30 Jun God is Love (Part 5): The Holy Spirit teaches us how to love like Jesus
One of Jesus’ disciples, John, went on to write at length about the church as a people marked by a Trinitarian love that is exemplified at the cross and empowered by the Spirit:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. . . . In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this, we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. . . . Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. . . . We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.12
Furthermore, Jesus speaks of the reward of such a Spirit-empowered, Christlike life of love, saying, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”13 Difficult as it is to comprehend, those who love God in word and deed and life will experience the presence of God in a loving intimacy akin to a warm, safe home in which a family lives together.
God loves you fully, and always will. You cannot make Him love you any more. And, nothing you can do will make Him love you any less.
Furthermore, God the Holy Spirit lives in every Christian. He is there to heal our hurts, enlarge our hearts, and give us an ever-increasing love for God and people. As a Christian, you have access to a supernatural eternal and limitless source of love that is for you and for you to share with others.
What do you think your life would be like today if God did not love you?
12 1 John 4:7–21.
13 John 14:23.
