Love as a command
“Jesus answered, “The most important [commandment] is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”” - Mark 12:28-31
Genuinely loving others
Recently I’ve noticed pride interrupting my relationships. It has slithered its way into my thoughts and done some damage. It has gotten in the way of my relationship with Christ, myself and definitely others. Pride can effect the way we view those relationships, the amount of effort we put into them and how we show love. Pride can be described as “a misplaced sense of worth”. We place our own worth on people and relationships which lets us decide the amount of love we want to give to them. Instead of simply loving others as God commands us, we let our pride invade our minds and chose those people or relationships we deem worthy and place our love there. But, that’s not God’s will. More often than not God wants us to reach out and love those who are harder to love. Those who have hurt us, or we can’t easily relate to.
Love those who are harder to love
One of the hardest things in this world is to love someone when they have wronged you. To look them in the eyes and choose to show them grace and compassion after they have hurt you. It can also be to quite difficult to show love to someone who is different from you. So often we get caught up in our emotions and push people away, not giving them a chance for redemption or to get to know them. Sometimes a person will show us a piece of who they are that’s different to us or we’ll see a glimpse of their sin and fleshly nature and we run from it. We say “oh that’s too much for me” or “they’re horrible and need to fix themselves” or “they are so different from me, I wouldn’t even know what to talk about”. This can become such an automatic reflex of our sinful flesh that sometimes we don’t even realize we’re doing it. We place our own worth on the relationship and move on.
But as Christians, we should not operate this way. God commands us in the Bible, more than once, to love others. To show them compassion and grace, as He has shown us. No matter if they’ve sinned against us or are different from us, we should love them as Christ does. When you think about implementing this into your daily life, it can seem overwhelming. Pray to God and ask Him to help you love others authentically. I know He will help because He wants us to show others love and be a light for Him!
