“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of god and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love on another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

   There has never been a more pressing time for the church to make clear to the world that we are who we are because God loved us, not because we love Him. We have been adept in our efforts to define Christian behavior and the Cardinal doctrines of our faith. We have, however, failed in expressing our own weaknesses and our complete dependence on God to be reconciled to Him. God chose us. 

   While this sounds simple it is certainly not simple to communicate and live out in our daily lives. Men’s hearts crave the peace that comes from God alone. Sadly, the enemy of our souls works relentlessly to undermine our faith and our message. Christ, and Christ alone, is able to redeem men. We cannot do this ourselves. We must have the redemptive work of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to live, communicate, and trust in this divine plan of reclamation. 

   The atoning work of Christ is our communication of hope to all men and women we see every day in our journey here on this planet. Christ is willing and able to save everyone that calls on His name. What extraordinary love. Without pretext or equivocation God has sent His one and only Son to redeem His creation.

   Is it any wonder that Satan works so feverishly to distort the message of love we have been given in Christ Jesus? Christ has brought light to the darkness. Paul makes it clear in his epistle to the Colossian church…

“For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins.”

Let us love one another; our hope and our message.