Perfected Love

A powerful example of the world seeing God through the love of the church is Acts 2:44-47. The people in Jerusalem saw the way the believers treated one another, and they wanted to be a part.

Perfected Love

"No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us."

(1 John 4:12)

A powerful example of the world seeing God through the love of the church is Acts 2:44-47. The people in Jerusalem saw the way the believers treated one another, and they wanted to be a part.

Look at the last part of verse 12: God's love is perfected or completed in us when we love others. John Stott says, "It would be hard to exaggerate the greatness of this conception. . . . And we must not stagger at the majesty of this conclusion. . . . God's love which originates in Himself (1 John 4:7, 8) and was manifested in His Son (vv. 9, 10) is perfected in His people (v. 12). God's love for us is perfected only when it is reproduced in us . . . in the Christian fellowship. We are to love each other, first because God is love (vv. 8, 9), secondly because God loved us (vv. 10, 11), and thirdly because, if we do love one another, God dwells in us and His love is perfected in us (v. 12)" (The Epistles of John, p. 164).

We will know that the love of God is perfected or completed in us when we love others and sacrifice for others.

In his book, Who Switched the Price Tags?, Tony Campolo tells the following true story (taken from Chuck Swindoll's Tale of the Tardy Oxcart, p. 6-7):

"Tony Campolo tells the true story of a Jewish boy who suffered under the Nazis in World War II. He was living in a small Polish village when he and all the other Jews in the vicinity were rounded up by Nazi SS troops and sentenced to death. This boy joined his neighbors in digging a shallow ditch for their graves, then faced the firing squad with his parents. Sprayed with machine-gun fire, bodies fell into the ditch, and the Nazis covered the crumpled bodies with dirt. But none of the bullets hit the little boy. He was splattered with the blood of his parents, and when they fell into the ditch, he pretended to be dead and fell on top of them. The grave was so shallow that the thin covering of dirt did not prevent air from getting through to him so that he could breathe.

"Several hours later, when darkness fell, he clawed his way out of the grave. With blood and dirt caked to his little body, he made his way to the nearest house and begged for help. Recognizing him as one of the Jewish boys marked for death, he was turned away at house after house as people feared getting into trouble with the SS troops. Then something inside seemed to guide him to say something that was very strange for a Jewish boy to say. When the next family responded to his timid knocking in the still of the night, they heard him cry, 'Don't you recognize me? I am the Jesus you say you love.' After a poignant pause, the woman who stood in the doorway swept him into her arms and kissed him. From that day on, the members of that family cared for that boy as though he was one of their own."

The family that took in the abandoned Jewish boy demonstrated genuine agape love. May God empower us to love like that.