🌿 ✝️ Love is where to start when following Jesus, because:

• Love is why God the Father sent His Son to save us: John 3:16 .

• Love is why Jesus subjected Himself to becoming human, suffered, and died to save us: Philippians 2:5-8 .

• Without love, nothing else you do matters: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 .

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👥 🌎 When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, out of the 100's of commandments in the old testament, He picked these two: love God and love others: Matthew 22:34-40 . Note that the second commandment "is like" the first.

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🌿 But don't love others out of obligation. We love others because God first loved us and we want to be like Him: 1 John 4:7-21 .

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🌿 👥 Incredibly, God considered us more important than his son. We should consider others more important than ourselves: Philippians 2:3-11, John 13:34-35 .

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👥 🌎 Everything Jesus did was out of love: giving up His position in heaven to become like us, healing, teaching, and feeding people, caring for outcasts, and dying for us to give us forgiveness and eternal life. The evidence that we have truly put our faith in Jesus is that our heart is transformed so we live like Him, loving people:  Matthew 25:31-46 .

• Note: Jesus is not teaching that we are saved by our good works, but that good works will inevitably follow salvation. See Ephesians 2:8-10 .

• This song by Steven Curtis Chapman was inspired by this passage in Matthew: What Now