1 John 4:16 – And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
Growing up I had heard the quote “I never met a man I didn’t like.” When I heard it I thought that it was amazing. But I came to understand that liking a person does not mean that one approves of, or likes, everything about another. It means finding in a person something to like. In fact, it is likely that no-one likes absolutely everything about any person they have known for any prolonged period of time. We may accept and like a person completely, but if the truth be known, there is always something within a person that is not a good trait. Any remark that any person is “perfect” is spurious and ought not to be accepted. We are all flawed. It’s who we are. Only Jesus was not flawed. Only Jesus was perfect. But the rest of us, even the very best of us, are all flawed. We can love the whole, but in truth, there are those parts!
God loves us and He knows all our flaws even more than we do. Still He wholly loves us. Does He love the sinful parts of us? No. But He loves us beyond understanding and for those who love His Son that love will never cease. Family, Jesus, God in the flesh, told us that in order to fulfill all the law from God it comes down to two commandments, to love God with all that we are and to love each other more than we love ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40). In fact, through His Apostle Paul, Jesus has also told us to place the interest of others above our own interests (Philippians 2:3-8), just as Jesus Himself did regarding all of us. Jesus subjected Himself to great pain, agony and suffering for our benefit, not for His own. Jesus thought of us before Himself. God thought of us before Himself. If God the Father sent His very own Son to die for all of us, personally for each of us, then how surpassingly great is that love? “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son…” John 3:16. Romans 8:32 “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all…” That is God’s love. It is not love that needs to be conjured up but a love that is pre-existing within Him and so it pre-exists for us to be born into. It pre-exists us and when we are created it has been waiting for us infinitely from the past (Jeremiah 31:3, Romans 8:31-39). We ask ourselves how long has that been? Well whatever we come up with, it was longer than that.
It is right and proper and God ordained to love each other. It is one way that the Lord uses us to bring His blessings to each other. Yet, the love that matters first and foremost is the love of God for us. It is what has saved us and what eternally keeps us saved. Of all the ways that we can and do bless each other, none of us can save another’s eternal soul. Only God can do that. Only God has done that. So let us cling to God’s love, let us cling to God. That is where peace and security are. Let’s love God before all as He has loved us before all. And let us love one another with the love that He pours onto, and into, us. Praise our God who loves us! Praise our God!
Psalm 150:6 – Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord!
Micah 7:7 – But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.
Micah 6:8 – He has shown You, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of You but to do justly, to love mercy, And to walk humbly with Your God.