Jesus sacrificial love, our orientation of life changes from self-centeredness to an empowered love for others. That love is active and visible and is shaped by God’s truth as he is at work reshaping our lives as well as those of our brothers and sisters.
Read this passage over several times and reflect on the way Jesus laid down His life for you. If you have time, look over the following passages and reflect on the uniqueness of Christian love and its source of motivation and power.
2 Peter 1:2-7; Colossians 3:1-14; 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a
1 John 3:10–18
10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.
11 For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12 Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.