Love God, Love People

If you are a Christian you love God. It is pretty easy to love him, he has given us everything for nothing. So most of us don't struggle with this, but what about loving people?

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. John 13:35

There are many different themes throughout the New Testament, but one that comes up quite a bit is love. But what is love? We tend to love many things. For example, how many times do you hear this, "I love this show" or "I love chicken fried steak"? We hear it constantly. People use love for everything. But what is Jesus talking about? What is he really telling us to do? To love people like we love chicken fried steak?

If I asked you if you love others what would you say? I think you would say yes of course I do. I love my mom, dad, brother, friend and family members. But what about the guy that is always picking on you or a friend of yours? Or the person that just gets on your nerves all the time? It is very hard sometimes to love everyone or people that you just don't like. As Christians we struggle with this. Many churches don't even have love for each other in the same church. We argue about pointless stuff or when someone enters our church we ask, "why is that person here?"

As Christians we are suppose to love everyone Christians, non-Christians, people you don't like, EVERYONE. It is funny to me when people judge non-Christians for their actions and just tell them everything they are doing wrong. Does that person think they are helping anything? If someone told me that I was doing all these wrong things and that I was going to Hell, I don't think I would respond very well. Yet, Christians all over this country do this every day. Loving others means genuinely caring about them and building relationships, not ignoring them and judging. Why should non-Christians have the same morals as Christians? It doesn't matter if a person that doesn't have Christ does a million good deeds or does zero that person is still going to hell. Instead of judging that person we should care about them so much that we don't want them to go to hell, so we do everything in our power to steer them in that direction.

Jesus wants us to love people because this is how the world will know that we follow him. If we love everyone and are ACTUALLY different than world, then the world will notice. I am sure it gets old to non-Christians to be told over and over again by Christians that they are going to hell or just flat out being ignored by people in the church. They are looking for something and we have what they are looking for. Why then do we act like we don't want them to know about it? We have the greatest news in the history of the world, we should constantly be sharing it and loving people like Jesus commanded us to do.

Jesus hung out with the people that Christians today turn their noses up to. If we are following Jesus shouldn't we act like him? He always showed love to everyone it didn't matter if they were high up in the religious system or prostitutes. Therefore we should do the same.

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. John 13:35

Are you a disciple?

-Ryan