“I hate him.” “I hate her.” “I hate them, and I hate that group too.” Have we ever heard or maybe said these words? Is there an individual who has wronged us, or maybe a group of people who have maligned us, and now we “hate” them for it? Today's verse from John the apostle is about as challenging a verse for us as there is in the Bible. For we who have lived on the Earth for any time at all have encountered those people or that person who has mistreated us or someone we love. Now, hatred seems natural, and loving them may be the furthermost proposition within our being. John the apostle says in First John chapter four and verse twenty that there is a big problem with us hating others. He wrote:
If a man say, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar: for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
We have all heard that we must live a life that is consistent with what we say otherwise we are being hypocritical. However today John steps that up a notch. John says if we say we love God, and hate our brother, we are liars. If we have hatred toward anyone, anywhere in our hearts, we are lying about our love for God. Many people say, “I love God”, and this is very understandable. God is so loving, but when it comes to people, and their fallibility, now what is our behavior? What is our attitude? In other words, John says we must love our brothers, (and this means any other person) or we are lying about our love for God.
John goes on to give an explanation to this difficult charge. He writes with a question of reason: “for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen”. We have seen others with our eyes. We have encountered them personally. We may have had a relationship with them at one time or another, and now we are distant. Maybe they hurt us, and hurt us badly. Maybe they conducted themselves in a manner that seems worthy of hatred, but John says “How can he love God whom he has not seen” when we hate someone whom we have seen.
The questions that loom for us today is “Do we really love God?” Is our love toward others consistent with our love for God? Do we have anyone in our lives whom if we were to be honest we would say we hate them? If so, we must take our hatred before our God who loves us so completely. We must confess this hatred before Him, and ask Him to remove the hatred from our hearts. The result will be that our love for Him will be genuine and true, and the title of “liar” will be removed from our name.
Next time we shall look even further into what John has to say about loving others and our relationship with God, so read ahead, and we shall join together then.
Until tomorrow...there is more...
Look for the new devotional book “Equipped for Battle – From Generation to Generation” in all major bookstore sites, www.amazon.com ; www.barnesandnobles.com ; download to e-books, and find it locally at www.mrzlc.com/bookstore
No comments:
Post a Comment