Creative Love
Opening Prayer
I love You, Lord. I can only reach the mountaintop of life because of Your sustaining grace. You alone are King of kings and Lord of lords.
Read 1 JOHN 3:11–24
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.
19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Meditate
“Love divine, all loves excelling / Joy of heaven to earth come down; / Fix in us thy humble dwelling; / All thy faithful mercies crown” (Charles Wesley, 1707–1788).
Think Further
Yesterday we pondered the amazing vision of being like Christ when we see him as he is. Today’s reading unpacks some of what it means for us in this life as it explores the meaning of love. If you think of love as the kind of thing expressed on a Valentine card, this passage will bring you down to earth.
Our love is to be like that of Jesus. Obviously this is not the sentimental kind of love that we find in greeting cards, nor even the kind of love that we witness between couples when they get engaged. It’s love of a kind that the world does not know much about. We often think of love as something that is elicited by people whom we find attractive, but Christian love is altogether different. It is directed to anyone and everyone we meet, those like us and those unlike us.
John is talking about giving ourselves selflessly to one another. Our love is not to be in words, but in our actions. As I write this a young woman from our church is in the hospital with a serious illness. Some members of the congregation have shown genuine, creative love. One person provided single-serving portions of all kinds of different foods for her husband, who was coming home from work late and hungry. Someone else took a meal for her parents on the day of her surgery, knowing that they would not have the energy to cook that day. These people had thoughtfully put themselves into the shoes of the young woman’s family. This is real, down-to- earth, practical love that sprang from identification with others. May we all exercise that kind of creativity as we love the people around us.
Apply
To whom can you show this kind of love that John speaks about?
Closing prayer
Show me, Lord Jesus, how to use what I have—time, talents, money—in practical ways that communicate Your love for others.
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