Monday, June 18 ~ “CALLED to Copy”

Monday, June 18 ~ “CALLED to Copy”

1 John 4:7-21

⁷Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.⁹God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.¹⁰In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.¹¹Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.¹²No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.¹³By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
¹⁴And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world.¹⁵God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.¹⁶So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
¹⁷Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.¹⁸There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.¹⁹We love because he first loved us.²⁰Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.²¹The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
_________________________________________________________________________________

Jesus is sincere in loving us. Jesus loved us before we came to this world, Jesus is loving us at this very moment, and Jesus will love us. This love is unconditional in its nature. If Jesus loved us because of our certain achievement, it would have been impossible that everyone is loved by Jesus.

     We are called to imitate Jesus. Some people might think that there is no need for us to actually practice the love like Jesus,’ because we are loved by Jesus regardless of how we think and behave. However, we rather need to love one another because that it is what we received from Jesus. 1 John 4:19 teaches us that we love because Christ first loved us. If we do not love others even after we know that we received love from Jesus, it is hard to say that we understood and felt the unconditional and sincere nature of Jesus’ love. If we felt Jesus’ love toward at least a little bit, we need to try to imitate the love. This is why we are “called” to imitate Jesus.

     The fact that “we are called to imitate Jesus” does not mean that we are called to be a simply “good person.” It rather means that we are called to be a person that thinks and acts and loves like Jesus. Therefore, in imitating Jesus’ love, we should not only love our neighbors but also show the love in our actual life. Sometimes we need to be selfless and sacrifice ourselves to love others. This attitude might seem to be foolish from the perspective of secular world. However, this is exactly what Jesus went through in order to love us. Even though our love cannot be as big as Jesus’ love, we should keep trying to copy Jesus by expressing love to our neighbors.

     This mission trip is one of the imitations we can practice. Since Christ went on missions to share God’s love with us when he became a human, we can understand his love and practice it by participating in this trip.

Blessings,

I Sil Yoon