Now That is Love

For the past few weeks, I have been reading through the book of John.  It's one of those books where I feel like I'm familiar with a lot of the stories, but have never taken the time to read through it from start to finish.  I was reading through John 13 yesterday, and these two verses below really stuck out to me:

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." John 13:34-35

The first thing that catches my eye out of these verses is "just as I have loved you."  As I read it, I thought to myself...

How does Jesus love me? 
What are ways that He continually shows love to me?

A few of the MANY ways I found that Jesus loves us are:

• "Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens." Psalm 36:5 
• "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ." Ephesians 2:4-5
• "but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8
• "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are..." 1 John 3:1
• "I have loved you with an everlasting love." Jeremiah 31:3
• "...and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." Galations 2:20

Now that is love.  Not the type of love you see through a dozen roses or in the latest Nicholas Sparks' movie.  That's the type of love that says I'm going to leave my perfect throne in Heaven and live a life on this imperfect earth so that I can give my life for you and as a result you can spend eternity with Me. That's the type of love that changes lives, sets aside differences and meets people where they are at.  Max Lucado once said,

"He, who can dig the Grand Canyon with His pinkie, thinks you're worth His death on Roman timber."

The fact that Jesus thinks that we are worth His death on the cross is a perfect depiction of the love He has for us.  Here in John 13, that's the love He tells us we should have towards one another.  Now obviously, being the sinful people we are, we will always fall short when it comes to loving others like Jesus loves us.  But it's through this love that more people meet Jesus and see Him on their level.  Jesus says, "by this" - by the way we love - people will know that we are His disciples.  It should be our goal to love others with a love that has Jesus' name written all over it.  We should ooze the love of Jesus out of every ounce of our body.
In any encounter you have with someone, see people through the eyes of Jesus.  When we see people like Jesus sees them and sees us, we are able to love them like He loves us.  1 Corinthians 13:13 (MSG) says,

"But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly.  And the best of the three is love." 

Did you catch that... Jesus tells us that love is the most important out of all three of those.  And He doesn't just tell us to love, He tells us to love EXTRAVAGANTLY.  Synonyms for extravagant are absurb or bizarre.  The way we love people should get to the point where it flat out doesn't make sense.  Because at that point, where our love causes people to start asking why, is the point at which love becomes a game changer.  Through that love, people will see Jesus.  And when people see Jesus, lives will change.