God gave-unfailing love

If God is love and love is God, what is love?

Love is a lot of things.Any word, situation, experience we have to describe love is inadequate when compared to the awesome love of God. Our finite minds cannot comprehend it. Love is indescribable. At times we think we know, but we can't. God is love.

God loves us unconditionally and he wants to! God gave and still gives unfailing love.

We don't deserve it, we can't earn it. All we can do is attempt to live, do, be something in return that we can't fully comprehend.


If God gave us something that is unfailing, this love, it would help to understand it. The trouble is that the more we delve into what love is and the more we think we begin to understand it, the more we realize that we can't explain what it is outside fo the perfect love we have in Jesus. And even then we accept it, but do we truly understand it? If we did we would live different lives. We are limited to understanding how big, how great, how deep this love is for us. This love is impossible to grasp, yet is perfect in the simplicity of what it is. Ephesians 3:19 tells us that this love surpasses all knowledge as it is unknowable, but at the same time cannot be completely known.

1 John 4:8-10 tells us that to know God one must love. If one doesn't love one does not know God. But we don't really know what love is so how can we know God?

The scripture goes on to tell us that love is what God did for us--he gave his only (unique) Son. In this way we see love modeled for us. We can't fully grasp it, but we see it in action and can go and do likewise.

Love isn't something that we do for God. Love is what God did for us when he allowed Jesus to dies on the cross for our sins. Our response is the natural out flowing of this love from our spiritual soul to our material sole.

In order to know God one must love. If one does not love, one cannot know God. The Amplified Bible tells us that not only does one not know God if they don't love, but they never knew God. This shows us that this love is unconditional--it is continuous. Truly loving God isn't a phase in life, there isn't a gap during rebellious teenage years--it continues. Real love, true love never ends. It's big. It's worth living for, fighting for, and dying for. That's what Jesus did for us.

When do we "know" someone? When does a person for from being a stranger, to having recognition in your memory, to being an acquaintance, to being "known" by you? To love God isn't to have him as someone you recognize on the street every now and again or even to talk to him occasionally as an acquaintance. To know God is to have a relationship with Him. He who does not have an intimate, personal relationship with God does not love.

God made his love know (apparent) to us be sending Jesus to the earth to die for our sin. In his great love for us he became the atoning sacrifice for our sin. It's difficult to grasp--it seems quite inconceivable if it is done without love. But it wasn't. It was love and that makes all the difference in eternity.

Our sin keeps us from God--all sin does--the confessed din, the secret sin, the "justifiable" sin, the "deniable" sin...all of it keeps us from God, from knowing God and from loving God. Ephesians 2 tells us that we used to be separated from Christ as a result of our sin but that because of Christ's great love for us (vs 5) we have been made alive in Christ.

Is sin the opposite of love? Some say apathy is the opposite of love or hatred is the opposite of love. Elie Wiesel says indifference is its opposite. I think sin is its opposite. Sin separates us from God. Sin damages the intimate, personal relationship. Sin keeps us from knowing God and it damages the connection no matter how "small" we think it is--it still separates us. This is why we strive for a life of holiness.

The more we sin the less we love. Jesus, who was without sin was and is love. He modeled love for us.

We can't love and sin. To know God is to know this love, to depend on it, to rely on it, to live by it and in it, to exist in it.

God gave his unfailing love through His only Son so that we may live through him. We do this by living in love.

How we respond to this unfailing love is in knowing God. Knowing God cannot be kept to oneself. It must be shared, expressed, live and must be evident to all--not just to the people who look, think and smell like you--to all people. The song says "they'll know we are Christians by our love". John 15:9-17 gives us some instructions about how we are to love--just as the Father has loved us. Vs 17 then commands us to love one another.

Ephesians 2 tells us that we are made alive in Christ by this love and that we are to abide in it as it has been modeled for us (Jn 15:10). Our response is to allow this love to control us (2 Cor 5:14) and to love one another (Jn 13:35) as nothing can ever separate us from this love (Ro 8:35-39). This unfailing love surpasses all knowledge (Eph 3:19) and is poured out into our hearts (Ro 5:5).

Do you "know" God? Do you love? This love is the distinguishing mark of Christ's followers (Jn 13:35). Is it distinguishable in your life--in all areas of your life? God gave his unfailing love and this love compels (2 Cor 5:24)--drives us, pushes us, urges us, forces us--to love others. This unfailing love allows us to no longer live for ourselves, but to live for Him.