IF WE LOVE ONE ANOTHER (PART 1)

No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. (1 John 4:12)

The word John uses for "complete" in this passage is the Greek word τελειόω (teleioō), which means "to make perfect" or "to bring to completion or fullness." 

Oh, how often we seek to solve our spiritual problems our own way and not listen to the Word of God. The Lord feels far from us, our inner life feels dry and unfulfilled. We wrestle, we moan, we shuffle our circumstances, and try everything we can think of under the sun, but we seldom see that the answer to many of our inner life issues is sitting across from us at the breakfast table, or singing next to us at a meeting, or swinging a hammer next to us at work.

To put it plainly, when we love one another, our brothers and sisters in Christ, with the love of God, then God perfects His love within us and draws nearer to us in our inner being.

Yet, when we are struggling and/or suffering, loving others is the last thing we want to do. Our instinct is to pull in on ourselves. Our pride and self-centeredness always want us to love others from a place of strength. In this way, our times of suffering become times of spiritual death and decay, rather than what the Lord intends, which is for them to be times of refining and deepening of love.

Even nature teaches us this most important spiritual truth. Water that does not flow becomes stagnant. It stinks. It can no longer support a healthy life. Every deadly toxin grows in it. So it is with our inner life if we receive the love of Christ but do not pour it out to others. We become stale and stagnant, and poison for anyone who would dare to "drink" of our thoughts and emotions.

But the water that flows remains healthy and life-giving. Even to our eyes, a bubbling brook is lovely to see, while a festering, stagnant bog is an ugly thing to see.

Dear friends, the greatest love of all, the very definition of Love itself, we see in our Jesus on the Cross. In His weakness, He loved us. In His suffering, He forgave. We, too, must be willing to love one another, not from our strength, but from our suffering. In the midst of our own personal difficulties and pains, to give to others the sweet love that we have received from the Lord through the Cross.

The result of such love, as the Word declares, will be the dwelling presence of God in our lives and the perfecting of His love within our hearts. 

The time is coming, and seems already to be at hand, when the love of most will grow cold. Paul declares that in the last days people will be "lovers of themselves" (2 Timothy 3:2). But that is not what we are called to in Christ. We are called to walk in love, even in our weakness— perhaps especially in our weakness!—and thereby experience the nearness of our heavenly Father and the continued perfection of His love within us.

Give the love you've been given and watch the Lord do within you what only He can do. Amen.