August

 

Our theme verse chosen for the 2021-2022 school year is 1 John 4:11 - "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."

The church father, Jerome, said that when the apostle John was in his extreme old age, he was so weak that he had to be carried into the church meetings. At the end of the meeting he would be helped to his feet to give a word of exhortation to the church. Invariably, he would repeat, “Little children, let us love one another.” The disciples began to grow weary of the same words every time, and they finally asked him why he always said the same thing over and over. He replied, “Because it is the Lord’s commandment, and if this only is done, it is enough” (cited by John Stott, The Epistles of John [Eerdmans], p. 49).

God’s act of love in sending his Son into the world to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins (1Jn 4:10) ought to motivate us as believers to love one another in a similar sacrificial fashion. The author John made the same point already in 1 John 3:16. But this failure to show love for fellow believers is just what the opponents are doing: In 1 John 3:17 John charged them with refusing to love their brothers by withholding needed material assistance. By their failure to love the brothers sacrificially according to the example Jesus set for believers, the opponents have demonstrated again the falsity of their claims to love God and know God (see 1 John 2:9).

God is gracious to the unthankful and to the evil. He makes his sun to rise and rain to fall for the unjust as well as for the righteous, therefore we ought to love the unlovely and the unloving. But just as God has a special love for his own people, we who believe in him ought to have a peculiar affection for all who are his.

If you had a pipe that was clogged - water kept going into it, but never came out, that pipe would be useless. You would replace it. Just so, God puts His love into our lives that it might flow out. We want the Lord to clear us and fill us so that His love can flow through us.

"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."

The Cross of Christ (c) copyright Ed Riojas, Higher Things