Love as you have been Loved

“This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.”
John 15:12

Tis the season for love! Each year, there is a day set aside on our calendar with the express purpose of celebrating love, Valentine’s Day. On each Valentine’s Day many will seek to express their love through the means of various gifts: flowers, candy, cards, and jewelry. For all of us there is a natural desire to want to demonstrate our love and certainly we should. However, the demonstration of our love should be more than the purchasing of temporal things. The Lord Jesus said that we should love one another as He loved us. Paul would say later to husbands that they should love their wives as Christ loved the Church (Ephesians 5:25). This then raises the question, how do we love as Christ loved?

First, our love for one another must be SACRIFICIAL. I am reminded of the passage in Philippians 2:5-8 where we find that Christ in love gave of Himself for us. He who deserved to receive all honor, glory, and praise was willing to leave Heaven and come to this earth that we might be saved. He did so because He placed value upon us and was willing to give up the glory that we could one day be with Him in glory. So ought we to love one another.

Finally, our love must be SANCTIFYING. In Ephesians 5, Paul is relating the truth about God’s love through means that we can comprehend, the love in marriage. In verse 26, we are told that Christ loved the church so much that He gave Himself for it that He might sanctify it and cleanse it. Our love for one another ought to always be pure and it should always seek to make the object of our love better. Selfish love seeks only the good of the one “expressing the love” (the Bible calls this lust), but true biblical love seeks the good in the object of the love. As you celebrate your love for one another, do so as Christ loved you.

Pastor Bateman