“By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
— John 13:35

Paul tells us in Philippians 1:27 that we are to live lives “worthy of the Gospel of Christ.” Included in that notion is that we are to live lives of love. Jesus even said that people will know that you belong to Him if you love one another. As Francis Schaeffer said, love for each other is “the mark of the Christian.” How will the world know we belong to Jesus? Because of our love.

Now it is easy to love the lovely, to love the loving, but God loves the God-haters and poured out His life for them. And so we are called upon to show that kind of a loving attitude toward people who may not be the type of persons that the ordinary individual would go out of his way to love.

Someone criticized a Christian leader with the remark that the church (in general) has a lot of kooks in it. The leader replied, “Well, I thank you for that compliment because I think it is true that the church has more of the unfortunate people that are handicapped and people that don’t get along well in many social situations than most any other voluntary associative organization. That is a wonderful compliment about the love of Christ being shown, where other people won’t put up with those kinds of people.” May God give us the grace to show more love, even to the unlovable.

God of love, give me strength for today that I may truly love Your bride, the church. Thank You for loving me. Let Your love so fill my heart that others may also benefit from it. Help me to be more like You and love the unlovable…

IN GOD’S STRENGTH AND BY HIS LOVE,
WE LOVE.