True Love Is Practical

  Such divine instructions we sorely need, for they are not part of the religions of this world, and through heredity we tend to be selfish, greedy, inconsiderate, envious, jealous, hateful, unforgiving, vengeful, and the great Hater tries to make us more so.  "God is love."  Satan the Devil is hate.  He tries  to make us in his  image as his children, jst as he made Caub,  The children of God and the children of the Devil are evident by this fact:  Everyone who does not  practice righteousness does not originate with God, neither does he who does not love his brother.  For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should have love for one anoter, not like Cain, who originated with the wicked one and slaughtered his brother. And for the sake of what did he slaughter him?  Because ghis own works were wickedc,  but those of his brother were righteous." - 1 John 3:10-12, NW. 

Cain, though Abel's own brother and hence a close neighbor of his, came to hate him.  In this world it is not unusual for a person not to have the best of feelign toward his neighbor, even one in the same family or congregation.  Favortism for some neighbors and arrogant contempt for others can exist or crop up through selfishness.  This is contrary  to one of the two greatest laws.  Recommending  to lax Christians to quit violating it through favortism, the disciple James  wrote: "If, now,  you practice carrying out the kingly law according to the Scriptures,  'You ust love your neighbor as yourself,' you are doing quite well." (James 2:1-8, NW)  This means  loving poor neigbbors  as  yourself, as well as rich ones, without any favoritism by you in the hop[e of selfish gain or in the thought that rich ones deserve better treatment.  We do not love ourselves less than the rich because  we may be poor.  The law to love neighbor as oneself is "kingly."  What, then,  is the greatest law, the law to love God with all we are and have?  Upon these all-embracing commands the whole Bible hangs.  (Matthew 22:35-40; Romans 13:8; Galatians 5:14)  The rest of the Bible shows how we must put love of God and love of neighbor into action.  "Let all of your affairs take place with love." (1 Corinthians 16:14, NW)  Showing partialituy that discriminates unneighborly against the poor is not obedienced to the kingly law.  It does not lead to the best results, hence is not practical.

God wants our love of him to be, not something sentimenta;l and formal. but something practical that expresses itself towards its people, his children, our Christian brothers.  "If anyone makes the statement, 'I love God,' and yet is hating his brother, he is a liar.  For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot be loving God, whom he has not seen.  And this commandment we have from him, that the one who loves God should be loving his brother also." (1 John 4:20, 21, NW)  Partiality against the poor brothers is not hin harmony  with this commandment. So we cannot carry out  te greatest of the commandments, to love God wiht all  we are and have, and at the same time be violating the second greatest-commandment, the kingly one of neighbor love.😊

Next time: True Love Is Practical - "NEITHER IN WORD NOR WITH THE TONGUE

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