Becoming The Brother Everyone Needsنموونە

A Brother Who Loves

What sets those of us who have put our faith in Jesus Christ apart from the world and identifies us as brothers and sisters in Christ? Our mutual commitment to love each other in obedience to Jesus’ command.

Jesus commands His followers to love one another as He has loved them. To do so, you must first understand how Jesus loved you.

irst, Jesus demonstrated agape’ love, an intentional love expressed through service based not on the merit of the receiver, but on the noble intentions of the giver. To demonstrate agape love is to extend grace, treating others better than they deserve to be treated, and to extend mercy, withholding or deflecting deserved consequences. Jesus extended grace and mercy to all mankind in obedience to God the Father out of love for Him, not only in His interaction with people during His life on earth, but also in His death on the cross for the sin of the world.

Jesus’ followers must, likewise, lay down their lives for others, if not literally, then in the form of intentional, self-sacrificing service, loving not only our brothers and sisters in Christ, but our enemies as well, something those who do not belong to God pay close attention to because they cannot understand it, not having accepted God’s gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ and so not having His Holy Spirit in their hearts.

• How far are you willing to go to love others?
• Do your actions over the past week prove it?
• Do you love those you naturally like and those you don’t naturally like equally?
• Do your actions prove the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in your heart?

Read Ephesians 2:1-10, Matthew 16:24-25, and Matthew 5:43-48.