"Love means living the way God commanded us to live.
As you have heard from the beginning,
His command is this: Live a life of love."
2 John 1:6
In Galatians, we learn that the whole law is dependent on one command, which is to "Love others as you love yourself" (Galatians 5:14). This means to love unselfishly; to put others before yourself. For most, this is hard to do; in fact, it only comes when we make a conscience effort. This is because of our survival instinct; to do everything it takes for ourselves to get "on top". Because of this, God gives us a lifetime to learn selflessness.
While God wants his people to love everyone, he wants us to have a special love for each other. As Jesus said in John, "Your strong love for each other will prove to the world that you are my disciples" (John 13:35). This means that when we show a strong love for our brothers and sisters in Christ, the world will learn how to love by our testimony. In order to learn this, God wants us to be in fellowship, for we cannot learn how to love selflessly in isolation. Through fellowship we learn three important truths.
As we have learned in Galatians, love is the greatest commandment. As such, it should be our top priority. The Bible says, "Let love be your greatest aim" (1 Corinthians 14:1a).
Life without love is really worthless.
As Paul said to the Corinthians, "No matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love" (1 Corinthians 13:3).
God says that relationships are what life is all about. If this is true, then we should not hesitate to make time for them. Think of all the relationships we have: spouse, children, friends, acquaintances, etc. Do we make enough time for them? If God tells us that relationships are important, shouldn't we take special care to include them in our lives? "Four of the Ten Commandments deal with our relationship to God while the other six deal with our relationships with people" (Warren). Notice that all Commandments have to do with relationships. In the New Testament, Jesus summarized what was most important to God (Matthew 22:37 – 40). After loving God, which is worshiping, learning to love one another is the second most important thing in our lives. In other words, achievements or the acquiring of material things are not important. It is our relationships that concern God.
So, when our schedules get overloaded, most often our relationships suffer. Can we be pleasing God when we allow this? We become preoccupied with unimportant things, and let our second purpose of our lives slide.
Love will last forever.
Another reason God tells us that love is our top priority is that, along with faith and hope, it is eternal (1 Corinthians 13:13). "It's not what you do, but how much love you put into it that matters" (Mother Theresa). At the end of our lives, we want to be surrounded by the people that we love, not our accomplishments, for these accomplishments are empty. In our final moments, we realize that relationships are what life is all about.
We will be evaluated on our love. One of the ways that God measures spiritual maturity is by how we treat others (Matthew 25:40). As the Bible says in Galatians, faith expresses itself through love, which is the only thing that matters (Galatians 5:6).
Remembering this every morning, should bring us to our knees and thank God for another day of loving Him and our brothers and sisters in Christ. We should not waste our time worrying about unimportant things, such as, our career and acquiring things of no real worth.
Tomorrow, we will cover Part 2 of this lesson
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