02/02/2026
THE PASTORāS CORNER
2026 is moving right along, weāre making it through January and looking forward to February. February is the month of love, with Valentineās day right in the middle. But love is something that should be on our mind all year long. In fact when asked, Jesus said the greatest commandment is to āLove the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.ā The second is this: āLove your neighbor as yourself.ā There is no commandment greater than these.ā (Mark 12:30-31)
Love should be the mark of all Christiansā¦ first of God, then to others. Why does the Great Commandment instruct us to love God first, others second? Because this is the order in which God himself loves. Godās love did not begin in Genesis 1:1. It is eternal, existing before creation. Actually, creation was because of God acting out of love.
We love because he first loved us. He loves us, having first and eternally loved himself. Self-love is not always admirable in humans. While loving ourselves is good, and even necessary for loving our neighbor, the Bible also speaks to the negative category of those who are ālovers of selfā (2 Tim. 3:2).
Love God and love you neighborā¦ Iām sensing a pattern. Itās impossible for anyone, including God, to love God too much. But it is possible for us to love the love of God too much. We do this when we emphasize the love of God at the expense of his other attributes. Sin can cause us to love a version of God thatās not accurate. The overemphasis of Godās love is even evident in non-Christians. They may know very little of the Bible, yet many know and are quick to quote the phrase that āGod is loveā (1 John 4:8). The statement āMy God is a God of loveā often has the idea that his love precludes Him ever acting in wrath or justice, or in any way that does not fit our human conceptions of love.
But Godās love is both holy and infinite, which means that all his actions are loving, even when we cannot see them as such. Not only are all his actions loving, but all He withholds or refrains from doing is also loving. When we endure hardship or loss, we may be tempted to question if God truly does love us. But the Bible reminds us that hardship and loss are to be expected in this life. Still, the Bible also encourages saying that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. Nothing!
And, once we recognize that the love God has bestowed upon us is not merely an emotion but an act of the will, we are forced to reevaluate how we love others. We must tear down the divisions that we place our fellow humans into. There can no longer be categories of ālovableā and āunlovable.ā
If love is an act of the willānot motivated by need, not measuring worth, not requiring reciprocityāthen there is no such category as āunlovable.ā This is what Jesus teaches in the parable of the good Samaritan. When the lawyer seeks to qualify the meaning of the Great Commandment by asking, āAnd who is my neighbor?ā (Luke 10:29), Jesus responds with a story about a man who shows love to the āunlovable.ā
We love, no matter the cost. The costliness of Godās love is evident in the cross. When we begin to follow Christ, we resolve to love God even if it costs us. And it doesā¦ It costs us our pride, our preferences, our time, our financial resources, our comfort. At times, it costs in our relationships with family, our safety, and more. But in laying these aside, we learn the worthiness of the object of our love in a deeper way. We find increasing empathy, and as we mature, we resolve to love God and our neighbor, no matter what it costs us.
This is the kind of love that marks believers as distinct from the world. What is the will of God for your life? That you love as you have been loved.
God Bless,
Pastor Byron
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