Love before you lead. Love more than you lead. It really is that simple. If you love well, leadership can follow. This flies in the face of much leadership training and even church consulting, but it is biblical. Jesus talks very little about leadership, and neither does Paul or the other apostles. But, they all talk about love. A lot. The New Testament is filled with instructions to love and disciple. Leadership is a small aside.
Why? Because we do not lord it over them as the gentiles do. Jesus has called his followers to a different way of living and leading and it is rooted in love for him and others. Loving is more risky than leadership, but it is also more godly and more rewarding.
Look at how great a love the Father has given us, that we should be called God’s children. And we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it didn’t know Him
1 John 3:1
1 John is written by the Apostle John near the end of his life. He desires to see churches grow and writes so that the other believers who read his word, can share in fellowship with him and that they may have complete joy in Christ and in one another. John writes with many words of warning to avoid false teachers and to walk in the light of Jesus Christ, but the focus of 1 John is on love.
John writes of the Father’s love for us in 3:1, but in 4:19 John explains that we only love because God first loved us. In 1 John 3:16 he explains that we only know what love is by looking to the cross of Jesus. This is love, “that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”
John intermingled the themes of love and warning against false teachers because the two ideas are not independent of one another. Christians are called to love, but biblical love is not an ignorant love, it is grounded in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Real, biblical love is not built on false promises and lies, it is built on truth. As followers of Jesus, we can love as Christ loved only when we understand who Jesus is and what he has done for us.
Are you concerned about leading well? Begin with love. Are you nervous about false teaching or bad doctrine? Focus on love. You never have to choose between love and truth, so don’t buy the lie. Choose to love in truth and to share truth in love.
- Have you ever seen love for others and a love for truth divorced from one another? What was the result of that separation? How can you maintain a commitment to the truth of God’s word and loving your fellow Christians?
- Pray: Praise God for the love he has shown the world through Christ’s death on the cross. Thank God for loving you first and for inviting the world to love him through Christ. Ask God to help you to understand how to love as he loves.
Photo by Luca Nicoletti on Unsplash
