At a certain point in my life, I remember God impressing on me the simple but profound importance of love. I know we hear about it often in church, but He kept reminding me that it really is the goal—love for God and love for people. I have to return to this again and again. Amidst all the tasks, responsibilities, and good ideas that fill our minds, it’s so easy to drift from this simple but central truth.
Jesus said that loving God and loving others is the very heart of God’s Word. The Apostle Paul said that love is the greatest of all virtues and that even the most impressive actions mean nothing without it. The Apostle John went further still stating that God is love. Love, then, is not merely something God commands; it is who He is and what He calls us to reflect.
Christian author and pastor Paul E. Billheimer once wrote, “The local church, therefore, may be viewed as a spiritual workshop for the development of agape love. Thus the stresses and strains of a spiritual fellowship offer the ideal situation for the testing and maturing of love… The local congregation is one of the very best laboratories in which individual believers may discover their real spiritual emptiness and begin to grow in agape love.”
In a culture shaped by consumerism and individuality, it can be easy to think of church in terms of what we can get rather than a place to cultivate love and giving. It is easy to assume that if we feel no personal need for the church, we can simply do faith on our own. But Scripture paints a very different picture. The church is not just a place to attend; it is a community in which love is practiced, tested, and matured. It is the training ground of the heart where God shapes us into people who love like He loves.