Love is first. It is the foundational attitude/action/mind-set. Love encompasses what we think, what we feel, what we say and what we do. It is something we all need, we all receive and we all give. But it also something we can all grow in understanding of and in doing better.
For followers of Jesus, love is the stuff of all relationships. Love needs to be seen in every interaction between someone from God's family and anyone else. That's why love is sometimes best seen when someone fails to love.
When someone acts or speaks in a way that causes pain -- emotional or physical -- the natural response is to cause pain in return. To retaliate. Love may defend itself if there is danger. But it does not simply get even. It controls those feelings. It doesn't snap.
Certainly, because of sin, members of God's family do snap. But, as they learn to love, they learn to hold onto their emotions, and snap less. Love does not give full expression to anger. Love absorbs the emotion. it does not let the fire come close to the gas fumes.
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