Reading Through The New Testament in 2016 - November 25th - 1 John 5

This reflection has a title. “Loving God’s children.” I don’t normally give these reflections a title, but the question I want you to ask yourself through this is, “How can I love God’s children better?”

When you were born into the kingdom of God, you were born to love. Because God is love. The second part of the first verse starts off incredibly strong: “and everyone who loves the Father loves his children, too.”

So, if we are to love God’s children, we first need to figure out who God’s children are. Well, let’s look at the previous chapter. 1 John 3:10 says “So no we can tell who are children of God and who are children of the devil. Anyone who does not live righteously and does not love other believers does not belong to God.”

While at a first glance, that seems harsh. But I don’t think it is. Essentially someone who is God’s child is someone who loves others. So, to be a child of God, you need to love others. For you to love others is to be a child of God. These verses are well connected; I think and just go to show how important it is to love others. So, we cannot become a child of God until we start loving other believers.

So, here’s my question for you. Is there someone who you don’t love? Is there people in your life that you hate? Because I don’t think we can be a child of God and hate our neighbor. We can disagree with them. We can correct them. But we cannot hate them. So, let’s go and love God’s children. Because the act of loving God’s children makes you become a child of God.