Passport to HeavenSample

After Jesus instituted the Last Supper the night before His death on the cross, He proclaimed to His disciples, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). 

Christ set the paradigm for His church: Love others in the same way He loved them. This genuine, selfless love was to become the characteristic mark of Christians and their Founder. Love would identify those who were disciples of the Nazarene, and love would separate His body from the world. Therefore, everything a Christ-follower does must be done through the lens of love. Without love, we are nothing. 

Paul confirmed that high standard when he declared, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). 

If we claim to know and follow Jesus of Nazareth, we too are commissioned by the Lord to love our neighbor as our self. But how do we show love? There are many ways to love others, but the greatest love we can offer the world is to proclaim the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost—to deliver God’s Word in grace and truth. As Paul states in Romans 10:14, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” It is our responsibility—our joy—to lovingly share the Good News with others. After all, if we see others in spiritual bondage but don’t share truth with them, do we really have love in our hearts? 

Contrary to what the world seems to preach, true love is not affirming others in their sinful and lost state, it is proclaiming the Christ who can liberate them from captivity. Therefore, our greatest calling as Christians is to be conduits of God’s love to unbelievers by proclaiming to them the salvation found only in Jesus of Nazareth. 

In what ways can we share the Gospel to the lost? How has the Gospel changed your life?