THE EXPRESSION OF LOVE.

Love cannot be contained; it must be expressed. God expresses His love in His relentless pursuit of us! He pursued Adam and Eve in the garden, even after they sinned. God’s love and the value He places on us is not dependent on anything we do or don’t do. He pursues every individual with this love because we are His special creation! God’s love to mankind through Jesus is the focus of the whole Bible!

Jesus declared this pursuit when He said, “The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Luke 19:10 KJVER). God pursues us as if we are lost sheep. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6). Our sin nature focuses on self and our own way that leads us away from God. But He placed this waywardness and all our sin on Jesus. God’s loving nature never gives up! We may turn from God, but He never turns away from us.

When a man loves a woman, he pursues her. Adam found what he was looking for in Eve. When he used the word “now” Adam revealed his longing that had been unfulilled thus far. “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” (Genesis 2:23). It was truly love at first sight. He gave her the name Woman, which was akin to his name of Man. And after the fall, he calls her Eve, which means “life.” Adam said Eve was the mother of all living. Many mothers later, the Savior would be born, made of a woman, and bring the way of everlasting life to creation.

 

GOD LOVES US AS MUCH AS HE LOVES JESUS! 

The Father loves us as much as He loves His Son! This is astounding! In Jesus’ prayer to the Father for us, He said, “that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them, as You have loved Me.” (John 17:24). Wow! This deserves some thought. It expresses the depth of His love for us.

LOVE DOES NOT EXIST WITHOUT A BELOVED

Love requires an individual as an object of its love. Love implies a desire for a relationship with the one who is loved. Love is unfulfilled without relationship. God’s love for us motivates His pursuit. Our casual reference to things we say we love, like chocolate, cars, places, etc. indicates a desire to engage with those things. Certainly, there isn’t relationship with things like there is with people. Things cannot love us back. But we never talk about love without connecting it to something or someone.

 

ACCEPTING GOD’S LOVE

We may doubt God’s love, but our doubt does not stop Him from loving us. Like any other truth and doctrine, we must choose to believe it. If we look for it, we will see God’s love throughout the Old and New Testaments! The more I understand God’s love for me, the more clearly I see it in His word, hymns, and songs that tell of His love.

God’s love is in His words and is expressed through His actions. One of these actions is His pursuit of us! God never gave up on Israel, even when He sent them into captivity for their disobedience. He was waiting for their hearts to turn back to Him. He “so loved” us that He “gave” His only Son to redeem and bring us into relationship with Him. He desired this relationship from the beginning.

 

DOUBTING HIS LOVE 

Eve doubted God’s love in the Garden of Eden. She believed Satan’s lie that God was holding back something good from them. Eve didn’t think God was giving them what was best, so she took matters into her own hands. But God always knows what is best. He sees the big picture. We only see things through our lens of experience. And sometimes, we need prescription glasses to see clearly. God’s word is that prescription! Doubt is generated by the natural, “old man,” not from the indwelling Holy Spirit.

We doubt God and His love when we do things our way instead of His. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was the one and only thing God forbade them. Sin lies waiting at our door when we entertain its plausibility. It often leads to doing what God has said is not good for us. But it won’t work out any better for us than it did for Adam and Eve.

God doesn’t pick and choose who He loves. He loves all of us! We may find it hard to love the unlovable, those very different from us, or even those we find difficult. But God sees them as one made in His likeness. And if they are saved, He sees them through His perfect Son, Jesus. If you live in this world, God loves you. “For God so loved the world…” (John 3:16). God loves all!

When we doubt God’s love for us, we condemn ourselves as unworthy of His love. But God loves us despite our unworthiness. “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved.” (John 3:17). Self-condemnation can blind us to the kind of love that comes from God.

 

GOD’S UNSHAKEABLE LOVE DESPITE OUR FAILINGS

 God loves unregenerate, unsaved sinners. “God commends His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8).Why would He love us less as His saved and redeemed people when we fail and sin?

God doesn’t give up. He wants us to know how much He loves us. His love cannot be compared to the human love the kind of love that may have failed us. His agape love is long-suffering. “You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion, and gracious, long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth.” (Psalm 86:15). God’s love “suffers long, and is kind…charity [agape love] never fails” (1 Cor. 13:4,8). God is not only capable of love, He “is love.” (1 John 4:16). God’s agape love is patient.

Adam and Eve hid because of their sin. Sin causes us to hide. It is the nature of the “old man” of sin that tempts us to hide from God. But God pursues. He wants a relationship with us! Separation and isolation are contrary to relationship.

We may not fully understand God’s love. But that’s okay because God is a patient teacher. Truths like the Godhead, creation, and the Holy Spirit living in us are difficult to grasp. They are grand subjects. The love of God is also beyond our comprehension. We are incapable of knowing every person, let alone loving each of them. But God knows and loves the 8+ billion people in the world. We will have eternity to learn and experience the depth of His love!

 

GOD’S LOVE FOR THE INDIVIDUAL

We can know God cares for each and every one of us because of the importance He places on the individual. Jesus tells a parable of the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to find the one lost sheep. “The Son of man is come to save that which was lost…If a man have a hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, does he not leave the ninety and nine, …and seeks that which is gone astray?” (Matt. 18:11,12). The shepherd returns with his lost sheep and rejoices. God rejoices over each person restored to Him.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who gave His life for the sheep (John 10:11). He came first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and then to the Gentiles. God intends the gospel to go to the ends of the earth. God desires to save even the most remote person in the world. Jesus gave His life for all, those near and far, who are willing to believe in Him. There is not one of us, who lives farther or closer to God in Heaven. We are equidistant. Jesus died for all. This should make us concerned for missions around the world.

God knows our name. He is the good shepherd and “calls his own sheep by name,” (John 10:3). None of us are invisible to God. There are many examples throughout the Scripture that Jesus or the Father calls people by name. When we pray for Mary or Joe, or any other name, He knows which Mary or Joe we’re praying for.

 

 PROOF OF HIS LOVE

Giving His Son to die for our sins is the supreme proof of His love. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation [atoning sacrifice, legal satisfaction] for our sins.” (1 John 4:10). Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends…” (John 15:13).

 

NOURISHED AND ENRICHED BY GOD’S LOVE

Only the God of love can teach us about His love. It is through Him that we can comprehend His magnificent love.

“…That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;

 And to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph. 3:16-19).

Knowing the love of Christ goes beyond a knowledge of it. This “knowing” is experiencing God’s love. God loves, nourishes, and cherishes the Believer, even as a husband is to love, nourish, and cherish his wife (Eph. 5:28-30). Though we may fail how we love others, God always loves perfectly.

We are rooted and grounded in God’s love. Things that are rooted in the ground grow. We can grow not only in our understanding of God’s love but also in our experience of it. God’s love has great breadth, length, depth, and height! It’s even more than three-dimensional, it has four dimensions: breadth, length, depth, and height.

Because human love is not as great as God’s love, we have a lot to learn about His love. But He not only teaches us to love others with His agape love, God continues to love us. As a good Father, He loves His children. He is pursuing us with an agape love that “never fails” (1 Cor. 13:8). Because “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and God is eternal, His love for us will never end. He will show His love for us throughout eternity!

For Personal Reflection:

How can you become more aware of His love today?

What do you need to believe about God’s love?

Are you making room for relationship with Him?