LOVE: PART II

Love is what motivates God

Christmas is the picture of God’s love for us, and that love is what motivated God to send His one and only Son down to earth in the form of a helpless newborn baby. God’s love for us is at the center of Christmas. This is the greatest love that we will ever experience; greater than the love a man feels for his wife, greater than the love a mother feels for her child. God’s love came down to earth that first Advent because He wants us to recognize and experience His love for us.

This is why we celebrate Christmas.

We celebrate this time of year because of the truth in John 3:16, “For God SO LOVED the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”  God doesn’t just love us a little bit, He loves us SO much! He desires good things for us even though we don’t deserve anything good from Him because of our sin. How often do we throw His love aside, choosing our sin over Him time and again? 

We sin…yet He still loves us! 

This doesn’t mean that He approves of our sinful conduct. 

He isn’t permissive of our wickedness. 

God doesn’t love our sinfulness, but He does love us in the midst of our sin. 

He loves us right there in all of our mess and filth, He doesn’t wait for us to be clean or perfect, He loves each one of us too much to leave us in our hopeless sin-condition. He hates evil, wickedness, selfishness and pride. He hates sin. 

He knows the destructive power of sin and desires to replace it with the life giving power of His Spirit.

He hates it because sin creates a deep divide between He and the sinner. When we choose sin over Him, we choose the counterfeit thrill of sin over a relationship with the Lord Most High.

God is holy; Isaiah 6:3 says, “And one cried out to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!’ His holiness and our sinfulness cannot coexist together, just as darkness and light can’t dwell in the same space, neither can holiness and sin. 

Isaiah describes what he experienced when he came face to face with it, “And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said: ‘Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.’” 

God’s holiness can’t be taken lightly.

He wants to dwell with us, but because we choose sin over a relationship with Him we’re in a state of hopeless separation from Him. Separation from the God who created us for fellowship with Him. He wasn’t the cause of that divide, we are; our sins are what keep us estranged from the God who loves us. 

God longs to give us good things; in John 10:10 Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it abundantly.” He desires to see good things fill our lives, He thrills in our happiness and joy. It’s sin that gets in the way of that abundant life.

So what did God do to solve this holy dilemma? He didn’t just throw His hands up in the air, giving up on all humanity. Why not? Why didn’t He just get rid of the sin, evil and wickedness in the world? With one word He could eliminate sin once and for all. But in order to get rid of evil in the world He would have to completely remove those who do the sinning…and that would be every single one of us. He could wipe out mankind with a breath, with a flood, fire, or plague in an instant. But He didn’t do that, because of love. “

Love is what motivates God to not do that. The rest of John 3:16 tells us why, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him SHOULD NOT PERISH but have everlasting life.” He doesn’t want ANYONE to perish because He loves us! Instead, He came up with a plan that would rescue us from the consequence of our sin. He made a way where there was no way in order that we could escape eternal death and know the promise of eternal life with Him. 

Love is the reason that God came down to us. Can we just take a second and really reflect on what that means? 

God, the creator of the universe, the Great I AM, the holy and righteous King of the world, chose to come down to earth and dwell with us in all of our messy humanness, in order that we could dwell with Him…because of love. He chose to send His only son to experience all that is humanity….because of love. He chose to give Jesus as a ransom for our sins…because of love. The beauty and wonder of the Christmas story told in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as tof the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” 

GOD CAME DOWN TO DWELL AMONG US…BECAUSE OF LOVE

God demonstrated how much He loves us through Jesus. Ephesians 2:4 tells us, “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.” 

Why do we celebrate Christmas? Because God’s love is demonstrated in the story of Christ’s birth. 

Love is what motivates God, and this is the kind of Love that should motivate us.

The revelation of God’s love in the Advent of Christ changes the way we view our motivation to love, not just at Christmas time but ALL the time.  God is the definition of love and that should translate into how we choose to love others. This means not just loving with limitations of our natural human understanding and ability, but to love in the fullness and complete knowledge of God’s love.

Accepting God’s love automatically results in the supernatural ability to love others well. To love even when we don’t feel like it, when we are drained by the weight of the world and its burdens and don’t have the ability to love deeply. To love those who are difficult to love, who are prickly and offensive and don’t return the love we offer. On our own we don’t have the ability to pour love like this; but with God we do.

We find a deep well of truth in these verses from John 4: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. For God is love…Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another…If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us…And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” 

Love is the greatest virtue that God gives us.  “And now abide faith, hope, love these three; but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13.

Love is a virtue of God; faith and hope are beautiful qualities given to us from God, but they aren’t part of His character. God has no need for faith or hope; we put OUR faith and hope in Him, but He sees the entire scope of mankind, from beginning to end and doesn’t need either to endure like we do. Faith and hope are the attitude and focus that we have in an ever changing world, love is the action we take to express where we put our faith and hope. Loving others becomes second nature when the first two virtues are in correct alignment, because we know how God would have us love one another well. 

To practice faith or hope without love only leads to distortion, disunity and dysfunction. We need God’s love in order to love others wholly. To love on our own is still love, but it’s an imperfect and incomplete kind of love. God gives us the ability to love others the way that He loves, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” John 13:34

Love perfectly demonstrates and fulfills what God requires of us in relationship with one another. Colossians 3 tells us to “Put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another.” The only way that we can do any of this is if we “put on” love; that supernatural kind of love that only comes from God, poured into the hearts of Believers and acting as the adhesive that binds us all together. “But above all these things, put on love which is the bond of perfection.” 

We make loving others well so much more complicated than it has to be. God makes it simple…Love Him and love others. We love because He loves us. Jesus reminds us  how to do this in Mark 12:30-31, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” We love God with everything in us, heart, sould, mind and strength, and then He gives us the ability and the knowledge to love others greatly. 

“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” 1 John 4:11. Not just at Christmastime, but ALL the time.

We are motivated to love others well because of God’s love for us.