What Is Authentic Love?

John 13: 34-35

A new command I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 
By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.

All of God's laws and all the prophets' predictions are based on Love, God's Love for us and all Creation, and lay out how we are also to love one another to cooperate with how He designed it all to work. 

Because God loved us so much to provide everything we need, both in this World and for eternity, He wants us to love Him back. 

And when Jesus said He was giving a new commandment, He was enlarging on the commandment that said we are to love one another as we love ourselves. 

As I observe myself and the people around me, I realize that we already relate to one another according to how we see ourselves: those with a poor self-image will aso see others with little value or respect; and those who realize their high worth to God will also treat others with high value and respect. 

Jesus goes way beyond this. He has loved us with a Love greater than we can imagine, a Love that is unconditional and unvariable. There is no way that He could ever love us more, and nothing can cause Him to love us less. God is Love. He is our standard to measure our love against. 

And we are to love one another with this tremendous Love that we receive from Him. When we love each other with this Love, it will be so much beyond the love the World knows, that it will be evident that we are His disciples! No one can love with this Love who has not received it, because it is not in us humanly. 

No matter how much we hurt God's heart, with our rebellion and idolatry and self-centeredness, He still Loves us the same. And when we belong to Him by re-birth, then no matter how far we run from Him, He will always draw us back to Himself. That's how He Loves us. 

O my Father, You are so far beyond what my little human brain can conceive and understand! Your Love for me is what first impressed me when You came to me to save me, and I have learned so much more now about it.  I have experienced Your Love in the deepest sorrow, through the darkest bogs, soaring to the highest heights, and riding on the most glorious joy! Nothing can compare with You, Father; nothing in all Creation can come anywhere near Your magnificent goodness! Your sovereign authority! Your almighty power! 

It is only right and Natural for every knee to kneel to You! For every tongue in every language to lift up Your Name! For every creature in all Creation to worship You and ascribe to You all the praise, all the glory, all the honor, all the blessings that all belong to only You. 

I look eagerly, expecting the Glorious Appearing of my Lord, my King, very soon now; to vanquish all His enemies, to set up His Kingdom on this Earth, to fulfill all the rest of the prophesies spoken and written so long ago, and assume His glorious crown to rule in perfect righteousness. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!