What kind of love do you exhibit?

Being a loving and kind person all of the time is not always an easy thing to do. Often, things happen to us that cause us to detest a person when we should be loving them despite their actions. Remember that when it comes to sin, we love the person but hate the sin. So the question to you is, what type of love are you exhibiting. Are you showing phileo love. This type of love is often considered "brotherly love." An example of phileo love would be befriending someone or showing brotherly love to them. This type of love is often only exhibited during positive circumstances. Are you the person that is nice to people only when things are going good. Do you show phileo love only or are you someone who shows unconditional love. There is a term for loving unconditionaly and that is called agape love. This type of love is the kind that Jesus has towards us. He loves us despite our actions and despite how much we sin or fall short of the glory of God. This is the type of love where you love someone no matter what they do to you or how bad they hurt you. Think about it this way. Christ loved us so much that He accepted us as we were. Then, once we became Christians, the Holy Spirit began to work in our lives to make us more like Christ. (sanctification) We too should show this agape love by accepting people as they are. No matter what a person looks like, smells like, or acts like, we should love them unconditionally so that we can show them the agape love that Christ first loved us with. (see 1 John 4:19) If we want to be world changers, we cannot let the actions of people to cause us to lose the love of Christ that we have for them. If we do this, then we will lose opportunities to be a light to them. John 15:17 says, "This I command you, that you love one another." (NASB) Showing the love of Christ, agape love, is not an option. This is a command straight from the mouth of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. I believe that adds some authority to this statement and should imply to each and everyone of us that we better love people unconditionally or else we will be judged harshly. Its amazing to think that Christ had such unconditional love for us despite all that we have done that He gave the ultimate act of love. John 15:13 says, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." (NASB) Christ made the ultimate sacrifice of love by giving up His life for the sake of ours. As Christians, we need to get to the point where we would give up our lives for the sake of the souls of others. God bless you!