THE COMMAND TO LOVE

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to His commands. As you have heard from the beginning, His command is that you walk in love.

2 John 1:4-6

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

When we place our belief and trust in Jesus, we receive a blessed, internal truth through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, a truth that comes from Christ who is the Truth (John 14:6), the One who sets the captives free (Luke 4:18). This is what we learned from yesterday’s message from our study of the opening verses of 2 John, chapter 1.

So the way to truth is through Jesus the Truth and when we submit ourselves fully to Him and His teaching, we will be walking in obedience to God and His commands. Indeed, we serve a God who wants His children to walk in the truth by living in and through His Son.

With this as a foundation, let’s now look at our verses for today, verses 4-6.

It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to His commands. As you have heard from the beginning, His command is that you walk in love.

As Christians, we are to be Christ-like and a big part of being Christ-like is to be obedient to the will of God the Father just as Jesus was. He, Jesus, was always about His Father’s business and was the only person who ever perfectly complied with what God wanted, even to His own death by crucifixion on Calvary’s cross.

In our passage for today, note that the way we show God we love Him as His children is to “walk in obedience to His commands”. There’s an old worship song that proclaimed that “they will know we are Christians by our love” and a big part of the love that should be seen in believers is their willingness to carry out what He expects. We show we love God through allowing His will to be our own.

When we do this, when we surrender ourselves to the bidding of God out of our love for Him, then we carry out His demand to “walk in His love” and “love one another”.

These commands are centered on love and if we get right down to it, it’s love that is the central theme of the Bible from beginning to end, the story of a loving Maker and Master of all mankind who, out of love, didn’t wish for anyone of His created men and women to perish but rather have the opportunity for eternal life.

Does my life reflect obedience to God’s command to love?

It’s a question that we all should be asking ourselves in an act of self reflection, every single day.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.