What is Radical Love?

As Valentine’s Day arrives tomorrow and love is its primary focus, I am reminded of an extraordinary love…a radical love.

This love modeled by Jesus and demonstrated in the lives of His followers during the first century is recorded by Aristedes when he was commissioned by the king to spy on the Christians and come back with a report of what he saw. This is what he writes,

“And their oppressors they comfort and make them their friends;
they do good to their enemies…
And when they see a stranger, they take him in to their homes
and rejoice over him as a very brother;
for they do not call them brethren after the flesh,
but brethren after the spirit and in God…
And if they hear that one of their number
is imprisoned or afflicted on account of the name of the Messiah,
all of them anxiously minister to his necessity,
and if it is possible to redeem him, they set him free.
and if there is among them any that is poor and needy,
and if they have no spare food,
they fast two or three days in order to supply
to the needy their lack of food.”

I wonder, if the Body of Christ, God’s representation in the world today, began to live the directions God provides in the Bible for His people, wouldn’t the world take notice? We would be a peculiar people the world could not ignore.

Let’s decide this Valentine’s Day to live a love greater than our world today has ever seen. Let’s explore the life Jesus lived out before us and pray for ways to emulate Him each and every day in all we do. Let’s seek to live His radical, powerful, unable to be ignored love so the world might truly see Jesus in us!