My favorite book of the Bible is the Gospel of John. When I was a route salesman for a coffee company many years ago as a young man, one of my customers was a restaurant in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, that was owned by two Amish ladies. In addition to serving delicious meals, they had Christian literature for sale by the register, I bought a paperback titled, “How to be a Christian without being religious.” It was an illustrated version of John’s Gospel. Many years later, when I was a service manager for a pest control company in the Chicago area, one of my technicians announced that he was quitting to go into full time Christian ministry, and I gave him that well-worn paperback. He looked at me and asked, “Do you think I need this?” I smiled and answered, “We all need it, my brother, we all need it.”
In his account of Jesus’ ministry, six times John refers to himself as “the disciple Jesus loved”. It sounds like bragging, especially since John and his brother were nicknamed the sons of thunder. In 1 John chapter four, one of the letters he wrote to the church, there are several very familiar verses about love. “God is love.” “There is no fear in love. Perfect love chases out all fear.” “We love because he first loved us.” “Whoever loves God must love his brother.” I don’t believe John was bragging at all, I think he was in awe of, and obsessed by, Jesus’ love for him; love that Jesus wanted him to share with others. Having experienced that love myself, I fully understand the wonderment John felt.
The Jewish leaders of Jesus’ earthly ministry were religious to the extreme, but that isn’t what God wants us to be. He wants us to worship Him in spirit and in truth (as Jesus told the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well) and then let our actions be directed by the love in our hearts and minds, instead of by rites, rituals or traditions,
A theologian was asked to sum up the entire Bible in one sentence, He replied, “Jesus loves me this I know, because the Bible tells me so.” Spend some time each day in awe that Jesus loves you so much that he gave his life that you can have eternal life by believing in and following him. Then live your life each day sharing that love with those around you,