Take a moment to read Romans 13:8-14 before reading the devotional below.
Right living isn’t just between you and God — it impacts our relationships too. We can’t truly follow Jesus if we do not treat others with love and compassion. This includes strangers and our closest family members and everyone in between. No one is exempt from the love we are called to give.
As a counselor, I am interested in the concept of “love your neighbor as yourself.” In many ways, that presumes a healthy self-love, but a lot of people struggle with poor self-esteem. When they do not love themselves, they don’t love their neighbor either (in the biblical sense of the word “love”). Think about it: when you are angry or hurting inside you have less to give to others. You are more likely to lash out or even perhaps allow them to treat you poorly. Verse 10 helps us see that all of this is wrong thinking as it says, “Love does no wrong to others.”
Here’s your freedom for today: love will never hurt you. No matter what you have been told about love and no matter how badly you have treated others, you can start again. You begin by acknowledging that you have no understanding of love. Your thoughts are not true. Love does not hurt. If you hurt others, then you have to start over with your concept of love. If others have hurt you, then they have not loved you no matter what they said. Time is running out in this world, and we don’t have time to waste without love. We need it, right now, in every relationship and between God and ourselves. If your relationships are broken, today is the day to decide to start over. Question your understanding of love and turn to the Bible to learn what love really is. A simple search of the word “love” in the Bible will shed a lot of light on how we can understand that word a whole lot better.