Responses to His wondrous love, conclusion

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (I John 4:11)

(Hear that claxon horn? That's a warning.....it's a band-aid alert! The Spirit really got my toes on this study, and He may be speaking to you, today, too. Just sayin'.)

Now that we know what wondrous love is; and now that we've been compelled to love Him by putting Him first in our lives.....that should also change how we operate in our relationships with others. Like we said before, that means we show love to Mr. McCranky, and Tommy Whinesalot, and many others!
Before we met Jesus, and before we understood what real, wondrous love looked like, our love for others may have been based on a lack of real understanding. Our love for others may have been conditional ("I love you if you do this and this for me." Or, "I love you if you change to be what I think you should be.").
Or our love for others may have only been reciprocating ("I love you if you are loving toward me.")
It may even have been based only in feelings ("It's rainy; it's Monday; and I had a fight with my kiddos over their curfew; I don't feel like being loving toward others today.")

Anyone nodding their heads at some of those?
Now, since we are believers, our love for others needs to be based in the kind of love that we have experienced from God.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. (I John 3:16-18)

It struck me as I studied that John wasn't just referring to the cross when he wrote about Jesus laying down His life. Maybe that was already evident to you, but it hit me afresh and anew....
It wasn't just His death on the cross. It was also His dying to self -- on a daily basis.

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23)

Taking up our cross means putting our "self" aside. Dying to self. That is what Jesus did; He humbled Himself and washed feet. He said that He came to serve and give His life as a ransom.
We've mentioned before how flippantly "love" is used today; like the soup when we try to stretch it to feed more people, it's watered down! The same word we use to describe how we feel about our precious children is the same one we use to describe the pumpkin-cinnamon muffin we had for breakfast.  I'm sure that all of you already know about the three Greek words for "love:" agape (parent and child), phileo (brotherly/friend), and eros (husband and wife).
Agape love is the love that God shows to us. And that is the love that needs to be what we show to others -- it needs to be what we strive for in our earthly relationships.
Agape love is deep. It's sacrificial. It's unconditional.
And John is telling us too, that love is a verb. It's an action word, like we mentioned a couple of days ago. We can tell others "I love you" but if it is real? We will be showing them. How? By how patient we are with others, how forgiving we are, how generous we are, how much we are willing to be inconvenienced, and more. In short, it will show in how well we are doing at living what we call the Golden Rule.
Showing love in this way is very different from making donations and doing good deeds. We can pretend to be generous and we can rack up loads of good deeds.....in the eyes of the world we can be super-awesome-good folks. But in the eyes of God, have we done anything at all?

To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. (Mark 12:33)

If our service isn't done in love, perhaps God is not pleased, but disgusted. In the Old Testament, and in the New (I'm thinking of Revelation, too) there are references to God's displeasure over religious activities wrongly motivated, and over lukewarm devotion, too.

Wondrous love motivates a response to love and serve Him; it motivates a desire to love and serve others; dying daily to self is not optional. I found two quotes that seemed really appropriate as I studied. William Barclay was a Scottish theologian (love it when I find something awesome in my heritage!):

More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world, and more people have been driven from the church by the hardness and ugliness of so-called Christianity than by all the doubts of the world.

Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and take up His cross.  William Barclay

Love will be the most convincing factor in winning someone to Christ. Our loving response to His love is so important. In the words of a song, "What's love got to do with it?"
Everything. Just everything.