If you could narrow it down what would you say is the one distinctive quality of a Christ-follower?

Here are some things that don’t make it:

  • going to Bible studies;
  • going to Church;
  • going to a worship service;
  • being around a lot of Christians;
  • praying;
  • believing all the things that other Christians say you need to believe;
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    Don’t get me wrong.  These can be great AND necessary things to grow as a Christ-follower but I don’t see any of these in Scripture as being a distinctive quality of a Christ-follower.

    Today I read:

    7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

    8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 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. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 John 4:7-8).

    It struck me as I read this that LOVE is THE distinctive quality of a Christ-follower.  Now this is not a new thought, it is a revolutionary thought.

    Love is the action that sets Christ-followers apart from everyone else.  Not just any love, but a Jesus-like love.  A love that is sacrificial to anyone and everyone.  Love is how people will know we follow Jesus.

    Again, this is something you have heard before as I have too.  It is something we “know”.  But is the knowing being applied everyday?  Today it struck me that I try to focus on so many things when it comes to following Jesus when the one thing that matters most is to ask, “How am I loving others today?”