Left With Love

DEVOTION 1 PETER LEFT WITH LOVE 1 Peter 4:8 8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. NIV This would mean there can be no judging at all, no criticism, no being critical at all, not a single shred of plunking splinters from another’s eye, not even a hint of any of this, if love covers a multitude of sins. Maybe we use that excuse, “Because I love you, I have to tell you what you are doing wrong”. Maybe it is just our nature to find fault with others while overlooking our own. That is the splinter and log thing. Maybe we just enjoy having a critical spirit and derive some pleasure in looking for ways to make others feel guilty. Maybe it makes us feel a bit superior, more spiritual or a better Christian because we don’t do those things, or have those faults we find in the other person, of course that is thinking more of ourselves then we should, and that is sin also. Back to that splinter and log thing. So we have to be left with love each other deeply. This is the Agape love not the Agapao love. The Agapao love is in a moral of social sense, but Agape love is benevolent, love feast sort of love. This is the type of love which God loves us with and of course we know that He has covered the entire multitude of our sin with the blood of Jesus. He has forgiven us completely, holding nothing against us at all, because He has forgotten our sin. That is far more than we might say about our dear brothers and sister in Christ. It seems forgiveness does not always include forgetting, for we might well what to remember just in case we need to bring it up again at the appropriate time in a heated discussion. Should we not just love, and cover all those faults, those sins with the blood of Jesus? Should we not start each day as if all our fellow believers have never ever sinned and are not going to either today, but if they do, no big deal, because we love them and we have the covered, as well as we sure are perfect either and we what them to have us covered. Why would we want them to criticize or judge us? So then why we do that to them? Should we do onto them as they do unto us? Or should we do want we want them to do unto us? Therefore we are left with love.