January 17
God is Love
Beloved,
let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born
of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested
the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the
world, that we might live through him
(1 John 4:7-8)
A deranged man has finally tracked down his wife.
She left him some time ago because of his consistent pattern of physical and
emotional abuse. Afraid for her life she has kept herself hidden. But he loves
her so much he must find her. Now that he has her he tells her, “I love you too
much to let you go. If I can’t have you then no one can.” He then pulls out a
gun and kills her.
Some seem to believe that this is the kind of “love”
that God has—one in which He abuses us physically and emotionally and then
kills us when we try to get away from Him. Many of our sermons from the pulpit
have helped to reinforce this false idea about “love” as it relates to God. Is
this what it means for God to be loving?
Notice that God manifests His love toward us by
sacrificing Himself. He sent His only Son in the world to die for sinful
creatures that were in rebellion against Him (Rom. 5:1-8). God is not looking
to hurt us and proves this by His ultimate sacrifice on our behalf. Since God
is love then He is unable to do anything that could hurt or harm others: “Love
worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the
law” (Rom. 13:10).
Within His love God gives us genuine choices. We can
accept or reject His love on our behalf. He does this without coercion.
However, He does warn us about the alternative, which is slavery to Satan and
sin. Nonetheless, God, in His love, begs and pleads with us to choose Him
because only through voluntary submission is He able to protect us from the one
who actually does desire to do us harm.
God’s love is an unselfish love that looks beyond
its own desires to see what it can do for others. God’s love is an
“others-focused” love. This is completely opposite of Satan’s distorted
substitutes that seeks to gratify its own needs and when it is done with its
object, the love is gone (2 Sam. 13:1-20). Wouldn’t you rather have the love
that looks to heal rather than hurt others? Receive God’s love. He permeates
love because He is love.
Buy our devotional book from which today's blog is derived:
No comments:
Post a Comment