United in the Love of Godنموونە

Live out God’s Love

God’s love for us initiated and brought about our salvation and subsequent union to Him. As a result, unity is not something we need to look for; unity is something we already have. By faith in Christ we are already united to God.

And so, if we are united to God most especially in love, so also we are united to one another in love. God’s love for us in Christ is the only force strong enough to bring us together to God. And God’s love in Christ is the only force strong enough to keep us together with God as one community in Christ.

Love is, of course, at the heart of everything for Christians. The only thing that “counts” for the Christian is “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). Love is the home for all of God’s commandments (Galatians 5:14). If we are to be united it will only be because we are “united to one another in love” (Westminster Confession 26.1).

So when it comes to figuring out how best to love one another, it will begin with God. We love based on the love the Lord shows toward us (1 John 4:7, 12), which means we love out of and within God’s love for us. And since God’s love for us as His bride is such a unifying power, then this is the kind of way we want to love one another as a unifying power among us. We want to love one another in the same way God, as a husband, loves us, as His bride.

Here is something to consider. This love, that flows from God to us, also flows among us. God’s beloved love for you connects you to God in His beloved love and it connects you to other believers in the same beloved love. We are carried together with other believers into eternity in God’s beloved love because God already today connects us together in His beloved love.

We are a reconciled community to one another because God reconciled us to Himself. We can speak of unity among us, of being “one new man,” because of what God has given us: the body and blood of Jesus (Ephesians 2:13–16). This lasts into eternity even as it echoes back into the present, and in how we relate to one another today.