The Love of God

This week, some parts of the world will be celebrating St. Valentine’s Day. Sentimental cards, flowers and candies will be exchanged by people who are in love. While human love is an important part of our life, it is not the most important. For those in love it may seem to be the most important, but the problem is that human love is rather fickle. It ebbs and flows with the hormonal tide. It waxes and wanes with the seasons of life. It rises and falls like average daily temperature statistics.

When love is flowing, waxing and rising, there is nothing better. We are happy and fulfilled. When it is ebbing, waning and falling, nothing is worse. We are in emotional pain and purposeless. In these times, it helps to remember that while romantic love is not the great answer to everything that we may have thought it would be, there is a love which is more than we can imagine.

Throughout the Bible we read of God’s love for humanity. In the Old Testament we find these words of Jeremiah, the prophet: “The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.’” (Jeremiah 31:3 NIV). In the New Testament we find this written by Paul, the apostle: “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions” (Ephesians 2:4-5 NIV). There has never been any question about God’s love for people - the only part of creation which bears the stamp of His image.

Unexpressed love is a kind of anomaly. I can’t imagine true love which is never expressed in one way or another. Sometimes it is verbalized, at others it is expressed in one of an uncountable number of ways, ranging from subtle to bombastic. Though God clearly speaks of His love for us in the Bible, He also expresses it in non-verbal ways.

The apostle John indicates the chief way in which God demonstrated His love. Here’s something he wrote in his first letter. “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (1John 4:9 NIV).

Paul highlighted a significant point about God’s love in his letter to the Romans: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8) . Not only did God actively demonstrate His love, but He took the initiative, not waiting for us to turn toward Him first.

But there’s more. We’ve seen that God’s love was shown to us through the death of His Son for us when we were still His enemies so that we could have life. Then, we learn that it was God’s purpose to not merely save us from eternal death, but to make us His own children by adoption. John wrote: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are” (1 John 3:1)!

To top it off, nothing can get in the way of God’s love for us. Human love can be disrupted by tension in the relationship, geographical distance, changing circumstances, new interests and lots of other things. God’s love, knows no interruption. Listen to what one man who knew God’s love personally in his life wrote: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ...I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35,38-39 NIV).

Ron Hughes
© January 2008