Love Acts

You’ll hear it said that what we do defines who we are.

Well Jesus pushed that to the absolute extreme saying, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.”

Showing love to another human being requires sacrifice. Loving someone else demands that you put their needs, their good above your own. Love is lots of things (read 1 Corinthians 13 for a list – you’ll probably have heard that read at weddings) but quite honestly, showing love is exhausting. Humanly speaking, true love is almost impossible. Almost.

For perfect love to be shown it needed a perfect (sinless) human and there weren’t any… not until Jesus was born.

He alone, having lived a perfect life, was able to show perfect love by giving his own life for others. The Bible tells us clearly that his death was a sacrifice for us.

It is this kind of love – this sacrificial love – that Jesus calls all who follow him to show to others. It’s not that we have lived perfect lives – we haven’t. It’s not that our deaths could in any possible way pay for someone else’s sin – that’s not possible. It is simply that we reflect his perfect love in the way that we act towards others. We can’t do this perfectly but this is what followers of Jesus are called to do and our obedience to his command – to love others as he loved us – is only possible _because_ he first loved us.

It is in this context that I consider myself a friend of Jesus. Are you? Do you want to be?
You can watch this week’s sermon that will explore all this and more on Sunday from 10.30am. The link is in the comments below.