your _____ will prove to the world

John 13

34 So now I am giving you a new commandment:

        Love each other.

Just as I have loved you,

     you should love each other.

35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples."

So, Jesus said what is the yardstick by which the world will know we belong to Him?

Yeah.... about that...

Loving someone doesn't mean we accept, condone, validate, agree, & concur with every part of who & what a person is.

I seriously doubt if anyone who loves me does that about me!

What I do know is that loving someone means caring about them & valuing them as a person, no matter who or what they are.

It's called unconditional love.

We seem to be in short supply of that these days.

What am I saying? We've ALWAYS been in short supply of it!


Unfortunately, it would seem that people who aren't connected to Jesus may know us for a lot of other things, but love is something they do not automatically associate with Christ followers.

I think it would be redundant & unhelpful to enumerate all of those things they think.

While I know that we've always had to live down people who demonstrate those other characteristics,

     is it just me,

     or does it seem we're having to do it an awful lot more than usual in the last couple or three of decades?


Anyway, Jesus Himself, on the night before He died, was very specific with the disciple.

I would think if I knew I was going to be dead the next day,

     I wouldn't mince words,

     nor be obtuse in anything I would say to people as important to Jesus as His disciples.

I'd be pretty straight with people.

I think Jesus was too that night.

Jesus specifically said to love each other.

And that quality of love would be so special & so profound that the rest of the heathen world would associate & define people who believed in Him by that quality of love.

So, are we gonna read & heed...

     or are we gonna continue on the same erroneous path?