No one would ever say it out loud—probably because in their hearts they know it’s ridiculous. But so many of us seem to live with an implicit attitude of “I love Jesus and all, but I just can’t stand people.” This really isn’t an option God gives us though. It turns out God equates the way we treat others with the way we treat him. If we love God and abide in his Son, the immediate result of that is that we will obey his command to love others. If we are truly friends of Jesus, we will love like Jesus.
And not many people actually ever get to be called “friends” of God! In the Old Testament, only Abraham and Moses, the two greatest examples of trusting and obeying the Lord, are ever given the title. But all of a sudden Jesus extends it to everyone who takes after him and obeys him. Friendship with God doesn’t just mean we blindly obey a distant master; rather we know him and love him, and God actually enjoys company with us, and he is fully involved in our lives, and we in his. And in fact, we vividly experience that friendship through loving other believers and sharing friendship with them!
But with what kind of love? The most natural concept of "love" is to simply appreciate those who are beneficial to us. But as we grow to understand love more deeply and richly, we’re able to appreciate even people who have no use to us—even those we might dislike. Then we learn what it’s like to delight in someone else’s good, rather than just our own. Better yet, we learn a humble willingness to forego something good for ourselves, for the sake of their good. Even deeper love, we then learn, is to actively sacrifice for someone else, because their flourishing is a higher priority even than our own. And then finally, eventually, the deepest, richest form of love we will learn is the love that is giving up our own life, and everything we care about, for the person we love. Truly no one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
The gospel—the good news of our redemption by the Son through the Spirit—equips us to selflessly love one another. Self-centeredness and strife are the natural way of the world, but the gospel is our reconciliation, not only to God but to our fellow man as well. Love others like Jesus loves them: with his very life.
