Love each other… How – Grace…
The third example of Jesus’ love that we will look at in this series is how He loved in grace. Jesus’ example – 2Thessaloians 2v16+17: 16May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, 17encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.
Jesus came and demonstrated His love for us in showing us grace, and giving us mercy. It was through Jesus that we have access to God. Jesus demonstrated grace to many on earth, think of the woman caught in adultery; she was about to be stoned by the crowd (and rightly so, by the law of that day), yet Christ comes, and reveals every single persons sin to them and then shows the woman grace. This is just how Jesus operated, He demonstrated His love to us by showing us grace.
And us – how can we copy Jesus in this area? We need to show each other grace, this is a demonstration of our love for each other. This doesn’t mean that we never confront each other about issues, or that we never have a disagreement. But rather, that when we do have disagreements that we are quick to show each other grace. When we love each other in grace, this means that we don’t love because we are loved back, no rather we love each other whether it is reciprocated or not. This ought to be our aim, this is the model of love that God has set out for us:
1John 4v19: We love because he first loved us.
God has loved us before we loved Him, He was the one that initiated this love. He loved us even when we hated Him, He loved us when we ignored Him, He loved us when we loved sin, He loved us first. Take this example as you love one another, loved gracefully, show love even if it is not returned.
