# 17 2021 Dev. 1 Jn.3:16. Love! Read all of Ch.3 first. The purpose of these devotionals is to draw closer to God and grow spiritually by applying His Word to our daily living. All passages are taken from the NIV.
1 Jn.3:16 “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”
Chapter 3 is divided into two parts: God’s children, “that we should be called the children of God!” and practice what you preach, “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” Both sections revolve around love. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us,” and part two: “We should love one another.”
John opens for us a way of living and a way of being that is antithetical to the current environment where we live and where are churches are located. We are God’s children but the world does not know Him (“world” meaning every thing and every person who have rejected God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit). In our life and thought, or in our life and world view, we are to be like Christ by faith, living as He lived when He walked on this earth. John has first hand knowledge of how children of God ought to live but even John does not know the end result of God’s children’s lives; “what we will be has not yet been made known.” But what he knows he tells us; ‘We shall be like Him,” and “All who have hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”
John assures us before he moves on to sin. He is not speaking of a sinless life while we are in this life. We are children of God because our hearts and souls belong to God’s Kingdom but our bodies are still in this broken place, we still sin but in Christ we confess and make every effort to avoid sin. Our comfort is as John says: hope in Christ, purifies us.
The next section is about love, a radical love. There is no neutral place in this life, we either pass from death to life because we love one another or we stay dead not loving as Jesus loves. According to John, the opposite of love is hate, is like murder. Love is to be sacrificial as we read it in v.16 to the point of self sacrifice, it is a difficult concept but that is the way of Jesus’ Love. True love always means action and truth, not feelings, feelings and emotions are involved but the truth of love is an unwavering commitment. We commit to Jesus, we commit to each other and we commit to our spouses, our children and to how we serve God in this life. For the children of God all of life is worship! God “sets our hearts at rest in his presence”. “And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.”
Amen and Amen!
If we are Eloquent, Prophetic, Faithful, Generous and self-sacrificing, but do not love, we are nothing! 1 Cor. 13
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