Love First

Love comes first. It comes before our agendas and our differences. Love is first. It comes before our mission statements and our visions. Love First means that all else begins with love. Love informs the Great Commission of Christ to "Go into all the world making disciples of Jesus Christ"It feeds all we do and all we are in every setting of life.

"I love you". My upbringing and my culture and perhaps yours did not say such things, and if someone heard this phrase, it was all too seldom. The church needs to get used to talking about love.  All too often we drift first to what makes us different or unique, what we stand for, debate, or stand against. In these areas we can speak quickly and often but what about love. Love is First, then we highlight our uniqueness, stands, debates but we do so differently.

Jesus took what was complex and made it simple. In our scriptures what we call the Old Testament is replete with lists of laws. We tend to know about the ten primary laws that we call the Ten Commandments but so many more got added along the way. Jesus says, "Do unto others as you would have them do to you. By this you sum up the law and the prophets". Again when Jesus is participating in a debate a religious leader asks him, "Which is the greatest commandment?" To which Jesus replies, "The greatest is this, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself". To Love First means to live simply and to keep what is most important in life, most important. It means to live in the marketplace, the home, and the places of leisure, yes all of life with the most important (Love) the most important.

What does this love look like? How does it act? Please know that when we speak of love first we are speaking not of a love we create but a love we reflect. God loves first. We are loved with an everlasting love, a divine love. All persons are loved. God's love is not one of simply words but of action. "For God so loved the world that God gave an only son". God's love is real to us because God acted upon that love and gave the most precious gift, Jesus the Christ.

Jesus defines this kind of love often for us in the New Testament prior to that supreme expression of love in the giving of his life for us. Love serves, it is not served. Love risks, it initiates and does not wait for others to love us first before we can express love to them. Love loves the unlovely, even loves our enemy. Love never fails.

The Ohio River Valley of the United Methodist Church claims the theme, "Love First" as it fulfills the mission of the Church-To make Disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. If you read this far and are not a United Methodist or for that matter not a follower of Jesus Christ, come join us in any of our United Methodist churches to experience God's divine love and God's call to love as we have been loved.