We love, because He first loved

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35. Love. A powerful emotion. As disciples of Christ we are asked to love. Because the world understood love and through love we will be known as disciples of Christ. "If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing." 1 Corinthians 13:1 And Christ asked us to love one another because power and miracles can only so much move mountains and give prophecies but does not move the heart as much as how it moved the mountains if love was not the main ingredient in the power and miracles. Power without love and prophecies without love brings pride to accomplishments of miracles and good deeds done because we boast in our ability to do things and makes us thirst after compliments for the accomplishment of all these deeds done. But power with love and prophecies with love brings humility and lets us boast in the Lord instead of in ourselves, its makes us thirst to long for more of Christ and what He can do through us, not what we can do through Him. Love brings us back to why we do what we do, why we prophesy, why we do good deeds and love lets us surrender to the will of Christ rather than building our own will upon Christ. Love brings us back to the basics and lets us know that before all these, God loved us first, demonstrated through Christ. He loved us first, "Love one another. As I have loved you," that we may learn to love as He did. To experience love first hand from the Lord and pass it on to another.

1 John 4:7-21

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. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.  We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

'All I Have is Christ' by Sovereign Grace Music

Verse 1

I once was lost in darkest night

Yet thought I knew the way

The sin that promised joy and life

Had led me to the grave

I had no hope that You would own

A rebel to Your will

And if You had not loved me first

I would refuse You still

Verse 2

But as I ran my hell-bound race

Indifferent to the cost

You looked upon my helpless state

And led me to the cross

And I beheld God's love displayed

You suffered in my place

You bore the wrath reserved for me

Now all I know is grace

Chorus

Hallelujah! All I have is Christ

Hallelujah! Jesus is my life

Verse 3

Now, Lord, I would be Yours alone

And live so all might see

The strength to follow Your commands

Could never come from me

Oh Father, use my ransomed life

In any way You choose

And let my song forever be

My only boast is You