“9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1 John 4:9-10
God loves us. Believing that God loves us is central to our Christian faith. However, the concept of love in this world is quite different from the love God has for us. As 1 John 4:9-10 points out, God doesn’t show us His love like we do, by sending flowers or writing love songs. God’s ultimate gesture of love is seen at the cross of Christ. It is God’s love that turned an instrument of torture into a symbol of hope and of love. The cross has also become the symbol of our faith and our belonging to God. With Holy Week and Easter just gone, I can’t help but think of Good Friday as good indeed because it was the day Jesus, the Son of God, was crucified in order to forgive our sins and reconcile us to God.
In most relationships, it is not unusual to have to fit in first and adjust to the other person in order to be loved by them. This is not the case with God. The Bible tells us that God reaches out to us because He loves us and wants to be in relationship with us. The whole Scripture communicates the message of God’s love for us. In Romans 5:8, the Apostle Paul writes about of how amazing God’s love is because “[He] demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” What this means is that God paid the highest possible price for our salvation at a time we could not do anything about our sin condition; sin separates us from God and make us inclined to not want to know Him, to reject Him and deny His love. And yet God still showed us His love by sending His only begotten Son, Jesus, to die for our sins so we could be reconciled to Him.
The fact that God loves us has to come first in our journey with Him. As believers, we don’t believe in God in order to be loved and belong. It’s the revelation of God’s love for us by God Himself that leads us to put our faith in Him and accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour. When we believe in Jesus, we become children of God and are part of His family; we belong to Him fully (John 1:12). And we naturally also want others to believe as well. In 2 Corinthians 5:14, Paul writes that it is Christ’s love that compels us. Once we understand the length Jesus went for us and begin to comprehend the depth of God’s love for us, we not only start to change the way we relate to God, we also relate to others differently and are compelled to tell people about the love of God in Jesus.
Even though the Bible is very clear that God loves us, somehow, we can still fall back into trying to earn God’s love and favour through our deeds. But our best effort will always be in vain because the reality is that there is nothing we can do to earn His love; we are already loved.
In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul writes that the most amazing gifts and deeds are worthless, if we do not have love. And from my own journey with God, I can say that serving Him without understanding His love for me and for others is exhausting. And serving others with joy and without grumbling (Philippians 2:14) is certainly impossible without an understanding of His love. When we have a revelation of God’s love for us, it fuels us to serve Him and other well with joy.
In short, ‘We love because He first loved us’ (1 John 4:19). And God’s love makes all the difference. An understanding of this is what changes our lives and can also change the lives of the people around us. In Jesus, we receive God’s love and His love transforms us and compels us to love others and share His love with them as well.
Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins gives us the assurance that we are loved. The Good News of His death and resurrection is cause for rejoicing. When we shared this Good News with people, it is invitation to believe in Him and to belonging to Him and be included in the family of God.
I want to end this reflection with Paul’s prayer for the Philippians as a prayer for you today: “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.” Philippians 1:9.
This is all possible because God loved us first.