Day 11: God is Loving
Day 11: God is Loving
"Beloved, let us love another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 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 may live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he has loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." - 1 John 4: 7-9
God is love. God's love was made manifest to us in the death and resurrection of his Son Jesus so that we might live. We know that God is love because he was willing to send his Son to take on the entirety of His wrath towards our sin. Everything we deserved, he put on his Son, and His Son willingly took. Jesus states in John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends." We are God's friends. The greatest love is shown in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Do you ever doubt God's love for you? My friend, all you must do is remember that pinnacle moment of God's redemption, the cross. God didn't even spare his own Son, but willing gave him up. "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." The whole Bible is the accumulation of God demonstrating his love for us through redeeming a people (the church) to himself.
"May we have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length, and the height and the depth, to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."(Ephesians 3:18-19) May we know God's love for us that we might help others to know His love for them.
Prayer
Father, I thank you that from eternity past, you have loved me. Thank you for demonstrating your love for me by sending your Son to take on the punishment I deserve for my sin that I might have life in you. I pray that I would know, experience, and delight in your love today. I pray that I would love others in the same way that you have loved me. Would you empower me by your Spirit to love my family, friends, co-workers, and others around me as you have loved me?