This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another. If any one of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in you? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. Those who keep his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us. 1 John 3:16-24
The mark of Jesus Christ when He laid down (give up willingly) His very life for us is love. Not of words but of action. Not of pleasure but of suffering. Not a golden crown but of a crown of thorns. But by His strips, we can then be healed.
We know that we belong to the truth Jesus proclaimed not in labor but in rest because Christ had finished all there needs to be done on the cross. Even if our own hearts and flesh condemns us, we are to stand firmly in His finished work! We have nothing to add onto His finished work, nothing we can do to “redeem us further”, because God in Jesus is greater than our own hearts and flesh. Only in Christ is there life, in flesh there is always death and condemnation.
The confidence we have to come before a great Almighty God, and simply ask and receive from Him like little children comes from the mark of Jesus Christ which is love and truth. We can because we bear the mark when we believe in the Son of God, that is Jesus Christ. We love and keep his words because He love us and live in us, empowering us to do that. He lives in us by the Holy Spirit in us, we too bear the mark of the Holy Spirit. The beautiful mark or fruit of the Holy Spirit in us; see here.
Do you have that mark?
King David 