We don’t have to go knocking on God’s door to beg Him to love us. This devotional reading looks at how God loves us first.
Nuggets
- We can know God by His love.
- God expresses His love through His actions toward us.
We call it religion. Religion is worship of a higher power.
Here at Seeking God with Elaine, we know that is really about is being a relationship. The foundation of that relationship is love. It’s goal is love.
That love is unsolicited love. Program note: this went long, so I had to break it into two devotions. I’m keeping the connections and application to the next devotion.
Let’s look to see how God gives us unsolicited love.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the On the Day of the Lord theme, click the button below.
Devotions in the Getting Started in Revelation study
The foundation of this series is Witherspoon’s sermon The Love of Christ in Redemption.
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We the People
God Loved Us First
“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I Jn. 4: 8-10 ESV)
We can know God by His love.
God loved us before we were created. Nothing in this world could match it.
God could see that all mankind had sinned. The Jews were not exempted here. In fact, the world was so entrenched in sin that it did not know its Savior when He came – even the Jews.
What does John mean by his statement that “Anyone who does not love does not know God …” (I Jn. 4: 8 ESV)?
No, not everyone loves. We know, know of, or have heard of people who seem to hate everyone. Sometimes, their explanations for their reason to hate appears to be valid. Sometimes, they are just valid in their own delusional world.
God isn’t about hate. He wants us to love each other. “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (I Jn, 4: 20 ESV).
The thing is, is that God is love. “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (I Jn. 4: 16 ESV).
When we long for love, we find love — God.
Do we really want a love that can be determined solely through logic?
There is so much about God that is hard for us to understand. He is Omnipotent and Omniscient. He is self-existent and immortal. He is righteous and holy.
But what do all those things mean practically?
When we think of God as love, we can understand. It takes it out of our imagination and consciousness and puts it into us.
Look what Mant said. He wrote, “He [John] does not say that God is benevolent, or kind, or merciful, or compassionate, or affectionate: he does not say that God is a Being of infinite goodness, or mercy, or loving kindness: but, as if he intended to magnify above measure this most adorable of the Divine attributes, he pronounces Him to be the quality in the abstract, and thus, as it were, identifies the Godhead with love.
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If God was only benevolent — well-meaning and kind — would we really understand the reason for Him sending His Son to die? That Sacrifice would seem over the top.
The same can be said for merciful and compassionate. Those seem too small a characteristic for such a painful, humiliating death.
We are not going to fully understand Who God is. We can only understand the small portion of Himself that He has revealed to us.
We can’t run this through the world’s definition of love. Love does not have tolerance and indulgence as components.
Some might ask if it is really love for God to create us only to banish us because we disobeyed Him. Doesn’t that show true love?
Would we rather mankind never have been created? Would we rather God not give us the chance to make our own decisions? Would we rather Gd never gave us a second chance?
Vaughan argued that mankind is better because of our fall from grace. No fall, no Jesus.
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So many see the pain and suffering occurring in the world and think it is all God’s fault. It isn’t.
God did not create a world where poverty, hatred, disease, and death was a part. That is all man’s doing. Those are the results of the original sin.
Let’s look at it this way. Tom and Sally have a baby named Elaine. Elaine crawls up the oven door handles to pull a pan of boiling water off onto herself.
It isn’t Tom and Sally’s fault for having a baby. It is Elaine’s fault because she wasn’t supposed to touch what was on the hot stove.
We have to remember that all the trials we suffer in this world are growing us to be more like God. It is training us for the world that is described in the Book of Revelation.
All things flow out of God’s love.
God gives His salvation freely to everyone. “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (II Pet. 3: 9 ESV).
God loved us first. He didn’t expect us to clean up our acts and then come to Him for salvation. God calls us to salvation – then to holiness.
- “Who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began” (II Tim. 1: 9 ESV).
- “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5: 8 ESV).
- “but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’” (I Pet. 1: 15-16 ESV).
Even if we are unaware that God loves us, He does. He loves non-believers as well as believers.
God’s love is not like our love. Our love is a feeling or emotion that we have. God’s love is an elemental part of His being.
God’s love – like His other attributes – are immortal and self-existent.
How God’s Love Is Shown
“but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5: 8 ESV)
God expresses His love through His actions toward us.
One thing I hadn’t thought about before is, while God’s love is everlasting, it is shown through things that are not. It is shown through circumstances, some which may last only a short amount of time.
We know that God gave His laws and commandments to the Wilderness Wanderers. We also know they – and us – could/can never keep them perfectly.
No, God didn’t give the laws and commandments to Moses so everyone could fail. He gave them so we could see that we need a Savior.
When God designed the Plan of Salvation and Jesus accomplished it, They knew more people than not wouldn’t accept. Jesus even said that. “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Mt. 7: 13-14 ESV).
In Elaine-speak. God didn’t say, “Hey! The majority of mankind didn’t like it that Adam and Eve sinned. So, I am going to fix a way for them to come back to Me.”
No, He said, “Most of mankind wants to sin. But I know some of them want to follow Me, so I will provide a way that they can.”
Jesus was sent by God because of love of mankind. This wasn’t only for the ones He knew would accept His gift. It was for all, even if they wouldn’t accept.
God did not make non-believers not accept His gift. He is sad when we do not.
Jesus didn’t come to us as the messenger. He was the promised message. His sole purpose of coming was to deliver us from the punishment our sins.
- “who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time” (I Tim. 2: 6 ESV).
- “Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand” (Isa. 53: 10 ESV).
- “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins” (Rom. 3: 25 ESV)
- “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life” (Lev. 17: 11 ESV).
Jesus is the propitiation – the substitute – that is offered to avoid God’s wrath.
We were flawed. We were made in Adam’s image, so we could not be the substitute for ourselves.
Only Jesus could be the substitute. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (II Cor. 5: 21 EV).
God’s love is “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world” (I Jn. 4: 16-17 ESV).
Love is perfected in us through sanctification. We are made new creations. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2: 20 ESV).
This perfected love is shown through our love to others.
God’s love does not make this a prosperity gospel. His love is not necessarily shown through the best cars, the biggest houses, and a serene life.
How do we become a child of God? “Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God’” (Jn. 3: 3 ESV).
Gibbon explained what born again really means. He wrote, “To become truly a son he must be born again — must of his own choice accept as his father the parent Providence gave him, and must by his own love and conduct make the house in which Providence placed him a home.”
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We have to choose to accept God as our Heavenly Father. We have to choose to love and obey Him by following His laws and commandments.
What is born again in our soul. That is the part of us that is immortal.
Our souls are also programmed to seek God. We want our soul to be like God.
Christ’s life, death, and resurrection are a result of God’s love, not just His act. God made a conscious decision to send Jesus for our redemption. Jesus came because He was sent – and because He was willing to be the Sacrifice.
Since God’s love is for all, His salvation is for all.
If love wasn’t the foundation, would we be able to believe it? I don’t think so. Salvation isn’t salvation without love.
What Father would send His Son to die a horrible death if that death did not serve a purpose, a purpose based on love?
Father God. We are humbled that You love us so much. To send Your Son to die for us after we disobeyed You shows this love to its fullest. Thank You, Lord, for salvation. Amen.
What do you think?
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