FAITH CAPSULE: Loving our neighbor perfects loving God.

1 John 4

The gift of God to man is unconditional love. Jesus is a sacrificial gift which God sent so we do not miss eternal life. In return for His love, we are to love Him just as He loves us. The kind of love He wants from us is identified in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. A young lawyer approached Jesus asking for what to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asked him what was written in the law and he responded, “…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) The lawyer prompted Jesus to tell the parable when he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29) Jesus identified who is neighbor is in the parable. A certain man that fell in the hands of thieves lost everything to thieves and was left helplessly wounded. A priest and a Levite that supposed to know better about compassion crossed to other side of the wounded man but a certain Samaritan (a supposedly unbeliever) showed compassion where the religious leader could not. Jesus answered the lawyer’s question of what needs to be done not to miss eternal life by asking the lawyer to go and do just as the Good Samaritan did.

The Good Samaritan is a measure of the gift we should be giving back to God who gave us the best gift in His begotten son. A yearly glamorous celebration of the gift of God to us is far from enough as a measure of our giving back to God if loving our neighbor is out of place in how we live life.
1 John 4:7-11 admonished us, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son to be propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
The picture of loving others is clear in the parable of the Good Samaritan: Loving our neighbor perfects loving God. Celebrate Jesus the gift of God by giving yourself to living life by having compassion for neighbors.

Prayer for today: Ask God to open your understanding; to know to do right and never to miss the chance of living as a vessel of blessings to others.