As you read in the last chapter, Christianity is all about relationships, starting with a relationship with God Himself. But the Bible also teaches extensively on the subject of relating well to other people, particularly other believers.

As Jesus prepared to meet with his final earthly destination — the cross — he gave the disciples some final instructions. Among those was this: “This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one';s life for one';s friends” (John 15:12–13).

Jesus came to earth to live, teach, and die so that he could establish a family, and it';s a family of believers who would be tied together by the same kind of love he demonstrated when he gave of himself in every way possible.

The Bible — in both the Old Testament and the New Testament — gives the reader many commands, guidelines, and wisdom on how to lovingly and selflessly operate within that family. Those specific commands can be summed up in the words of Jesus himself: “Love each other.”

The word love as it is used most often in the Bible doesn';t refer to feelings nearly as much as actions. When Jesus told his disciples to “love each other,” he wasn';t telling them to have warm feelings of friendship for one another. He was telling them to do for one another the things that built up and made each of them better servants of God and to avoid doing those things that could drag one another down and keep them from being all God had called them to be.

Much of the Bible gives instructions on how we are to love one another, but you';ll find the most practical and easily applicable guidelines in the proverbs, in the teachings of Jesus (particularly Matthew 5–7), and in the epistles of the apostle Paul, which were more than anything letters of instruction for the operations of churches at that time.