This has become one of the biggest themes I’ve heard repeated throughout the church recently. We are called to love God and love others. This is very true and what Jesus commanded in Matthew 22:34:40. In fact, Jesus said that those two commandments sum up the entire Law and the Prophets, so the message of the Old Testament is the same as the New: love God and love others. I worry that we have forgotten to first part of that phrase, and the only true way that we are able to love others, by loving God first and foremost above everything else. Jesus even takes it further than summing up the Law and the Prophets by telling his disciples in John 13 that love should be the mark of every Christian, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” This commandment is the very foundation of our faith and is revealed to us in the beginning of Scripture in the creation of the world. 

John 1, echoing the phrasing of Genesis 1 tells us: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” God didn’t have a need to create us to receive for honor or worship, but chose to create us from an outpouring of his love and perfect fellowship that he has experienced among the Trinity for eternity. Tim Keller in his book Center Church writes that, “he created us to share in his love and service.” The holy and perfect God chose to share his love in his creation of us. Then in the overflow of that love, he allows us to enter into a relationship with him as sons and daughters. He was the one who initially modeled the “love God and love others” within the Trinity. The commandments that sum up our entire Scriptures have been forever displayed by God to bring about his glory. Then as we continue to love God we are able to even more abundantly love others. The overflow of God’s love in our lives should pour over into the lives of those around us – both believers in the church, and nonbelievers we are sharing the Gospel with in word and in deed. 

This whole idea leads me to my focus the past few months – my love of the church. The way we are expected to show our love to our brothers and sisters is through the church. We meet together to: “encourage one another” (Heb 10:25), partake in the Lord’s supper (1 Cor 11:17-34), “address one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” (Eph 5:19) and “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture” (1 Tim 4:13). These things should be a part of all of our meetings and allow us to grow and “stir one another up to love and good works” (Heb 10:24). Love is best demonstrated within the local church and helps us better demonstrate Christ’s love to the world. How have you demonstrated Christ’s love this week? How can you better demonstrate Christ’s love?