Re: Verse reading—John 15:1-17 (day three)
“I chose you.” Every action that a person carries out takes place in a world in which God has already acted. Before anyone else loved the world, God loved the world, John tells us (both in his gospel and later on in his first letter), and so when we attempt to love someone, we do not do so alone and unaided, for then it would be impossible for us to love. Rather, we do so as a person who has received love from God, and therefore we can love another person. In the same way, before anyone else believed the human race capable of making something good out of the good universe God placed us in, Jesus believed it. Only with his soul-saving power will that happen, but it will happen. He was the first to declare it so.
