Loving God -Loving People

God is all about community. No Christian should live in isolation. Loving God and loving people
are two sides of the same coin – you can’t really do one without the other. God is love. If you
don’t have a relationship with God, you don’t fully understand what it means to love. You might
like people and even care about them, but I don’t believe we are capable of truly loving another
person until we have experienced God’s amazing unconditional love. Jesus said, “Apart from me
you can do nothing.” He also said, “I give you a new commandment that you love one another.”
Only with the love of Christ in us are we equipped to love like God loves. His love working
through us creates a much greater capacity for genuine, self-giving love towards others.

Love comes from God. It is because God first loved us that we can respond to him with love. “Let
us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loves is born of God, and knows God.”
(I John 4:7) It is only when we have tasted the unselfish, unending, uncompromising love of God
that we can feed another person out of what we have received. We cannot truly love God or Man
without knowing the One who is the source of all love. Jesus Christ was love incarnate, fully God
and fully man. His life is the ultimate love story.

Jesus came to serve, and his brief life on this planet opened the door for us to see and
experience God’s love through him. Before his life and death, there had never been a living
example of the deep, awesome, self-sacrificing love of God. Many men and women before Christ
knew God and were even filled with God’s Spirit, but no one had ever loved like Jesus loved.
And no one since Jesus has expressed this love as perfectly as he did. But, Jesus is still present
in the form of his Body the Church, and all Christians collectively possess the fullness of Christ’s
love.

God’s love is in the world and it is changing the world. You can be a part of the transforming
power of God’s unconditional love – if you invite Jesus to live in you. I imagine many would say
that they have done lots of good loving things for other people, but scripture tells us every
person’s accomplishments will be burned up in the fire and revealed to be nothing but straw if
these actions are not grounded in God.

If you don’t know Jesus you don’t know love in its fullness. It’s really that simple. Open your
heart to the love that Christ showed when he suffered and died taking on himself the penalty of
your sins, and then – you too will love like God loves. Out of gratitude for what Jesus has done
for us – as we allow Jesus to live in our hearts, we can love God and Man with real, self-giving,
life-changing, heart-healing, unending love!

Love is… Jesus. “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”
(John 15:13)

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About Bill Kuntz

Christian Life Coach and psychologist, husband to Wanda, dad to Kathy and Kristy, adopted son to God. I enjoy writing and blogging. My new passion is writing and speaking to inspire others to be all that God made them to be. I work with couples, families, and individuals (particularly young adults and adolescents) in my psychotherapy practice. As a life and leadership coach, I specialize in assisting pastors discern God's highest calling and to achieve high goals without sacrificing connections with family and friends. Please call if you or someone you care about needs counseling or coaching. My phone number is 314-647-4695.

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