‘If You Have Love For One Another’

By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.

John 13:35

Christ Himself sets forth the identifying characteristics of those who truly follow Him.  We find Him clearly delineating one such characteristic in our text for today.  We speak often of Christian ‘testimony.’  The ‘testimony’ is really just the reputation we establish with other people, based upon how we behave.  People watch how we work, listen to how we speak, observe how we treat others, and formulate their views of us from those evidences, plus others which we exhibit.  We develop a negative ‘testimony’ when we attempt to present a different image than who and what we really are for the sake of looking more ‘Christian.’  Other people perceive that more easily than we perhaps realize.  What they also perceive, perhaps more accurately than we realize, is the ‘love’ factor.  In context, Christ is speaking to His disciples on the night before He went to the cross.  He is describing how other people will be able to identify us as being followers of Christ by the love that we demonstrate for other followers of Christ.  It will be utterly humanly impossible to demonstrate this type of love apart from the grace of God and closeness to Christ.  The Holy Spirit Alone can enable us to have such love and to show such love to each other.  What is humanly impossible for us however, is entirely possible with Him.  Christ is able to enable us to ‘have love for one another’ and to enable others to see that we are His disciples.

Our most Gracious and Loving God,
We praise You that You are Love.
We rejoice in the manifestation of Your Love,
which we find in Christ.
Evermore teach us to love.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

He Loved Them to the End

Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.

John 13:1

Christ is no fair weather Lover. As His public ministry drew to a close, as the pain-seared march to the cross entered its last few hours, the Holy Spirit-inspired writer of the Fourth Gospel passes this telling remark. ‘He loved them to the end.’ Here is abundant soul-satisfying assurance. Here is something for every Blood-bought saint of God. Here is uplifting for every soul that rests by faith in the Only Begotten Son of God. The most blessed and sublime truth which we embrace as little children is this, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’ What heightens our joy is the unwavering constancy of this Love. He loves me to the end of His Perfect Life. He loves me to the end of His Atoning Death. He loves me to the end of His prevailing Intercession. He loves me to the end of my life. He loves me to the end of the age. He loves me to the end of all things. He loves me to the end of an unending eternity.  ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,  Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’  This is the Love from which no person or power in heaven, earth or hell can separate us. What an abundant blessing. What a Savior! What a Friend! Whatever you are enduring today, Child of Grace. Whatever hardship; whatever sorrow; whatever tribulation; whatever suffering; know this, that Jesus Christ, Your crucified, buried, risen, ascended and coming Lord loves you, and shall continue to love you, ‘to the end.’

‘Jesus, Lover of my soul, let me to Your bosom fly.’
Your love, O, Christ, overwhelms us completely.
It satisfies us, supports us and in every way, draws us out
more thoroughly unto You.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning