I am reading from 1 John today, and came across a verse again that is becoming a theme for this season of my life, and the season that our campus is in. Here's how John, one of the First Twelve, lays it out in his first letter:
For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.
We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other.
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.
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
1 John 3:11, 14, 16, 18 (NIV)
See the flow here:
- Jesus told us to love.
- The only way that we can really know that we really know Jesus is if we are actually loving one another in the same way that Jesus loved us.
- Jesus-love has a very specific fingerprint that distinguishes it from all other types of love: it is sacrificial.
- Sacrificial Jesus-love is not a feeling. It is an action.
Which forces me to ask myself this question:
What if we measured our faith not by how we're feeling, or how well our small group was going, or how many people were attending our church, but rather first and foremost by what we are doing to sacrificially love one another?
Take a moment today or tomorrow, maybe in a time of prayer, or in your personal devotions, to do a spiritual audit with that question as your only lens. Then write down what you see.
But, don't stop there. Don't just read what you wrote, or tell someone about it.
Rather: do something about it.
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