Oh How He Loves Us

[Gloria]

God Is Love

“Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” ( John 4:7b–8)
Reflection: The Greek word for love used in the above quotation is agape, which delights in giving. This self-sacrificing love holds the object of love in high esteem. Because it delights in self-sacrifice, it keeps on loving even when the one loved fails to respond. In other words, agape is unconditional love.

The author of the First Letter of John uniquely writes that “God is love.” God delights in giving himself to us. God takes great pleasure in sharing who he is with his creation. In fact, God self-sacrifices himself—and takes great delight in doing so—because he gets great pleasure from loving even when we, the object of his love, fail to respond. God never stops loving, as it is his very nature to do so.

The author of the First Letter of John repeats himself a few verses later, declaring again, “God is love” (1 John 4:16b). Then, he adds, “and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 John 16:b). This means that the God who is love finds us acceptable or worthy of his love and is willing to await a response from us. While he waits, he continues to live in us, to reside in us. Even if we do not respond to God’s love, our lack of response does not remove the fact that God’s essence is self-sacrificing love. God’s very being is love, according to the author of the First Letter of John. God as love is revealed to us through Christ, whose death shows us the very nature of God as love. God never stops giving away himself because it is his very nature to do so.

In what specific ways have you experienced God’s love? What response did you make? Is there a time when you were unresponsive to God, who loved you anyway?

Prayer: O God, you are love, and those who abide in love abide in you and you abide in them. I praise you for your delight in loving me and ask that you continue today, tomorrow, and forever and ever. Amen.


Mark G. Boyer, Love Addict

 

[Gloria]

Source of Love


“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God . . . .” John 4:7
Reflection: Because God is love, God is the source of love poured into creation. The self-sacrificing God freely shares his love with everything he made. Earlier in his First Letter, John exclaims, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God” ( John 3:1a).

In other words, the origin of all love, God, changes us by his love for us. Just as the love of one person for another changes the other, when God loves, people are changed by the source of love. In his Letter to the Romans, Paul writes about “God’s love [that] has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). For the apostle, the vehicle of God’s love is the Holy Spirit. “. . . God proves his love for us,” writes Paul, “in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). If anyone needs proof that God loves people, the death of his own Son should be evidence enough.

In the second-generation Pauline Letter to the Ephesians, the author elaborates on God’s love. He writes that “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ . . .” (Eph 2:4–5). Even sin cannot stop God from loving people. God’s giving of his love from himself as the source of all love changes them. At the end of the letter, the author wishes peace to the whole community of readers “and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 6:23). As the source of love, God’s agape, his own nature, releases people from deadly sin and raises them to life.

Journal/Meditation: In what specific ways have you experienced God’s unmerited, undeserved, great love? How did those experiences change you?

Prayer: God, source of all love poured into people’s hearts through your Holy Spirit, you bring people to life even though they may be dead in sin. Change my heart with even greater love that flows outward to those around me forever and ever. Amen.


Mark G. Boyer, Love Addict