Choosing Love | Tiffany Bebko

Brotherly love is something that we often take for granted in the church. We tend to forget that our love for one another is an amazing way to minister to both each other in the church and spread the gospel to the world. Sometimes our love is the only gospel people will encounter. In fact, a lack of love and respect for others is what often leads people away from the church.

Love doesn’t always come naturally to us. Due to our fallen sin nature, we tend towards a selfishness that seeks our own needs above others. Selflessness and putting others first takes effort and extra thought but it is so worth it. Even the smallest acts of love and kindness can make someone’s entire day better. It is imperative that we make that extra effort to love those around us well and follow the example that Jesus set for us.

As the verse discusses, God is invisible to human eyes but He uses us, His church, to minister to the outside world and show them His perfect love for them. He works through us to reveal himself as the perfect all loving, all merciful and just Creator. When we truly listen to this calling of love, people encounter Christ through us, both believers and nonbelievers. So truly let us make the conscious effort to love one another selflessly.

1 John 4:7-12 ESV

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”