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Over the past few months on these Sunday mornings we’ve been giving thought to a series of studies I’ve called, ‘Identity in Christ’. Throughout the pages of Scripture we find God drawing together to himself a family of spiritual sons and daughters, and that reality is core to our identity as those in Christ, for we are the children of God. As such we’re to love one another.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you…. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.” John 15:12, 17, ESV

This is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 1 John 3:23, ESV

This commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. 1 John 4:21, ESV

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 1 John 5:1, ESV

Only as we that make up this GracePoint community recognize that we have a common spiritual Father, a shared spiritual birth, the same spiritual Elder Brother Jesus, and are part of the same spiritual family of God can our fellowship with one another be what our Father wants it to be.

What’s the nature of this love that we’re to have for one another?

1. __________ THAT SPEAK LOUDER THAN __________

In 1 John the apostle John repeatedly emphasizes that the type of love we have been called to extend to each other as the children of God is a genuinely active rather than an insincere passive love. We’re not to merely give the appearance of being caring and concerned about each other’s struggles and life challenges by saying all the right things while in reality not caring enough to actually do what we can to practically offer support.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. 1 John 3:16-18, ESV

2. __________ THAT IS NOT BASED ON __________

If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. 1 John 2:29, ESV

Doing right is the ultimate proof of the fact that one is a child in God’s household. One of the clear commandments of both God our Father and Jesus our Elder Brother is that we are to love each other as members of the family of God. Our doing so provides a proof of the fact that we are indeed the children of God.

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:10-12, ESV

If we love one another in the family of God it’s because God indwells us. Therefore, when I love you as my spiritual brother or sister with the type of genuine, sacrificial love that is to characterize the the fellowship of God’s family, and when you love me as your brother in Christ in that way, such love is evidence that we are each as persons indeed the children of God, for ultimately it is him loving through us.

If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him… 1 John 3:17-19, ESV

Evidence in our lives of the type of genuine sacrificial love for other members of God’s family that God our Father calls us to express should persuade us that we are indeed part of God’s family.