A Survival Guide To True Love: Who?

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. (1 John 4:7)
1 Corinthians 13 talks about what love is. But who is love? and who should we love?

Another one of my favourite passages is 1 John 4:8. "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." (NIV version, bold and italicized font mine)

That answers half our question. God is love. We love, because He first loved us (1 John 4:10). God's love is shown everywhere around us. The way He perfectly created the earth to suit our every needs. The way He sent His only Son for us just to have a relationship with Him. All things created shout His existence, and at the root of that existence is love. Because God is love.

Romans 13:9 answers the second half of our question, who we should love.
The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet,"and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
That's so true! It's all summed up right there, before our eyes. We need to love our neighbors as ourself! But who in the world are our neighbors?

The original Greek word meaning "neighbour" is "πλησίον plēsion". But that doesn't really help, does it? Actually it does. With the original Greek, we can understand the definition of "neighbour" in that verse. In Romans 13:9, it means 'near'. So anyone near you.

Whether you're at the grocery store, school, work, at home, the mall, or at the movies, we're called to love everyone around us. Parents, teachers, bullies, bosses, brothers, sisters, children, aunts, uncles, friends, and many, many more.

As 1 John 4:7 says, let us love one another. Because God is love, and as Impossibilities we're striving to be more and more like Him and less and less like the world around.

Learning to love,
Daddy's Girl

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