Unity Seed – Love One Another: Not Self-Seeking

Key Verse

And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Colossians 3:14 (NIV)

Short Reflection

Time and time again we read in the words from God that love is to be preeminent, to take the very top place, to dominate every action or feeling. Love is an extremely powerful force. It unleashes God’s power to achieve results beyond what we can think or imagine.

So, it should not come as a surprise that Paul writes to the Church in Colosse that we should put on love over all of the other fantastic virtues listed in the previous two verses – compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, and forgiveness. When we do that, “perfect unity” results, and that is what we are looking for in this blog – to answer Jesus’ prayer from John 17 that we would become one as the Father and He are one.

We cannot address the topic of love without turning to God’s words in 1 Corinthians 13. There we read that love is many things and is not many things. One of the things it is not is self-seeking. Those words cut to my very core. If you and I are going to be able to answer Jesus’ prayer for unity, if we are going to be able to love as He loved, if we are going to be able to put on love above all of those other virtues, then we have to go on detox from all of our self-seeking. We have to become other-seeking. We have to become Jesus-seeking.

Lord, let this reader and I be “All for One”, and, as a result, help us refrain from the self-seeking that so dominates our lives.

This is the first in the “Love One Another” series of blog posts.