LOVING GOD, LOVING OTHERS, LIVE IT OUT:
MORE THAN A MOTTO
IT’S A LIFESTYLE
Matthew 22:34–40 (ESV) But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
“The most loving thing we can do for others is love God more than we love them. For if we love God most, we will love others best.”
Ephesians 3:17-19 …that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
If we love God with all our heart, we will love our neighbor as ourselves.
John 13:34-35 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
The reason we will love others best when we love God most is that love in its truest,
purest form only comes from God, because God is love
1 John 4:7–8 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God,
because God is love.
1 John 4:19 (ESV) We love because he first loved us.
Genesis 1:26–27: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
John 17:5 “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory which I had with you before the world was made.”
John 17:24 “my glory which you have given me in your love for me before the foundation of the world.”
Romans 11:36 “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”
When we become our supreme love instead of God, love becomes distorted and diseased.
1 Timothy 3:2-5 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
John 3:16 “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”
Romans 5:8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Ephesians 2:5 “even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—“.
John 17:26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
Mark 14:36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”.
1 John 4:11 “if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another”.
How we love others, particularly other Christians, reveals how we love God.
1 John 4:20 “He who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
Our love for each other is an indicator of the place God is holding in our hearts.
James 2:17–18 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. 18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
Our beliefs and doctrines are revealed by our deeds: Luke 6:46–49 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”
Our love for him is revealed by our love for others: 1 John 4:20 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.
Romans 2:4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
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