1 John 2:7-17 The Passion Translation (TPT)
Today, many people will recognize Valentine’s Day; a day to celebrate love and romance. This is an old tradition and expression of love. Yesterday, two of my friends sent me a Happy Galentine’s Day message; evidently it is also a day to celebrate gal friends. This is a new expression for me. However, I do love my gal friends—all my sisters in Christ—a lot, so I may choose to observe this new expression of love. These may be human celebrations of love, but at the most pure level possible, real love is sacred and believers are carriers.
Scripture teaches God is love and nothing can separate believers from him. Humans were created to love God. We were also created to love one another—especially believers in Christ. In our passage today, the Apostle John reminds his readers that believers now embrace the values of the Kingdom of God; we love each other the way God loves us. We become a human expression of his love. Although the enemy is always trying to pervert love and get believers to turn on one another, we need to stay in the light of God’s pure agape (sacrificial) love. “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through ever circumstance” (1 Cor. 13:4-7). That is the way God loves us. That is how we are to love one another.
1 John 2:7-17
7 Beloved, I’m not writing a new commandment to you, but an old one that you had from the beginning, and you’ve already heard it. 8 Yet, in a sense, it is a new commandment, as its truth is made manifest both in Christ and in you, because the darkness is disappearing and the true light is already blazing.
9 Anyone who says, “I am in the light,” while holding hatred in his heart toward a fellow believer is still in the darkness. 10 But the one who truly loves a fellow believer lives in the light, and there is nothing in him that will cause someone else to stumble. 11 But whoever hates a fellow believer lives in the darkness—stumbling around in the dark with no clue where he is going, for he is blinded by the darkness.
Prayer: Lord, thank you for imparting to me your pure and sacred love; for loving me s perfectly. Help me to love as you love; to genuinely love my brothers and sisters in Christ as you have loved me. I pray for my heart to love even those who are difficult to love. In Jesus’ name. Amen.