Living a Reciprocal Life

“We love because he first loved us”- 1 John 4:19

This verse sums up how we should live. As I have written in my two previous posts there are ways that we should be focusing our living and this is possibly the final one…for now. As we move through our journey it is important to remember our redemptive value provided by Jesus on the cross. In that redemptive value we find our life being empowered by the kingdom of God. Our purpose is to draw people’s focus to the cross with the kingdom of God at the center.

Finally, our life should be lived to reciprocate the love Christ has shown to us in His ministry, service, sacrifice, and resurrection. He loved us with reckless abandoned, knowing that His life was going to be taken for that love. His love was unconditional and He poured it out for each and every person He came into contact with. There was no doubt, there was no question of his motives (except for those who felt threatened by His ability to do more than they could), and He had no other reason to love than to reveal God’s glory.

This is our priority in our service. In order to fully do the ministry that Christ called us to do in the Great Commission (Matt. 28) we must love the way He loved. He said “Go and teach the people what I have taught you” and He taught the disciples that world will only know that they truly are His disciples by the way they love each other.

Christians need to love each other. They need to reciprocate the love they have been shown through Christ’s sacrifice and be willing to sacrifice their self to truly do as they were taught. This is how the world will be influenced by us as followers of Christ, when we can sincerely love, serve, and do it without any other motive except bringing glory and honor to God. This is what it means to live a reciprocal life, not because we have to, but because it’s the only proper response for what has been done for us.