"As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love." These 2 verses are from John 15:9-10 in the King James Version of the Bible.

Jesus is telling us to abide or continue in his love; but how? Well he gives us a clue by telling us to obey his commandments. A cardinal command is to love: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love they neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these”.

I believe we also need to meditate on the scriptures that tell us about God’s great love for us - and there are many of them. Here is one I am sure we are all familiar with, but it speaks volumes: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Wow, could you ever doubt his love for us?

We also need to learn to be quiet before God and just sense his love for us in our hearts; and experience it. If we get a revelation of God's great love for us then we will start to feel better about ourselves and then it will be easier to love others.

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Jesus loves you, those 3 little words often glibly roll off people’s tongues without thinking about it. However, the love of God bears thinking about. In 1 John chapter 4 (KJV) we can learn a lot about God’s love. In verse 10 we read, " Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins"; now that is love. Propitiation simply means that Christ’s sacrifice won God’s mercy for us.

In verse 16 the apostle John wrote: “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him”. We can know, experience and believe God’s love for us. It also says if we continue in love, God dwells in us and we in God. That’s a great place to live.

If we truly love God, we will love one another (1 John 4:20). As we dwell in God and he in us, we have his perfect love in us (1 John 4 :16-17) and that perfect love drives out all fear from within us (1 John 4:18)

We really need a revelation of God’s great love for us - it doesn’t just come from a quick read through of this chapter but by meditating on it and confessing it until, we know that we know that we know, God loves us. Once we have that revelation, we will be able to share it with others (1 John 4:7).

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“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34). It doesn’t get any stronger than that; we are commanded to love one another and not only love but to love as Christ loves us! The apostle James taught us that: “If ye really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well” (James 2:8). Loving our neighbor is a royal law, a cardinal command! This love of God is an unconditional love.

Although we received the love nature of God when we were born again (Rom 5:5) unconditional love does not come naturally to us. This means that we must develop or grow this love nature that we have; we need to be intentional about love and make decisions to put love into practice. Time spent with God who is love (1 John 4:8) and reading, studying and meditating on love scriptures will help us to do that.

Immediately after Jesus gave the command to love, in the gospel according to John, he also said that it was in this love for our neighbor that others would recognize us as Christians (John 13:34-35).

When we put love into practice then we will draw others to Christ. If the church universal started truly acting in love there would be a mighty revival. Love is a powerful force and in 1 Corinthians 13:2 we are told that without it we are nothing.

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Before His crucifixion Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him 3 times (Luke 22:31-34). Although Peter adamantly denied that this would happen, he did deny Jesus (Luke 22:54-62). We are often hard on Peter for his denial of Christ but how often do we deny Jesus? How often do we fail or hold back when we have an opportunity to represent Jesus and the Gospel before people?

But the main point I want us to see in this story is Christ’s love, forgiveness and restoration of Peter. After Jesus was raised from the dead, he spent some precious but short moments with his disciples: in that time a priority for him was to restore Peter. He asked Peter 3 times: “lovest thou me more than these?” (John 21:15-17; KJV). The first 2 times he asked he used the Greek word agapao, which is the unconditional God kind of love. Peter could only reply with the Greek word phileo or affection, he did not have a revelation of the God kind of love at that time; that would come later (see Peter’s Epistles). Jesus met Peter where he was at with his third time of asking, “lovest thou me” and also used the word phileo; accepting that Peter loved him to his (Peter’s) fullest understanding of love.

Wow, what love, understanding and forgiveness! Be encouraged to represent Jesus today and seek to love, forgive and restore as he did.

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In Ephesians 3:18 Paul prayed for the Christians in Ephesus that they would be able to comprehend the width, length, depth and height of God's love. That actually seems impossible to comprehend because it is so vast. This love is extended to everyone and no one is too far away to be included. “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love” (1 John 4:8; KJV). Paul goes on in verse 19 of Ephesians 3 to pray that the Ephesians would know the love of Christ; the word "know" actually means know by experience, not just head knowledge.

If we feel like we are unworthy of being loved by God we only have to read that famous verse in the gospel by the apostle John, where we are reminded that God gave his only son for us all (the world) and that if we believe in him, we will have eternal life (John 3:16). If that is not convincing enough, then consider what the prophet Jeremiah had to say: “The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (Jer 31:3).

In Jesus’ prayer for all those who believed in him he said that God the Father loved us as he loved Jesus (John 17:23).  

As a final note let us be reminded that nothing will ever separate us from God’s love: "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom 8:38-39). Amen.

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