God's Love and Ours

1 John 4:7-12

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Why do we need to love God?

It is the most appropriate thing for a Christian to do - because we are born of God and we know God. It is our best expression of worship before the Lord - for God is love. Not doing it could mean we are of the Devil. God first loved us, even when we don't deserve it, by sending Jesus Christ to die and pay for the penalty of our sins. Wouldn't we be grateful by loving the Lord back?

Why do we need to love others - including those who hate us?

That's how we make God's love complete in us - by loving others unconditionally. We need to reflect God's love for us towards other people. God loves those people in our surrounding, and it's just right that we love them too. In heaven, you may be seeing them FOREVER anyways - just think about that if you hate them here on earth. How difficult it could have been for Stephen if he hated Saul (Paul) for persecuting him, now that they are both in heaven forever!

That's why we need to practice loving God, and other Christians, and other people .... it's just the godly and heavenly thing to do.