Love Well

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“Love well. Live Jesus. Believe Big.” These are the three statements that we declare as a congregation at the end of each service at Severn Run. It has also been a wonderful way for us to discuss faith with our kids at home and translate it out into the world in which they live.

I have often found myself pondering each of these statements throughout the day. “Loving well” seems to come up quite often in my mind while at home with my kids, interacting with each of them and helping them to grow in their interactions with each other. To be honest there are plenty of times that I feel exhausted by the idea – am I loving them well if I say “no” to reading one more book so I can drink the cup of coffee that I have already warmed up five times? We can circle the drain in our thoughts sometimes trying to interpret things in our own understanding. This is why we need God’s Word and the Gospel to help us renew our minds, contextualize our own lives and thoughts, and grow in godly understanding to have an active faith that does what we believe, including “love well” in Christ.

So how does God teach us to ”love well” in Christ? Pastor Drew Shoffner has often used the teaching to “(Be)Loved.” What he is referring to is a two part process in the journey of faith in Christ, which is to allow ourselves to “Be Loved” by God, then go and “Be Love” out into the world. These two aspects of the relational nature of our union with God in Christ are based in the dual aspects of Biblical love and the foundational revelation of God the Father and Christ the Son. Specifically, we “love well” by loving both “vertically” and “horizontally.” Upward, or vertical, toward God through the Son, and as a response we then love outward, or horizontal, into the world as Followers of Christ.

First, we love vertically by loving God – just as the Son has loved the Father. Jesus is our example, always. In Deuteronomy 6:4-6, Moses shares what God directed him to teach to the Israelites:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.”

God is clear in His commandments to His people that He is to be the center of their lives as they learn to live righteously in relationship with Him and then we each other. Upward and then outward. Jesus repeats the same commandment when He is asked by the Pharisees “which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” in Matthew 22. Jesus’ response is both upward and outward:

“Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22: 37-40)

Jesus is our example, and it is His person and work that transforms us to love both upward to the Father and outward into the world. We love God because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). God gave us His Son, and it is by grace through our faith in His redemptive work in our lives through Jesus that we experience the process that renews us into fellowship with Him (John 3:16) Upward. Jesus then takes us into loving well into the world around us as we “Come and See” who He is, learn to walk in love with Him, and follow His commandments which are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. In John 13:34-35, Jesus explicitly commands His followers:

“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.”

Following Jesus and living His love out into the world works through the transformational power of the Holy Spirit as the Helper who works to convict us in our walk of faith as His disciples. The first of the Fruit of the Spirit is, in fact, love. We can trust the Spirit will show us how to love one another in Christ’s Church and also to love well in the greater cultural and historical moment in which He has placed us. This is a part of our witness to the world!

1 John 5: 1-5 sum up “loving well” beautifully:

“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.  Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”

I pray today that we all can grow in the ways that we can “(Be)Loved” by seeking the LORD in prayer, Scripture, and Christ-centered community every day. This is how we know what love is.

KB