A New Love - The One Year Salt and Light Devotional

Romans 12:9-13

Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. (Romans 12:9)

MANY CHRISTIAN MOVEMENTS throughout history and today have emphasized the importance of demonstrating love, both within the fellowship and beyond it. This is not surprising; Jesus told his followers to love one another because that love would mark our identity in him. In response, Christians consciously try to be an example to the world so it will see the gospel within them. The motive is good—to follow Jesus’ instructions and offer a meaningful testimony—and the outcome is sometimes effective. But the entire focus leads to one big, unsettling question: Why?

Why do Christians love others out of obligation? Why don’t we love because we are loving? Why, when all secular eyes are on us, do we have to remind ourselves that people are watching? Why doesn’t love pour out of us whether people are watching or not? In fact, it can. That’s the goal. Some of Jesus’ instructions focus on how we should behave, but the essence of his teaching was not behavioral. It was directed at the heart, our inner condition, the fallenness that gets us out of sync with God and must be remedied by a supernatural act. When we are born of the Spirit of the God who is love, love ought to come naturally. In our newness, it’s who we are. If God is love and we are becoming like him, then we are love.

This issue highlights the difference between religion and relationship, between regulating behavior and living from the new nature. The gospel of “do” monitors our actions; the gospel of “be” doesn’t have to. The path from one to the other is a process, and we may find ourselves reverting to the former when necessary. But the goal is transformation—or, as Paul puts it, really loving people without hypocrisy. Our renewal changes the way we see people. Love becomes our natural bent toward believers, along with those who do not believe as we do. The change in us does not end with us. Only real love can flow into others’ lives.

{Jesus, I choose to love others as you commanded. But far better for me to “be” love than to simply act the part. Fill my heart and soul with your love, and let it flow freely toward those around me. Amen.