All About Love

Before you start todays devotional, ask the Lord to use it to grow you up in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

It’s one thing to say we know Jesus Christ as our Savior and quite another to live a life that shows it. The truth is, we recognize other believers by their lives and not by their lips. God’s children take after their Father—they have His characteristics.

The Father gives us such love—so much that we can now be called His children. The world can’t begin to understand us because it didn’t understand Him. Only God’s Spirit can make our salvation real to us. Only He confirms it to our hearts with spiritual insight.

God’s love motivates the true child of God to obey God’s Word. It makes us want to live for God and to please Him. Because of His love, we make tremendous sacrifices for each other. We want to live it out.

This process should make us very glad—and also very humble. Truth is, we all should be farther along in our sanctification process than we are. But don’t be discouraged, because someday, when we see the glorified Jesus, we shall be like Him—not equal to Him, but He will make us like Him in our own way, with our own personalities, individualities, selves. He’ll not destroy the person you are but will bring you up to your full measure—your best self. Even today, He’s shaping your heart and your character and will yet perform a work in you that will result in a total makeover. A real heart transformation.

We are born with a nature that naturally rebels against God. When we sin, we break God’s laws of living. The person without Christ continually and habitually lives in their sin. Obsessed with pleasing themselves, they don’t give a thought to pleasing God (see Romans 8:5).

So how are you doing in this battle? Do you pursue the things that please God? Or do you constantly try to please yourself? Ask Him to show you your heart, and He will. You can’t have fellowship with God and continually pursue sinful things. If your heart’s desire is to go after your own way, ask yourself if you are really a Christian.

When we receive a new nature, we do not lose our old nature—that’s the problem. Only the Spirit of God can deliver you from your habit of sinning. If you recognize that you are helpless and hopeless, if some sin binds you down, spoils your life, robs you of your joy, and you are miserable, then go to Him and ask Him to deliver you from it—if you want to be delivered. If you want to get rid of that sin, if you really mean business with Him, then He means business with you.

God knows our hearts and knows whether or not we have really been born again and are His children. But our neighbors next door don’t know that. The only way for them to know we belong to God is for the life of God to be demonstrated in us. It’s not necessarily evident in what we say; God’s life is made obvious by our living.

1.If God showed you your heart, what do you think you would see?

2.Why do we, as saved children of God, so desperately desire to go back to sin, and what can be done about it?

3.Imagine you were to write a description of what Christians loving each other looks like. How would you describe it?

Additional Resources

Listen to Dr. J. Vernon McGee's complete audio teachings of1 John 2:23-29, 1 John 2, 1 John 2:29—3:6.