by Pam Brink

Created on: July 25, 2010   Last Updated: May 01, 2012

Christian love is a choice we make every moment of our lives to live up to the example of Jesus and his teachings. Christian love is not a feeling; it is a decision about how to behave toward others.
 
It is difficult to love a God we cannot see. If we are convinced that we were created in the image and likeness of God, and that we are all reflections of God, then we must treat each other, who we can see, with the love and respect we would treat God.

Love is a word we use every day to express a wide range of emotional attachments from simple liking to a passionate obsession. “I loved that movie. I love my dogs. I love that dress. I love my country. I love my faith. I love my parents, siblings, children, spouse” and so on. We try to express the strength of our feeling by the use of the word “love.” We assume everyone understands that we mean different things in these contexts and that our degree of attachment can range from affection, superficial liking, friendship, to a deep and strong emotional attachment or passion for something or someone else.

Jesus is the role model for Christian Love

Christians understand God from the unique perspective of Jesus’ first disciples. From their witness, we see Jesus describing God as a loving father who is generous beyond anything we can possibly imagine. We see the human person of Jesus going about the countryside, letting people know about his father, showing us as a living example, how we should talk to God and how we should behave in relation to other people   Jesus, by his behavior, modeled what is meant by Christian Love. Jesus passion was to let people know that God loves us, each of us, unconditionally.

If we look closely at how Jesus treated other people, we can see he was not judgmental. He didn’t tell people how to behave or what to do. The most he would say, as in the case of the woman caught in adultery who was to be stoned to death, was “Go and sin no more.” He didn’t criticize the men who had brought her, knowing that they were testing him, saying only, “He who is without sin shall cast the first stone.” Although he had no great respect for the behavior of the Scribes and Pharisees, he still told his disciples to obey them implicitly in matters of The Law, as they were legitimate authorities. He ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, the most despised public sinners of society. What are we to learn from these examples? We are to make

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