Thursday, December 4

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2014

Daniel 11:36–12:13

1 John 4:1–21

Psalm 123:1–4

Proverbs 29:2–4

 

 

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.  Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  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.   This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

 

 

According to 1 John 4, Christ-followers should model the self-sacrificing love of the Lord Jesus Christ and exalt the truth, starting with an unreserved confession in the reality of Christ’s Incarnation, His taking on flesh. 

 

God Himself is love.  Looking at 1 Corinthians 13:4–8a, we understand that love represents the opposite of pride.  Love seeks the truth and blessing for God and others.  It is both patient and kind and does not keep a record of wrongs.  Love breeds forgiveness and mercy.  It calls forth compassionate care and a willingness to abandon self.  As missionary Dr. David Thompson explained in a sermon we heard over Thanksgiving, following Jesus wholeheartedly means giving ourselves away.  On the Cross and through His day-to-day ministry, Jesus consistently modeled this principle.

 

Neither of these traits arises from the believer’s own goodness.  This chapter argues that, like the moon, we reflect the sun of God’s love and righteousness.  Love should so characterize the believer that we may question whether we have the love of God in us if we struggle to love our brothers and sisters.  Being re-made in His image after salvation, “in this world we are like Jesus.”  Principally, we must welcome the love of God into our hearts to fulfill Jesus’s commands in John 15:9–13:

 

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.  Now remain in my love.  If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this:  to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

 

 

We progressively come to live out this self-abnegating life by drawing closer to Jesus and becoming more completely filled with His love.  This growth process involves a daily confession of our sin and shortcomings and seeking to have the Spirit fill our empty and humble vessels.  Yet, we know that God may accomplish great things through ordinary people, as Acts 4:13 tells of the Sanhedrin’s surprise at Peter and John, who they viewed as “mere” fishermen:  “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”

 

 

Lord Jesus, take our lives and transform them each day more into Your likeness.  We seek to honor You and to reflect the love that You have always shown.  Your love is matchless in its purity and intensity.  Help us to become so overwhelmed with Your love that we pass into the background.  Use us to effect change in our community and families and allow us to turn our focus from ourselves to all those in need of Your care and intervention.  Thank You that You answer prayer and that, by Your Spirit, You may grow us into oaks of righteousness.  In Jesus’s Name, amen.

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