20. Love

Love – a concern for someone else that is stronger than concern for our self. We are willing to be inconvenienced, willing to suffer loss, willing even to die, for the benefit of someone else. Our love for God must be stronger than our love for any human. Jesus defines what love is not only in giving his life for us, but also giving us instructions about what behaviors are good for other people. We do not help them sin, for example, out of the mistaken idea that we are helping them. We do not always give people what they want (to make ourselves look good, perhaps) but we give them what God says they need.