Love each other
Day 402, Wednesday, Sept. 17
John 13:18 – 15:17
What does a Christian look like?
Jesus provides important guidance on how we are to live and model our faith.
In a passage that is familiar to us from the annual Maundy Thursday worship service during Holy Week, we read in 13:34-35:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Just in case this isn’t adequately clear, today’s reading ends with the words, “This is my command: Love each other.”
But love for one another isn’t the only love Jesus talks about in the reading. He also speaks of God’s love for him, his love for God, and his love for his disciples.
Beginning in 15:9 we read, “As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”

-Rev. Mark Fleming

Wednesday meditation

Job 35:1-8
Then Elihu said: “Do you think this is just? You say, ‘I am in the right, not God.’ Yet you ask him, ‘What profit is it to me, and what do I gain by not sinning?’
“I would like to reply to you and to your friends with you. Look up at the heavens and see; gaze at the clouds so high above you. If you sin, how does that affect him? If your sins are many, what does that do to him? If you are righteous, what do you give to him, or what does he receive from your hand? Your wickedness only affects humans like yourself, and your righteousness only other people.

Prayer focus
God, let us love each other to the extent that the world knows us by our love.