Everyone reading this post is viewing it on some sort of computer screen. The millions or billions of images you can see on your computer is pretty amazing. They captivate our attention, and many of them stun us visually. These displays aren’t some magic mirror on the wall, but they are controlled by the computer code feeding into them.

Turn off the display, mask the code. It’s still present within the computer, but it’s effect on the outside world is limited.

Change the code, change the display. It’s that simple.

In a similar way, God has given us a code to be displayed. He has given us the Gospel: the good news that Jesus has lived, died, and rose again for our sake. We are to be displays for this Gospel.

If we do not display the Gospel by the way we live, then the message of the Gospel will be rendered ineffective. God has made us to be the conduits through which his message is spread throughout the world.

This week’s passage, 1 John 4:7-12, makes this perfectly clear.

God made his love known through Jesus’ love, and now we are called to be the displays of that love for the world around us.

In verse 12, John writes: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”

Though, no one has ever seen God, one of the major ways we know and experience Him is through the love shown by fellow Christians. This can also be extended to the world around us. Those who don’t know the love of God can see and experience who God is when our love for one another is evident in our churches.

A major way the Gospel is communicated is through the love we display in our everyday lives.

In addition to this, as I said before, if you change the code in a computer, you change what is on the display. If we aren’t receiving this Gospel message on a daily basis by spending time in God’s Word, and if we aren’t communing with God regularly, then our lives will look differently. For instance, according to verses 7-8, those who know God will love others. There is a very specific characteristic that our lives will display if we are truly connected to God’s Word: Love.

But if we aren’t connected to God through the Gospel, we will not display the fruit of the Spirit, and so prove ourselves to not know God.

However, if we know God, but fail to dwell upon His great love in the Gospel, our lives will fail to display God’s good news for all of humanity.

So let us be plugged into His Word, and most importantly, let us love others that God’s Gospel might be rightly displayed through our lives.