03/13/2025
Let's consider this morning how completely God gave of Himself that we should find forgiveness for our sins and everlasting life with Him. Then, let's ask ourselves if we are willing to give ourselves to Him just as completely and with the same total emersion in love. Are we loving Him and our neighbors as we should or has the world formed a hard shell around this ability in us, and has Satan convinced us that in this hardened form it has become a treasure… a pearl?
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”
1 John 4:7 ESV
John 3:16-17 is a wonderful passage of scripture that gives us such reassurance of God's love for us, and at its heart (3:16) says in straightforward fashion that we find life in our belief in Jesus, listen...
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
John 3:16 KJV
And then as a further reassurance He tells us that although we deserved to be condemned that He sent His Son to save us...
“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”
John 3:17 KJV
God gave of Himself that we might live, and He did this out of love. So, the question for us becomes this: Are we ready to love Him back in kind? Are we ready to abandon our own self-interest and will to Him with that same overwhelming and intense love He showed us?
The odd thing about giving ourselves in love... abandoning ourselves to God, is that we do it without really dwelling on what we are giving up, but rather what we are gaining by loving Jesus and our Father God. Love is like that, it is selfless, and we give ourselves completely in it without once considering what we are leaving behind.
Anyone who has ever fallen in love with another knows what I am talking about. It can happen suddenly, gradually over a period of time, or even come with the sudden realization that we now love a person we had previously thought of as our friend, but in every case that moment of love's realization is wonderful and fills us with a focus on our new love without thought for ourselves. Our sole goal is in our holding and becoming like one with the object of our love. We can't touch them enough or stand to be separated from them; we would give up everything for another day with them. Scripture describes this as abiding in one another.
God is love, and love is integral to who we are. Its absence takes away the essence of our being, and if it were possible to remove love from God then He would be a shell of Himself as well.
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 ESV
Giving ourselves to Jesus and the Father is not simply a mental process or a physical act... it is much more than that; it is falling in love, and this is what God feels for us, and why He gives to us so completely.
Love fills us with such mystery that we seek to define it, but even in all our words we can't fully describe it. Poets have slaved over this since the first two words were put together and called language. However, scripture comes close to achieving this goal, but even it falls short and acknowledges the fact of its incomplete nature...
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-10 ESV
So, is it any wonder that love becomes the heart of the two greatest commandments of God? Is there any denying that we should give ourselves completely to Him and one another with total abandon? If we have any doubt then we can return to scripture and read the words of Jesus. They lead us but also tell us why he would endure the cross for us. It was love.
“"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."”
Matthew 22:36-40 ESV
How do we love? Do we love as God loves?
Prayer:
Father, I thank you for your love and loving me as you do. I thank you for loving me with such completeness and abandon that you would send your only begotten son to suffer and die in order to reconcile me to you. Lord, I thank you for raising Jesus from the dead on the third day... it instills such hope in me and lets me know that I have been cleansed from my sins, and will one day be raised from the grave to be eternally with you. Holy Father, I love you with all my heart. I lay awake in the night listening for your voice. I still my breath that I might hear your footfalls coming near. My skin peaks in anticipation as I await the brush of your breath... you are my love and my God; in you I have everything; no remaining wants or desires. And yet, my ability to love is so overwhelming in its nature and magnitude that you must provide me with others to share in it… just as you share yours with me. Thank You Father, your mercy and goodness knows no end, yet in all of who you are, your goodness, mercy, and grace, I find your love... even in your forgiveness of me I see, hear, and feel your love as it courses through me. Jesus abides in me, and I in Him, and as we have done so I find that He abides in you and you in Him as well… in this way He carries me with Him into abode with you. In you I abide, and love with all my body, mind, soul, and strength. You are my all in all, and in you I find my sufficiency. Praised be your name Holy Father for great are you in all things… but especially love; soft, warm, caring, and all-encompassing love.
Amen
“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.”
1 John 4:16 ESV
“Beloved, let us love one 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.”
1 John 4:7-8 ESV
“Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God,”
2 Corinthians 3:4-5 ESV
Rich Forbes