Hello everyone, hope you all have been doing well. Sorry for the late post, it has been a busy day. Anyway, today's verse is Romans 13:10. In a very simple, straightforward way, this verse is reminding us of what is argued to be the most important things mentioned in the Bible. This is love. The Bible mentions love many, many, many other times, one of the most famous one being the golden rule, "treat others how you would want to be treated" or "do unto others as you would have them do to you." Another well-known one would be 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. It is not very hard to treat someone with love, even simple acts like holding a door open for someone can be seen as an act of love. For future notice, the Bible is not talking about the kind of love our culture finds the most interesting, the Bible talks about agape love. Agape love is genuine, selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love. To be able to show true agape love is something every Christian should strive to do. We are called to love others and care for them above ourselves, Jesus called us to do this. Now, by no means does this mean we should not take care of ourselves, as the Bible calls our physical bodies temples for the Lord. It does mean that we shouldn't hit our siblings when they make us angry or help that senior citizen carry their grocery bags. Genuine agape love is about showing hospitality towards others and that we should always be willing to help others, agape can even mean lifting a prayer for someone you know is struggling.
I believe that another important thing to note is the second part of Romans 13:10, which mentions the law. To most people, this does not seem to make too much sense, but it makes a lot of sense. The law that this verse is talking about is not the laws of humans, but the law of God, God is love, God loved us first, therefore we are called by God to share His love with others. God's love is agape love. We are called to show God's agape love.
Challenge time: Agape love is hard to show, but there are many ways to start. Within the next week, do something nice for a stranger, even if it's just saying something nice, try to see if you can begin to show hospitality and agape love 4 times this upcoming week.
God bless you, and may Christ be with you always.