It is all connected.

Last week we talked about how we love God by loving those around us. Picking up from 1 John 5:2, it says, “This is how we can be sure that we love the children of God: by having a passionate love for God and by obedience to his commands.” This is how we test whether or not we love God. It is a bit of a weird test if you remember what we talked about last week. It is not measured by how often we attend church, of which going to church is important. Last week we learnt that the Bible tells us that we love God by loving His children.

In the same verse, it tells us that we can check if we love God’s children by loving God passionately. It sounds like we have a chicken and egg situation happening. What comes first? The last part of verse 2 answers that, it says, “and by obedience to His commands.” So, we love God’s children, the people around us, by passionately loving God and how do we passionately love God? By obeying what He asks us to do.

Loving God is simple. It is not a matter of words. Someone can say they love you and their actions run contrary to those words. God’s love is not about words, it is about actions, John 3:16. He demonstrated this by giving us Jesus. God didn’t love us so much He prayed for us. He didn’t love us so much, He hoped we would make it through life. No. His love was demonstrated by His actions. Not as an afterthought. God wasn’t sitting in heaven watching us struggle and think, “Hmm, I wonder what I can do to help.” God knew before the beginning of time that we would need help and we know that Jesus was slain before the world was made, Revelations 13:8.

God’s love is proactive, before Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, God already had a plan in place just in case one of us dropped the ball and we’d need it. Jesus. God giving us Jesus was not an after thought. It was something He pre-determined before we were created. That He would give of Himself should we ever need rescuing. He would rather die in our place should there be sin in our lives that would require our death. He already knew before you were born, before the world was formed, that He loved you and that He was willing to die for you.

God’s love is not just words in the pages in our Bible. It is intentional action. Jesus dying for us was not a spur of the moment, God was backed in a corner type situation. It was God’s plan all along. Devil just didn’t know it. God is not in the habit of sharing his plans with those who are out there seeing for themselves.

As much as loving us was not an afterthought for God, loving God should not be an afterthought for us. We need to be intentional about loving Him. We need to be intentional about loving the people around us and treating them with kindness.

Loving God has very little to do with our words, prayer, praise, worship. It is about our actions. It is about our obedience to Him. You can pray for someone all day but if you have the ability to help them and don’t do it are you loving them? No. Faith without works is dead, James 2:26. You can worship God all day but if you go to work and cuss out everyone you work with and tear people down, are you loving them? No. If you are not loving others, and you say you love God, Bible calls you a phony, 1 John 4:20.

1 John 5:2 tells us that we can check whether we love God by whether or not we are willing to obey what the Bible tells us to do and in case we are still not sure, we look around to see how we treat people around us.

1 John 5:3- 5 goes on to say, “True love for God means obeying his commands, and his commands don’t weigh us down as heavy burdens.  You see, every child of God overcomes the world, for our faith is the victorious power that triumphs over the world. So who are the world conquerors, defeating its power? Those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.”

Last week when we started looking at 1 John 5, we started off with faith in Jesus, believing in Jesus. We have come full circle back to believing in Jesus. Verses 3 to 5 above show us that in the middle, as we obey God it does something to our faith.

We talked a few weeks ago about how faith and hope are connected. It is important to see that faith and love are also connected. Faith without works is dead and how do we exercise our faith? By loving the people around us. As we love people around us, we work out our faith and we grow in our faith walk with God. We also know that loving people around us and obeying God is how we love God. So our love for God allows us to develop our faith in God and equips us to overcome and conquer in life.

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano