sokin's devotional 71 - loving the unlovable
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another...And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him...If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
1 John 4:11, 16, 20-21
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Verse 20 hits me the hardest. If we say we are lovers of God, and yet harbor bitterness and hatred towards people...the love of God is not in us. The bible says it more directly - we are liars.
It's a tough pill to swallow. There are people that have so wronged us to such a degree that loving them seems like the last thing we would do for that individual. But we are called to love radically. Why? Because God loved us radically.
I think at the core of our unwillingness to love the unlovable is that we don't realize how unlovable we are. We fail to realize our own sin and fallenness and we lose sight of that. We have been wronged. We deserve justice. But, one look at the cross and God's holiness and we may in humility see how arrogant we can become.
Again, I can't stress enough though - this isn't easy to do. But we have the authority. We have the power. Verse 16 says that we rely not in our own ability to overcome our bitterness, but we rely on the power of God and the radical love God has for us.
Believer, if there are people you cannot love...consider a moment what this word teaches us. We have to leave room in our hearts to be able to forgive and love the unlovable...even those that have wronged us deeply and wounded our soul. There must be room for reconciliation or else satan has already won.
As always, we fix our eyes, our hearts, our minds on Jesus. Who bled and died for the unlovable. For you. For me.
1 John 4:11, 16, 20-21
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Verse 20 hits me the hardest. If we say we are lovers of God, and yet harbor bitterness and hatred towards people...the love of God is not in us. The bible says it more directly - we are liars.
It's a tough pill to swallow. There are people that have so wronged us to such a degree that loving them seems like the last thing we would do for that individual. But we are called to love radically. Why? Because God loved us radically.
I think at the core of our unwillingness to love the unlovable is that we don't realize how unlovable we are. We fail to realize our own sin and fallenness and we lose sight of that. We have been wronged. We deserve justice. But, one look at the cross and God's holiness and we may in humility see how arrogant we can become.
Again, I can't stress enough though - this isn't easy to do. But we have the authority. We have the power. Verse 16 says that we rely not in our own ability to overcome our bitterness, but we rely on the power of God and the radical love God has for us.
Believer, if there are people you cannot love...consider a moment what this word teaches us. We have to leave room in our hearts to be able to forgive and love the unlovable...even those that have wronged us deeply and wounded our soul. There must be room for reconciliation or else satan has already won.
As always, we fix our eyes, our hearts, our minds on Jesus. Who bled and died for the unlovable. For you. For me.
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