No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwells in us, and his love is perfected in us.
– 1 John 4:12

Thoughts on Today’s Verse…

If we love one another, God will be with us. In other words, when we have love for God in our hearts, brothers and sisters can truly love one another. We should not pay lip service to loving God, but practically learn to love brothers and sisters. Loving God is expressed through loving brothers and sisters.

Some people say that they don’t know how to love brothers and sisters. Let’s see how the Lord Jesus loves people, “To humanity He was always tolerant, never vengeful, but forgave them their sins, exhorted them to repent, and taught them to have patience, forbearance, and love, to follow in His footsteps and sacrifice themselves for the sake of the cross. His love for the brothers and sisters exceeded His love for Mary. The work that He did took as its principle healing the people and driving out demons, all for the sake of His redemption. No matter where He went, He treated all who followed Him with grace. He made the poor rich, the lame walk, the blind see, and the deaf hear; He even invited the lowliest, destitute ones, the sinners, to sit at the same table with Him, never shunning them but always being patient, even saying, ‘When a shepherd loses one sheep out of a hundred, he will leave behind the ninety-nine to seek the one lost sheep, and when he finds it he will rejoice greatly.’ He loved His followers as a ewe loves her lambs. Though they were foolish and ignorant, and were sinners in His eyes, and furthermore were the humblest members of society, He considered these sinners—men whom others despised—as the apple of His eye. Since He favored them, He gave up His life for them, as a lamb was offered up on the altar. He went about in their midst as if He were their servant, letting them use Him and slaughter Him, submitting to them unconditionally.”

The Lord Jesus’ love for people is immense. We cannot have such love like Jesus, but we should imitate Him. From these words, I find the principles of getting along with brothers and sisters: We should learn forbearance and patience. Even though others say something that hurts us or infringes upon our interests, we should not retaliate, but instead, we should learn to forgive others, have love toward them, be considerate of their difficulties, and benefit them in everything. In addition, we should treat every brother and sister fairly, not be close to this one or distant from that one, but get along well with everyone.