- What does love WITHOUT hypocrisy… “genuine” love…look like?
- How do we know if we are giving God our genuine love, or loving Him just to have a good name?
- What practical tips can you provide to help someone self-examine their true motives, or see genuine love in someone else as an example?
- looks like God, for God is love (1 John 4:7-8).
- has been shown to us and seen by us in Jesus (John 14:8-9).
- has also been further defined and prioritized for us in Holy Scripture (1 Corinthians 13)
- is only possible because He first loved us (1 John 4:19)
We must
ask ourselves, “Is our love for God merely akin to the “love” a tick has for a
deer, dog or human that has the misfortune in crossing its path? Is our love
for God any deeper and more Christ-centered than the shallow self-focused love that
the crowd of 5000 people had displayed, due to miraculously fed by Christ
because of one boy’s wisdom in bringing himself a lunch consisting of 5 barley
loaves and two fish?” (John
6:1-15) which ultimately provoked Jesus’ gentle (and mostly un-noticed and
disregarded) admonishment of them, forever recorded in John
6:26-27?
We can
get a sense of the genuineness of our love by:
- Comparing ourselves (by replacing the word “love” with our own name) to the measure left for us in Scripture (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).
- Assessing ourselves against the “golden rule” – Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-40, 2 John 1:5-6, Deuteronomy10:12-13, 1 John 3:16-18)
- Applying ourselves to the acid test of hatred towards fellow believers (1 John 4:20-21, 1 John 5:2-3)
- taking an honest and accurate account of how:
- we’re either bothered by or ok with sin in ourselves and others (Hebrews 1:9)
- we’ve ministered and are still ministering to fellow believers (Hebrews 6:10)
- we’re keeping ourselves in the love of God (Jude vs. 20-23, John 15:9-10)
- confident we are about our own salvation (1 John 4:18)
- how frequently we are, (or if you’ve ever have been or currently are being) reproved and disciplined by God (Hebrews 12:6, Revelation 3:19)
Looking
into the mirror of God’s Word, to put together the above response, I can’t help
but find myself being drawn to reconsidering
and sometimes still struggle with 1
John 3:3-10 . I also can’t help but to agreeably sympathize along with
Martin Luther’s following quote: “When I look at myself, I don’t see how I can
be saved. But when I look at Christ, I don’t see how I can be lost.” We also
can take heart in the Holy Spirit’s exhortation made through Apostle John in 1
John 3:19-20: By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart
before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our
heart, and he knows everything.
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