God’s Love and Ours

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.

We enter into life with God through his love and he gives us assurance of that love through the Holy Spirit.  God gave us the demonstration of his love by sending his Son, Jesus, to die for our sins. When we live in gratitude for that gift of love he actually lives in us. The mystery of his great love is this: we think that love belongs to us but in fact it comes from God. At this moment, all the love that I can know and experience is God's love. The gift of faith that enables me to face every obstacle and to prraise him in the midst of all struggles with pain and sorrow is the gift of God. It is an inward reality St. Paul called the inner man that is to grow under the influence of God's Word in fellowship with other believers. The testimony of the early Church was a community that shared their goods, ate together and prayed for each other; they shared God's Word and his holy supper with joy. So the goal of the Church is to share the love of God that resides in us. The story of Jesus is our calling card. We gladly share that story with all who listen and come to a knowledge of the truth. 

Check it out! Christ is alive in you. 

 Amen.