Daily Advent Devotions from Church Street UMC
Tuesday, December 8, Morning
By Pat Hunter
God is Love
Read 1 John 4:7
“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.”
John elaborates extensively in 1 John chapters 2, 3 and 4 on the Old Testament commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself.” The Apostle John is also the writer of the gospel of John, the letters 2 and 3 John, and Revelation. He tells us in no uncertain terms that “we proclaim to you that we have seen and heard Jesus.” After having been an Apostle of Jesus for three years when he was probably in his thirties, he is now in his later years tending to the churches at Ephesus by writing to them letters about his concerns. One of his primary concerns is that as Christians, “we are to love one another.”
John’s theme of love is dominant in chapters 2, 3 and 4. In chapter 2 he writes: “Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. The old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command … Whoever loves his brother lives in the light and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.”
In I John 3: 1-24 we read, “How great the Father has lavished love on us, that we should be called the children of God … This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another … Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer … This is how we know what love is: Jesus laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our life for one another. Dear Children: Let us not love just with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth!”
Prayer
Dear God, May we learn to love our fellow man as you have loved us, not just through words or tongue, but through actions and the truth. Amen.
