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9 Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10 love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. – Romans 12:9-10
What could you accomplish if someone loved you with out condition?
My hope is that someone in your life has shown you such love, perhaps a parent, a spouse, a friend. Knowing that love has helped you do more than you could ever imagine. However, there are people in this world, and I have known a few who haven’t known such love. They have known the love of another person, but it has always been with a condition, that usually worked in the other persons favor.
Perhaps it was the parent who wanted their child to be successful, but when that child made a choice to do something else, the parent was unsupportive of such choice. Perhaps it was a business partner who worked hard with you to build up a business, but decided they wanted to go a different direction, or where unsupportive when you needed to go a different direction. There are thousands of scenarios we could come up with were the love and respect were mutual until one decision changed everything.
This is not so with the love of God. God’s love that is poured out on the cross of Jesus is truly unconditional. God’s love is meant for us to understand as seeing, knowing, and feeling the pain of our deepest regrets and mistakes, and choosing to sit with us, and help us up. God doesn’t look at choice we made 15 years ago, or a few seconds ago, and decide, no more chances. God gives us life and breath, and every moment of the day pours out blessing and love. God lifts us when we are down, and comforts us in our weakness.
God’s love in unconditional and genuine, and the call of the Christian is to learn how to utilize that love in the way we love others. As Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, just as God’s love has been genuine to us, we should let our love be genuine towards God and others. To love one another, and have a mutual affection that goes out of our way to offer forgiveness, to offer counsel, to offer comfort, and grace, and mercy even to those whose choices we don’t agree with.
In doing so, we truly become the body of Christ, sharing the love of God, unconditionally, with the world. May we love someone more deeply today, and always. Amen.
Grace & Peace,
Sam