1 John 4:7-21
God’s Love and Ours
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 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 them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
We should love all our brothers and sisters that we meet...God has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister...
Following Jesus and doing what He did is very hard...Priest Brennan Manning wrote, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians: who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle...That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”...
In a similar type quote on love and hate, Criss Jami wrote, “I am not convinced of the argument, 'I want to believe; it is only those awful Christians I hate...They get in the way of my belief.'..If you hate Christians more than you love Christ, you do not love Christ...It comes to mind the question, 'If you do not love your brother or sister whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you have not seen?”...
And G. K. Chesterton said this on being a Christian, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”...All these men understood and understand how very hard it is to walk in Jesus' footsteps...
But these are men who believe and do try to understand and follow Jesus...