Obey - Walk - Love

John writes in 1 John 2:7, 9-10: “Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning....Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in darkness. He's condemning empty religious talk again. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.” It is important to note that these verses come on the heals of the command in verses 5-6: “This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”

Walking as Jesus walked begins with loving others. We have tried to make Christianity more difficult than it really is. We've made it about church membership, or having a particular theological persuasion, or being baptized a certain way with exactly the right words being spoken during the ceremony, or using the correct vocabulary. John makes the progression unmistakably clear: We know that we know him if we obey him; obeying him means that we walk as Jesus walked; walking as Jesus walked means that we love others.

This progress has three very practical applications. Three things happen when you begin to love others like Jesus loved others:

1. You Find Yourself Living A Life That Makes Sense.  John says in verses 10-11: "Whoever loves his brother lives in the light...whoever hates his brother walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him." When you love others, it's easy to find the purpose for your life. Loving others gives you direction. Love brings light into your life, as opposed to hatred, which brings darkness. Have you ever known someone so full of hate, so set on revenge than he or she couldn't see straight?
2. You Begin To Experience Stability In Your Christian Walk. Read verse 10 again: “Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.” Think about this: How much of our sin is the result of not loving others? Greed. Rage. Deception. Sexual immorality. These are the result of not loving others. If you love others, you won't short-change them in business, you won't lash out in anger, you won't lie to them, you won't treat them like a sexual object. When you begin to love others the way you should love others, sin loses its power in your life. Also, when you love others, sin loses its appeal. Here's why. When you sin, you're thinking only of you. Sin is the ultimate act of selfishness. Not only does it drive a wedge between you and God, it drives a wedge between you and others.
3. You Help Others To Experience A Connection With God. When you love others, you create stability in their lives as well, because your actions aren't knocking them down spiritually. There's a sense in which the world, better than the church, understands that the church's top priority is to love people. When we battle it out over insignificant issues, when we define ourselves exclusively by what we're against, rather than the One we are for, they see through our façade. And they're less than impressed. The world doesn't want to hear about our faith unless they can see it, too.

God wants you to know where you stand with him. He wants you to be secure in knowing him. In order to know this, you have to know something else: People matter to God more than anything else in the world. If you want to know God in a life-changing way, then you need to learn to love people the way he loves people. 

(Special note: The outline above was from Stephen May's The Love Connection).