Read I Peter 1:22 – 2:3
“Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply from the heart.” (v 22)
“Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply from the heart.” (v 22)
Some Thoughts…
Peter reminds us that living a life of Christ-like purity can never excuse us from caring for others. He calls us to love one another deeply. I must never forget that it is necessary for me to love my fellow believers (yes, loving them all – even the strange ones, the loud ones, and the overly religious ones. God calls me to love them all deeply) with brotherly (family) love.
Here are Three Reasons to Love like Family:
1) (V 23) We have a totally new life – We are born again – we’ve been implanted with eternal seed – God’s powerful Word – that was and is and is to come – more than just letters on pages – it is Jesus alive in our dead souls slowly bringing to life the eternal people we were originally made to be. We are made to live forever – one family, one Father, for eternity. I am alive in Christ. And I am learning that to love my fellow man is to breathe His life into them.
2) (V24-25) We only have a short time to live out our fleshly existence – We are grass-like…every one of us, if time continues, will wither and die and be forgotten, but while we have breath and the leaves of our life are still green, we must produce fruit that points folk to the One who is eternal – God’s Word that He planted in us is eternal – we must choose to live the Spirit-life over and against the grass-like- flesh-life we used to know. And that life must be rooted and established in love.
3) (2:1-3) If we are born again, we will only find true nourishment in the milk of God’s Word and not in the relational sins that tear lives apart. Peter calls believers to take off the old clothing of self-preservation – you know those things we do to protect and insulate ourselves from the pain caused by others…we all have our own way of dealing with conflict and difficult relationships. Many times we feed off our feelings of anger, resentment and pain; we act out in all kinds of ways. Peter lists several in this passage, but he turns our attention to a better way to live, a better way to feed our inner self… It is the same way we have begun the purification process of salvation – we crave God’s Word like a baby cries for milk…We’ve tasted God…His grace and patience, His unexplainable and confounding patience with the human race…He is good…and we need more and more to be like Him…We love like brothers out of an overflow of God’s goodness growing in us as we learn more everyday about this mysterious and amazing salvation…as we obey the truth!
A Prayer…
Father,
Help me love like You do…and live my life hungry for You and Your will and for the fullness of Your Kingdom that is full of brothers and sisters in Christ moving day by day one step closer to You. I’m praying for maturity, but I still have such a long way to go…and I ask you to help me embrace my personal responsibility to grow up…to set aside childish attitudes and actions of selfish deceitfulness and live the life of love that I’m called to. Amen.