1 John 4:7-21
God's LOVE Compared to Our Love
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.
Matthew 22:36-40
The Greatest Commandment
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
God wants us to love Him, and He wants us to love each and everyone of our neighbors...God gives us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister...Loving all your neighbors is very hard thing to do...But when and if we can do everything out of love and follow God's will, then the world will be a better place...The Greatest Commandment is all about love...Jesus said that all the books of the law and the prophets in the Bible hang on two commandments...Love God with all your soul and with all your mind...And the second is to love your neighbor as yourself...
When we do things our own way and everyone else does things their own way, we in a way hamstringing God's power...For the world to be better, it must become engulfed in love...But God gives us our own free will and the decisions we make get in the way of God...C. S. Lewis talked about God letting man make his own choices like this, "God has made it a rule for Himself that He won’t alter people’s character by force...He can and will alter them—but only if the people will let Him...In that way He has really and truly limited His power...Sometimes we wonder why He has done so, or even wish that He hadn’t...But apparently He thinks it worth doing...He would rather have a world of free beings, with all its risks, than a world of people who did right like machines because they couldn’t do anything else...The more we succeed in imagining what a world of perfect automatic beings would be like, the more, I think, we shall see His wisdom."...
The more we love God and the more we love our neighbors, the better the world is...And in this loving sense, the more and more we love -the wiser we get, because we then can better see His wisdom...