The Best Love Story
At this time of year there is a lot of talk about love. The shops are full of ways in which we can demonstrate our love to that special person in our lives. Too often we take on board this message and it influences our understanding of true love. It is therefore good to go back to the Bible and consider what it says about love and the Originator of love!
The five Bible passages below describe God’s love. They are very familiar passages but our hope is that as you read and meditate upon them God will give you a fresh revelation of His supreme love for you. You might want to take one passage a day for the next five days and enjoy His love again!
God is love – 1 John 4:8
It is no wonder that love is such a big theme throughout the Bible and why we humans focus on it so much. God Himself is love and so when we consider love we are contemplating the divine. The fact that God is love should elevate and expand our horizons when it comes to our expectations of love. The problem is that too often we can go on to reduce our view of God to fit with our experience of love.
God’s character is wholly consistent. If God is love His love must be gracious because He is gracious. His love must be unchanging because He is unchanging. His love must be eternal because He is eternal. His love must be pure and holy and blameless because He is all of those things. His love must be just, merciful and righteous because that is who God is.
Let us not fall into the trap of reducing the love of God to the parameters the world gives for love but instead allow our vision to be filled with His love is because ‘God is love’.
Why not choose an aspect of God’s character and consider what that reveals about the nature of God’s love?
God’s love is big – Ephesians 3:14-21
Here Paul prays for the Ephesians that they will be rooted and grounded in a love that is so vast, so complete, so all-encompassing that we need God’s own power to grasp it! It’s like its length represents eternity past that will continue into eternity future; its width represents the whole of humanity; its depth represents the depths it reaches in lifting us from the pit of sin and rebellion, it rescues us from the clutches of hell; and its height represents the very throne-room of heaven which his love lifts us to.
No wonder we need his power to grasp its extent!
How big is your view of God’s love? Why not spend some time reflecting on the cosmic and eternal nature of His love and pray for power to grasp it?
God’s love saves – John 3:16
This is probably the best-known verse in the Bible and it describes a truly remarkable thing. God’s love for the world is so significant that He was willing to sacrifice His only Son for us to be saved. The sending of Jesus led to an horrific death on a cross. It led to the most unimaginable suffering anyone could ever experience. And it was God’s love for us which consigned Jesus to such horrors.
In all this, God’s motivation was that He loved us. And the result of all this was that we could believe in Him and instead of experiencing the same punishment as Jesus experienced on our behalf we could instead possess eternal life.
Spend some time meditating on these very well-known words. Take each part of the verse slowly and turn your thoughts into praise. What a great salvation!
God’s love demonstrated – Romans 5:6-11
These verses shine a strong light on our utter unworthiness and inability to do anything to save ourselves. The initiative and action in our salvation is entirely on God’s side who demonstrated His love by sending His Son to die for our sins. At the point of God’s love-demonstration we are described as helpless (v6), ungodly (v6), sinners (v8) and enemies (v10). It is in that state in which God reaches out to us, reconciles us to Himself and invites us to be part of His family.
From helpless to saved; ungodly to righteous; sinners to saints; enemies to friends. We now stand reconciled to Him and in that we praise (v11).
Spend some time thanking God for the fact that He loved you when you still hated Him. Be amazed again at the gospel!
God’s love impacts ours – 1 John 4:7-21
There is so much related to God’s love to explore in this passage! Why not read it and search for yourself? A few possibilities to get you started:
• John’s wonderful description of God’s saving love and the fact that He sent His Son to deal with our sins (vv9,10).
• The descriptions of how God’s love for us should inspire us to love one another (vv7,11,20,21).
• The fact that there is no fear in love, but instead fear is cast out by perfect love (v18).
• The reason we love is only because He loved us first (v19).
What is God highlighting from this passage for you? What does your love for others look like?
Becky Floy recently spoke about the love passage in 1 Corinthians 13.
