The Love of GodSample

Day 4 Devotional:

Our Demonstration of God’s Love

1John 4:7 tells us, ”let us love one another.“ The Greek word for love that John uses is a Greek verb in the active, present tense that literally means Let us practice loving each other. Practice refers to concrete action, not mere emotions or words.

John is saying that, as recipients of God’s unconditional love, you and I must demonstrate to others the same mercy and grace that God has shown to us in the gospel.

And he is saying that we are to do this, not primarily through our feelings, but through our will in terms of decisions we make to engage in concrete actions that demonstrate God’s love.

This means that God expects us to demonstrate the grace and mercy we have received from Him by deciding with our will to engage in actions that demonstrate love to others by being kind to them, by being generous to them, by being patient with them, by being gentle with them, by forgiving them, and so on.

The Lord expects us to be able to do this based on what John writes here in verses 12 and 13: But if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of His Spirit.

John is saying that, when we were born again the Holy Spirit came to in-dwell us to empower us to love others in the same way that He loves us.

In other words, as Christians, the in-dwelling Holy Spirit gives us both the ability to experience God’s love within ourselves, and the ability to demonstrate this love to others (Romans 5:8).

This explains why, in Galatians 5:22, the first item on Paul’s list of the fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, the love of God. The word fruit here refers to the result of the Holy Spirit living and working in our lives to impart to us the character of Christ and to empower us to love like Christ.

John ends our passage with these words in verses 19-21:

We love because He first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And He has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

One distinguishing characteristic of Christians is that God empowers us through His in-dwelling Holy Spirit, to demonstrate to Him, and to others, His kind of love that, through the gospel of Christ, He has bestowed on us.