Love Does
December 8, 2024

You surely know that you are like God’s special house. As God’s people, God’s Spirit lives in you.
1 Corinthians 3:16

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.
1 John 4:7,8

• It is only by

God that we learn to love. It is only by that we like God.

“God is (at once) Lover, Beloved and Love itself.” —St. Augustine

“If you had to summarize Christlike character in one word, there would be no competition: love. Love is the acid test of spiritual formation.” —John Mark Comer, Practicing The Way

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.
1 John 4:9,10

is what love does.

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
John 15:13

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
James 1:17

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
1 John 3:1a,b

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. 13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit… 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
1 John 4:11-13,16

• We

God’s love over and over again when we love others.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
1 John 3:16

“Jesus talked to His friends a lot about how we should identify ourselves. He said it wouldn’t be what we said, we believed, or all the good we hoped to do someday. Nope, He said we would identify ourselves simply by how we loved people. It’s tempting to think there is more to it, but there’s not. Love isn’t something we fall into; love is someone we become.” —Bob Goff, Author