Learning to Love My Bretheren
These things I have spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. This is My commandment, that ye love one another as I have loved you.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
– John 15:12-13
Hereby percieve we the love of God, because He laid down His for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the bretheren.
…
My litttle children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.
– I John 3:16, 18
“We ought to” because He has. That in itself is all the reason we need
So, what does this look like in our lives today?
Probably not a literal dying, but I do not think that that is the point.
I think it is about putting someone else and their needs before yourself, serving them out of a heart that desires to love them as Christ has loved you.
Sometimes it seems like dying, and in a way it is. Dying to your own self can be more agonizing than an actual death, because it must be continued and repeated every single moment of every single day. An actual death only happens once, “and then the glory”.
Every day, learning to serve out of love. Thereby learning to love.
It does work. There is no question about that.
Learning to love those around me is a leason that I had thought I had learned. But it is something that is making me draw heavily upon the fathomless grace and strength of my Saviour.