Love, love, love! The Beatles anyone? No… how about All of me, loves all of you….no…ok…

Today we are talking about… you guessed it… LOVE!

Now, if your familiar with Jesus and the Bible, you would have probably heard of one of his most famous teachings which appears in the gospel of Matthew and can be summed up as:

“Love God and love your neighbour as yourself.”

But what do we mean by love? Because… you can love your parents or your siblings, but you can also love Little Mix or doughnuts. And in the Bible, there are lots of different words for love in the original Greek language that was used – like phileo and agape. So, what does God mean by love? And which is the more important? Loving God, or loving others?

Well Jesus’ response to this is - ‘both’. Confusing right? But for Jesus, loving others is also a way that we show our love for God, and, we only learn to love because God loved us first! Wow! So, if you love God, you will love others too. And it’s the same the other way round too – loving others is an expression of loving God. One cannot be taken without the other.

So that means that love isn’t just a feeling that we have when we look at our dog, or when we watch a Netflix rom com, it’s an action or a choice we make. Loving God is an action – putting our faith and relationship with God before anything else. Loving our neighbour is an action –supporting them where we can. Putting other people’s needs before our own, even if they can’t pay you back, is an action of love. That might be people who we like, but also includes people who we really don’t like too – sometimes called ‘an enemy’ in the Bible. This love should be the same no matter if it’s a friend, your mum or your enemy. The love that’s written about in the Bible is a self-sacrificing love, that means putting someone else’s needs before your own, and it describes both God’s love for the world and the love we should show all people.

Jesus modelled this in the Bible – by loving people in a very practical and real way. He loved people that were different to him and served those who he couldn’t benefit from – the poor, the unwell, the unpopular and those who couldn’t give him anything in return. He showed them love by actions like healing, giving them food, teaching them, praying for them and journeying with them. And ultimately, Jesus revealed God’s love for the whole world by dying on the cross; willingly paying the price for all our sins and all the brokenness in our world. And in doing so he opened a way for everyone to know and experience God’s amazing love! What an amazing example of love! So how can we learn from Jesus and grow in love? Well let’s look in more detail at the bible verse about love that I mentioned at the start…

Jesus said that the greatest commandment of all is this:

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself.’

When we look at the verse, we see that there are three interlinked love themes. We are encouraged to love God, to love others and to love ourselves! As a Christian, I believe these three parts are totally interlinked.  Another way to describe this verse is to think about it using the words ‘Up, In and Out’. We are called to love God (UP), love ourselves (IN), and to love others (OUT). So as an example,

If you love God – then this will help you to love yourself better.

And if you love yourself – then you’ll be able to care for and love others better.

So, God wants us to love Him, to love others and to be kind to ourselves.

I wonder what ways you show love for God, for others and are kind to yourself? Have a chat about this now with your friends? What does it look like for you?