The truth is that not many of us find it easy to love others, including myself. It is an almost impossible task to love others in a non-selfish manner. Whether you’re in a romantic relationship, friendship, or any other type of relationship, it is vital to love the other person in order to maintain the relationship. And Jesus raised the bar by saying that we should love others as ourselves! So, I’ll be going over what God says about loving others, how to do it, and why it’s so important.
The Imperative Importance of Loving Others
The Bible makes is vividly clear that loving others is of the utmost importance. God wants people to love others, period. There is no way around it and no substitute. I mean, if you were to deny love, you’d have to deny the prevailing nature of God.
1 John 4:8 World English Bible (WEB)
8 He who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for God is love.
If we expect God to love us since we belong to Him, we should know God loves other people, too. He wants there to be a uniting love among His children. And if God is love, then the heart of God must yearn to see His people acting in love! Is there a better way to demonstrate that we belong to God than loving others?
Even Jesus declared that we must love people, we are supposed to love others as we love ourselves. And that was one of the greatest commandments of Jesus because He said that when we do that, we will automatically do good things which please Him. We wouldn’t be robbing, murdering, lying, or participating in any of that nonsense if we truly loved others.
Matthew 22:39 World English Bible (WEB)
39 A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’Leviticus 19:18
Therefore, the Bible clearly emphasizes how there is so much importance in loving others as yourself.
Loving Others As Yourself? How?
But, this begs the question of how to do it? How do you love people if they’re annoying, irritating, or just plain old boring?
There are many, many, many reasons to not like people. They’re hard to understand, and it seems almost impossible to genuinely love people at times.
However, all the reasons why other people are so unlovable and tick you off, fundamentally results from an imperfection which resides within your own heart. Read the previous sentence slowly to really understand what I’m saying here.
The reason why you cannot love others because of their irritating imperfections, is because you are loving others with the subtle intent or self-centered expectation of benefit from that relationship. You don’t need to take my word for it, take God’s Word as Paul writes in the following scripture.
1 Corinthians 13:4-5 World English Bible (WEB)
4 Love is patient and is kind. Love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud, 5 doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil;
If marriages were not based on self-seeking love, divorce rates would be drastically reduced. I mean, I adore how the Bible is so simple yet so profound. Jesus is the only one who is perfect and He knows every single imperfection which we hold and yet He still loves us!
Moreover, He went through hell for us, for all of us even though He knows all our quirks and imperfections.
Romans 5:7-8 World English Bible (WEB)
7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man. Yet perhaps for a good person someone would even dare to die. 8 But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
The Mystery Behind It All!
Therefore, if you want to love others, you’ve first got to understand the mystery behind it all. The reason why there is so much importance in loving others as yourself is because Jesus loves them. Whether the person’s your marriage partner, your friend, your co-worker, a family member or anyone else, God loves them.
And when you know that God loves them, you should love them just as Jesus loves you. In fact Jesus said it Himself, we can love others when we know that He loves us. If you genuinely know that God loves you, and you ask Him for the grace, you will love others as yourself.
John 13:34-35 World English Bible (WEB)
34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
If you looked for an imperfection, you’d find a thousand in any individual, and God knows that, but those imperfections should not prevent you from loving others. Otherwise, that’d be a self-seeking love and as you’ve seen earlier, the Bible says that love is not self-seeking, by definition.
If God’s love was self-seeking, we’d all be doomed to hell, just think about that! When Jesus loved us, it did not benefit Him, He was nailed to a tree because of His unconditional love for us.
Furthermore, if you want to experience God’s unconditional love and have not yet accepted Him, I urge you to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour. He, being God in the flesh died on the cross so that you would not be punished for your mistakes and He rose again after three days to justify your salvation. So, before loving others, you must first learn His love for you and then realize how to love yourself which I also wrote about in another post.
Spend Time With God and He’ll Do the Rest
So, in conclusion, recognize how much God really loves you, look at that person you find hard to love and just think to yourself… “Wow, God loves them so much that He died for them, they have so much value.” Ask God for the grace to love others and He will grow you in this understanding; you will be able to love others as yourself.
Finally, just seek God, get to know Him and you will love others so spend time with Him in prayer (communion with Holy Spirit), read His love letter (the Bible), and learn about Him though others who’ve walked with Jesus.
1 John 4:7-9 World English Bible (WEB)
7 Beloved, let’s love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves has been born of God, and knows God. 8 He who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for God is love. 9 By this God’s love was revealed in us, that God has sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.