Today we conclude our devotionals based on 2 Peter 1. Peter urges us to do our very best to add essential elements of character to our faith. Love is the last on his list. He saves the best for last (2 Pet. 1:7).
The apostle John is often called the apostle of Love. His gospel account is filled with admonition to love, and his three epistles follow suit. John is thought to have been the last surviving apostle, living until the end of the 1st century A.D. Tradition says that John lived out his days around Ephesus, ministering to the churches of Asia. He is reported to have often said in the churches, “Little children, love each other.” This is easy to believe. John wrote, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God…We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:7, 19-21). From John’s letters, it is clear that the problem some have with being children of God, has to do with unwillingness to love God’s children.
Someone said, “There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly becomes any of us to speak ill of the rest of us.” Let us love one another.
To be a child of God is the greatest privilege we have, but we also have responsibility. May God bless us all as we work with his Spirit to develop the character the Father expects of his children. TC
