All We Need Is (His) Love

“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

Love—it’s an amazing thing. People will do anything for love. There are shows devoted to the subject, websites helping people to find their perfect match, books, television shows, songs, and magazines all pushing their idea of what love is. What is love? Or better yet, who is love? Since God made us, He created us for certain things, and one of the things that God has created us for is to give and receive love. We were made to love and be loved. But the only problem is, we were created for a specific type of love and that love is God’s love. There are many different kinds of love—love for a spouse, love for a parent, love for a child, and love for a friend, but all of them find their root in the nature of Almighty God. The loves we experience are like leaves on a tree, connected and nourished by the root which is God Himself. God is love, but love is not God, although people treat it as such. Love is not God, but God, in His essence, is love, and he manifests this loving essence in His workings with the children of men. It means that He is desirous to be generous to us, benevolent, causing the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike.

Even though God is loving in His essence and in His outworkings with us His creation, this does not mean that He wants to give us everything our sinful hearts desire. No, to give us what is not best for us is not love. Love wants to give what is absolutely best, which means that God is the best for us. There is nothing greater to give us than Himself. There is no desire, no earthly pleasure, no sin that could ever surpass what it means to know and love God. All of those things are vain, frivolous and paltry desires. Drinking from the ocean of sin leaves us sick and dying; it can never satisfy our hearts, but leaves us longing for more. Only drinking from the well-spring of God’s delights found in the person of Christ will ever satisfy us. God gave us His Son because of His love for us. He saw us in our sin and rebellion, and chose to send His Son to die. That’s the supreme example of love that the universe has ever known.

How amazing is His love? Perhaps the better question is—how bad is your sin? What is your sin, loved one? What commandment have you broken? Do you have other gods? They may not be gods of wood or stone, but they may be of plastic or paper. Perhaps you are an idolater—finding your satisfaction in food and entertainment rather than at the foot of Christ? Maybe you have blasphemed God’s name—using the divine name at which every knee will bow as nothing more than an expletive in a moment of pain. Or maybe you are a Sabbath breaker—one who has chosen the comforts of this world rather than honoring the Lord your God who made you by worshiping Him with His people that He has paid for by His own blood? Or maybe you have not honored father or mother—arrogantly cursing them under your breath or failing to give them the honor that is due them? Perhaps your sin is the sin of murder? Maybe you have not murdered in deed, but you have in your heart. Or adultery? Maybe you have found yourself in the arms of one who is not your spouse. Or maybe you have chosen to indulge lust, cherishing the thought of adultery in your heart? As the Scripture says in Matthew 5:28,  

“But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

The act of adultery is spiritual as well as physical. God wants the heart, and the heart that nourishes secret sins still merits death in the sight of God, because God knows the thoughts of our heart, and since sin is birthed in the heart of our fallen desires, the sinful act will occur given enough time. Just as the seed of sin is planted and begins to take root in the thought life, it will break through the surface if given enough time. What is your sin? Do you covet? Do you steal? Do you lie? Sin is sin, and whether you've broken just one commandment or all of them, you're separated from God, deserving of judgment, and in need of the Savior.

Each and every sin leads down to death, but God saw us in our sinful state, rebels without a cause or clue, hating Him in thought and in deed, and yet He still chose to love us. God is loving toward us, and the supreme act of His love was seen in the death of His Son. Jesus saw your sins and still chose to die. Jesus gave His life for you. He put His hands down for the nails and offered His back to the whip—for you. God is loving, and at the end of time, His love will be fully seen when Jesus comes again to rule. No longer will wickedness reign. Every single evil act and sin will be judged. Not just the acts of genocide and homicide, but the secret sins will be exposed, and judgment will be meted out for every sinful deed ever committed by man.

Even in judgment God’s love will be seen. Man will have chosen what he wants—God or the pleasures of his own sin, and finally God will give the unrepentant over to the sin that they love. He does not want to do so; He would rather have each man and woman place their trust in Christ—to not only see the love displayed at Calvary’s tree, but to be a recipient of it! To be a beneficiary of the greatest act known to man! What a demonstration! What love! What an amazing God we serve! May His name be praised!

Trust in Him, dear one! Trust in Him who loves you with a love that cannot be measured. See His love displayed for you on Calvary! Turn from your sin and trust in Him and He will extend His love for you in ways that cannot possibly be understood! Amen and Amen.