No Greater Love – John 15:13

Jesus commands that we “Love one another as He has loved us” (John 15:12). Which on the outside sounds easy enough. We love our wives, our husbands, our sons and daughters. We love our brothers and sisters (usually). Lets go even farther and say that we love our neighbor. But the problem is, that this is generally a surface kind of love.

When we dig a little deeper into the kind of Love that Jesus is talking about we have to begin with the next verse in John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Now lets examine whether we really, LOVE our wives, husbands, sons and daughters…We certainly don’t have this kind of love for our neighbor.

This is “agape” love in a purely biblical sense. This is a self sacrificing love. This is the kind of love the “world” will never know. A kind of love that one can only gain through the abiding of the Holy Spirit. That is why this 15th chapter of John begins by Jesus telling us that we must abide in Him and He in us.

Without our abiding in Him we can never truly love as He loves.

Til next time,

Gary B.