How deep is the love of Christ?

I have been thinking a lot lately about love and more specifically , about how we as Christians, (believers in Jesus Christ) are supposed to live out love in our lives. I will be the first to admit that in the past I used to become what I called "righteously angry" at certain things people said or positions that they took. This attitude even extended to some who, as I do, call themselves followers of Christ. Lately however, as I read God's word and really look at how Jesus lived His life I have come to see things a bit differently. I have had to ask myself some hard questions like, "How do I live my life before others (believers and non-believers alike), and just as importantly how am I showing love, specifically the love of Christ as it is revealed in His gospel"? I hear Christians say things like, "We have to take our country back for Christ". My thought here is, that seems silly, when was it taken from Him? He is sovereign over everything isn't He? When we say things like this in front of people who don't know Jesus are we showing Christian love? I don't really think we are, and I have in the past been guilty of the same attitudes. If you ask people who aren't Christians about Christians they might say, "well they hate homosexuals". Where did they get that idea? The answer is probably from "Christians".
I am not advocating here that we overlook everything that happens, good or bad, in the name of love. If we ignore or enable evil in our own or someones life that is not love, but if we look at someone who is a broken fallen being just like we are and then say "well, I can't associate with that person, or they don't think like I do", that isn't love either. Most people can quote John 3:16, but most can't quote 1 John 3:16 which says,

"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers."

As believers in Christ, this verse tells us how we are to know love. It shows us the love of Christ, it shows us how deep His love is, He gave his life that we might live and so we ought to do the same. I think as followers of Christ we need to spend more time loving others through His gospel and less time complaining about what we don't like about the world. In closing I think Paul sums it all up perfectly in Ephesians chapter 3,

[14] For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, [15] from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, [16] that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, [17] so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, [18] may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, [19] and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

(Ephesians 3:14-19 ESV)

It is my hope and prayer for all of us as Christians that as Paul prays here in Ephesians, that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith and that we remain rooted and grounded in love, and so we may be filled with the fullness of God and then follow Jesus by showing that love and fullness to others.

Yours in Christ's amazing love, Bob Best