"Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" (1 John 4:11).

Note the thrust of God's love: it bears in the direction of others like ourselves, whom he loves--our fellow human beings. One of the temptations for those who would be religious is to practice a so-called godliness which focuses on impersonal forms, ceremonies, traditions and ideas. These are not central. God has made this clear by his attention to US. Our moral indebtedness to one another is measured out by nothing less than the magnitude of God's loving act in Jesus.