Love Perfection

“No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.” 1. John 4:12

The love of God is perfected when we love our neighbor as ourselves. That’s a huge revelation. I heard this in a sermon today. This means if we don’t love our neighbor as we should, we are not perfected in love. We haven’t achieved our designed purpose. That’s pretty powerful stuff! How do you love your neighbor as yourself? I think people try to weasel out of it by making excuses all the time like: “So if I buy myself a big-screen TV, do I have to buy you one too?” well, if you take the words of this verse seriously, yes. It means to make the other person equal to yourself. If you treat yourself well so should you treat the other person. You love yourself, right? Well…there you have it! And the problem always lies in living out the truth you’ve just discovered. And why is there a problem with loving people to the same extent as yourself? The answer is in the last syllable: Self! We give self way to much room and attention. And we have help from the evil one: He started the whole deal about inventing his own alternate form of wisdom since he wanted to be god himself. And that’s what we do when we lift ourselves above God, our creator. Rebellion=selfishness=alternate wisdom=foolishness. What then should we do to love others? Humble ourselves, not be self seeking, being kind and forgiving to others and seek to do God’s will, not our own. That should get the job done!