There is a song where a woman with a flat tire on a cold wet very dark night, has a man stop to help her change her flat tire. He won't take money for helping her but tells her to pass it on to someone else that she can help. She stops at a dinner and tips the pregnant waitress that looks tired and holding her stomach because she is due to deliver soon. The woman eats and pays her bill and leaves a tip for the waitress. Finally the waitress goes home tells her husband about this $100 tip. As the song finished we understand that her husband was the one that stopped to help her change her flat tire. He had told her to pass it on that he didn't want any money.
1 John 4:7-21 (NLT)
-Loving One Another
7 Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. 8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
This love in our scripture isn't any kind of love but God's love. He loved us when we didn't deserve to be loved. He loved us when we ignored him, He loved us when we disobeyed him. He loves us today even through we make mistake after mistake. If we know His Son as Savior His Son will defend us to the Father. He defends us because we was here on earth and suffered everything we suffer. The sin of others, the callous attitude of others but he didn't sin. When we sin he understands and defends us to the Father and we are forgiven.
9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.
13 And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us.
Knowing Jesus as Savior is the key to this love. Turning our lives over to him even though we sin and live in a callus world. We don't really need to be perfect but we do need to know Jesus as Savior and grow in His love that is a mature love not a love without blemish.
Love as the text explains isn’t just an emotional thing. Godly Love is a perfect (mature) love that is given and grows in us through God as we get to know who he really is.
Do you know that kind of Love?
