Endings (Part 3): Loving Like Jesus

As those close to me should know by now, I have recently resigned from my position at Victory Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. This post is not about that. Rather, this post is about what I want my legacy to be at VBC (or really, anywhere else that I ever teach and minister).

I am teaching through a series called "Endings" with the students over my last weeks with them. These six messages will attempt to drive home the six main things I have tried to teach them over the past fifteen months that I have spent as their student minister, and would be the six things that I would focus on more than anything if I were to remain there indefinitely. Thus, I will teach six statements that sum up everything I am about. This blog series will communicate that to whomever else would like to know my heart.

Here's the third statement: The most important thing we can do is love.

Doesn't that sound cliche? Alas, it is precisely what Matthew 22:37-40 is getting at:

He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands." (HCSB)

We love God and love people. That is what Jesus called our most important task when He was asked that question. But how do we do it?

1. We love God because He first loved us (John 3:16, 1 John 4:19): God looked upon some scraggly ol' sinners and loved them anyways. That is how we even got saved: He loved us before we loved Him. In fact, we are incapable of loving Him without His first loving us.

This love that He shows us, despite our terribly sinful disposition, should bring us to an infatuation with Him. He has so showered us with love that the only proper response is to be obsessed with Him. Just read the Psalms. Read verses like 16:11, 28:7, 63:1-5, and 90:14. They overflow with a love for Him. Yet, how can we truly show that we love Him?

2. We love others because He first loved us (1 John 4:20-21): It is by loving others that we show our love for Him. There is a reason that James points out that faith without works is dead; those who have faith and love for God should love on and work for almost anyone in need. That's how we show the love we have for Him!

Furthermore, our lives are reviewed by God based on how we love others (1 Corinthians 13:2-3). How do we do that correctly? We follow the rest of 1 Corinthians 13, and we foster a love for Him and others that we never imagined possible.

 Love is patient, love is kind.
Love does not envy,
is not boastful, is not conceited, 

 does not act improperly,
is not selfish, is not provoked,
and does not keep a record of wrongs. 

 Love finds no joy in unrighteousness
but rejoices in the truth. 

 It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.

 Love never ends.  

(1 Corinthians 13:4-8a, HCSB)

So, how are you living your life? Do you love like 1 Corinthians 13 or Luke 6:32 say we should? Do we go out of our way to show some nutzo love to people, being kind and patient and humble? Do we bear all things with them? Believe them when no one else will? Hope for them things they won't even hope for themselves? Endure the hard times with them and be the shoulder to cry on?

We are exchanged to follow Christ in love. That is the calling for believers in Jesus: we love God and love people with reckless abandon.That's all there is to it; that's how love truly wins.