We Are Living in the Last Hours: So Love As God Does
Love originates from God, and since we are the pinnacle of His creation, we ought to love as He loves. However, sin has twisted the meaning of love, and now, man defines love to fit his changing circumstances. This is sort of like creating God in your own image, and when that happens, you really don’t have God, just “you” on a larger scale.
To truly experience love, we must look to God to learn how to really love each other and ourselves.
In John the apostle’s first messages to the churches, he is very clear as to God’s true identity, His essence. God is love.
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.
By this we know we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. Whoever confesses that Jesus in the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the Day of Judgment, because as His is, so also are we, in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:7-21, ESV).
John writes earlier that we are in the last hour, and that there are anti-Christs in the world. In 1 John 2:22 describes the anti-Christ as: “he who denies the Father and the Son.” There are many who fit this description today, and despite our best efforts, we cannot avoid them. They seek us out, and do all they can to erode our faith.
We are living in the last hour, and regardless of whether time feels as if it is passing slowly or quickly, we can be certain of one thing – it will end.
So what sort of people are we to be in this last hour? What does God expect of us?
He wants us to be people of love. He wants us to reflect the person of Jesus Christ. As a man, Jesus was neither macho nor effeminate. He was simply all things to all people, so that all could relate to Him and through Him find their way back to God.
Our society has twisted love into an unrecognizable mash of selfish lust and faux-altruism. When we allow unbiblical views of love to dominate our minds and hearts, I believe we risk falling under the judgment of God.
However, when our churches – who stand in the name of Christ – allow the world’s view of love to dominate church doctrine, then I know we are in deep trouble.
We must regain the Biblical perspective of love in our church and in our society. We stand in the last hour; what will we do with the time that remains?
I admonish you to make certain you recognize God’s vision of the role of love in your life. Read what He has written for us. To know God and to love Him we must know His word.
Paul tells us, at the end of his first letter to the church at Corinth: “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like me, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:13-14).
The world indeed needs love, but not the glitzy, sexualized kind that Hollywood sells so well, but instead, the real, authentic and never-ending sort that is only available from God.