Love, Even When It’s Hard
- (From this week’s contributor, Brandon Daugherty)
“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.”
1 John 4:19-21
I have been praying about what to write for the blog and then we went to youth camp. Going into camp, I still had no clue what to say, then our meetings started. This week’s theme is to be set apart. That got me to thinking about how to defines love. The love this world has celebrates pride and arrogance. If you don’t agree with the world, you must be an evil person who doesn’t really believe in love.
The love God teaches us about in His Word is a different kind of love. It is unconditional love. He says to love your God with everything you have and love your neighbor as yourself. It’s the opposite of what the world teaches. The love of the world is selfish and hateful while God’s kind of love is selfless.
As Christians, it is so easy to look at worldly love and see its hatefulness and grow bitter towards the world and even develop a hatred for people in this world, but we can’t do that. 1 John 4 7-21 tells us what Godly love looks like. If you’ve never read it, give it a look but we are going to focus on verses 19-21. John tells us why we should love as Christians.. Christ loved us first and we are to imitate Him in every aspect of life, including how we love. So when people throw harsh words or even real projectiles at us we are to love them anyways. Jesus did that for us. Our sin hung Him on that cross but He loved us enough to bear that pain and even pray “forgive them”. Why would we expect anything different? In fact, if we act any different from Him in our love towards others, according to this passage there is an issue. “If he does not love his brother who he can see how can you love the God you can’t see.” See, our love is called to be set apart. A different unselfish love. A love willing to die so others can live. A love that imitates the love God first showed us