Daily Verse: John 15

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”

The other day, our six year old daughter proclaimed the following to her three year old brother as they stood at a marker board: “If you erase my picture, I am going to erase yours”. This is common behavior for children…the old eye for an eye mentality, where we return equal or greater “fire” in the direction that fire was received. Unfortunately this is often not something that we outgrow with age, as the “I’ll do to you as you have done to me” mindset is common among people of all ages.  We are reciprocal…good for good, evil for evil. In our minds, we can rationalize and justify this form of behavior…it simply makes sense to us…especially when we allow selfish desires and pride to do the driving. But our minds are sinful and often lead us to sinful decisions. In the text above, we see the words of Christ leading us to love each other as he has loved us. And if we think back to that Easter story, we recall that Jesus displayed the greatest form or love by giving his life for each of us (John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”)…and we are called to do the same. That means when someone wrongs us in some way, we are to respond with forgiveness and love…just as Christ has done and continues to do every day. We sinned yesterday, we sin today, and we will sin tomorrow…and even though we have no valid excuse, Christ loved yesterday, Christ loves today, and Christ will love tomorrow…regardless of how deeply we wrong him. We are to adopt this same incredibly unconventional love for each other. Is it easy? Heck no…it’s incredibly difficult…and at times it seems completely impossible…yet this is what we are commanded to do. May we consider it a privilege today to love each other in such an unusual way, mirroring the same love that Christ shows us every day. And who knows, our unusual behavior just might turn some to the one true Lord above. To God be the glory!