Is love really that difficult?

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4:7-12

How simple would it be for us to just live by this? God loves us, he shows his love through Christ and his sacrifice, we accept this as God's love for us, and so we respond by loving each other.

Does Christianity really have to be as difficult as we make it out to be? Should living out the love of Christ really be so difficult?

I get tired of Christianity being about who's right and who's wrong. John told us that if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. In other words, it doesn't matter if we're right if we aren't living what we say we believe. Our believing should lead to loving, or we should seriously question whether or not we actually believe.

Sometimes I forget that this is what it's really all about. We can try to get everything in order so that on the outside it looks like we're amazing Christians. But if we don't actually love others, then we totally missed the point.

I don't think I could say it any better than my former theology professor, Dr. Wittmer, "Genuine Christians never stop serving because they never stop loving, and they never stop loving because they never stop believing."