Loving Each Other

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

John 16:12

 I use to pray for more love for people. For an end to my impatience with people and their faults. For strength to turn the other cheek and forgive when someone wounded me. What I missed is the wondrous simplicity of what Christ is saying in this verse. My love for others flows out of my understanding of God's love for me. When I take my eyes off of myself and cease my striving to be what I think I should be, when I accept the reality of who I am, a very flawed person, very much in need of the God of the universe dying for me, I begin to understand the love of my Saviour. 

 And then, as I learn the truth and the magnitude of His love for me, I am set free to love others. To know that this same God gave His life for them. That He held nothing back in giving Himself  and that I in turn cannot hold anything back in loving others.

 It becomes about Him. And not at all about me.

"You are more flawed and sinful than you ever dared to believe 

and yet more loved 

and accepted

than you ever hoped to imagine."

-Tim Keller