1John 4:10-12
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another,
God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.
This was one of the greatest truths that I learned about love in Scripture. Years ago, I couldn’t understand why I didn’t seem to be growing in faith and maturity, the way I knew I should be. I was in the Word all the time. God showed me, through this passage of Scripture, that I could be in the Word all the time, but that it is “loving one another” that perfects His love in us. This truth is affirmed in other passages as well.
LOVING ONE ANOTHER MAKES US FRUITFUL AND USEFUL IN THE KINGDOM
2 Peter 1:5-8
5 Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, 6 and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, 7 and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
LOVNG ONE ANOTHER DEVELOPS A FORGIVING AND UNOFFENDED SPIRIT IN US
The Excellence of Love
1 CORINTHIANS 13:1-3 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
LOVE IS THE “OUTSOURCING” OF OUR FAITH
1 Corinthians 13:8-11
8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part;10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.
There are so my other passages of Scripture that proclaim the perfecting quality of love. Suffice it to say, that if you want t really grow in your faith, than practice loving others. I will leave you with this one last Scripture
1 Corinthians 8:1 Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies.
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