How to love like Jesus & guard your heart?
Q: How do you love like Jesus and guard your heart? I’m a new believer with no family to ask. I still have much of the Bible to read so specific scripture that would be helpful to me to look more into this and grow.
A: Loving like Jesus means self-giving love rooted in God’s grace.
Guarding your heart means centering your affections on Christ and resisting sin’s pull.
Together, they keep us from either cold self-protection or reckless sentimentality.
So... “loving like Jesus” and “guarding your heart” are not opposites, but two sides of how God sanctifies His people.
Here’s how it fits together:
1. Loving like Jesus
Christ is the standard: Jesus says, “Love one another: just as I have loved you” (John 13:34). His love was self-giving, truth-filled, patient, and sacrificial.
Love flows from grace received. we love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19). Our ability to love others comes from the Spirit, not just willpower.
Practical outworking: Loving like Christ means showing mercy, forgiveness, kindness, truth, and service, even to those who are hard to love. It doesn’t mean enabling sin or abandoning discernment.
2. Guarding your heart
Biblical basis: Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
Christianity emphasis: Guarding your heart means protecting your thoughts, desires, and affections from idols, bitterness, or sin. It’s not about closing yourself off emotionally, but about centering your heart on Christ.
Spirit’s work: The Holy Spirit renews our hearts so that we desire God above all else (Ezek. 36:26). Guarding means actively resisting influences that would pull us from Him.
3. Balancing the two
Love with discernment: Paul prays that love would “abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment” (Phil. 1:9). Christian love is not blind sentimentality; it is wise, truth-guided love.
Boundaries in love: Jesus loved fully yet set boundaries — He withdrew to pray (Mark 1:35), did not entrust Himself to everyone (John 2:24), and confronted sin directly. We can imitate Him by loving sacrificially while not allowing sin, manipulation, or idolatry to consume our hearts.
Guarding enables loving: By guarding our hearts in Christ (Phil. 4:7), we are freed to love others without being enslaved to their approval or crushed by their rejection.
It is important for you to join a local Bible focused church, to be part of the local Christian community, be under their shepherding, to get discipled there,
grow in holiness & be used by God there too. Theyll educate you in Sunday School, fellowship study groups and during services with sermons. Heres helps for finding one and what you need to know about church. Christianity isnt a solo Faith, you are to be an integral active member at a church. š✝️✨️
God bless
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