God has shown us his love by sending his only Son into the world so that we could have life through him. This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the payment for our sins. Dear friends, if this is the way God loved us, we must also love each other. No one has ever seen God. If we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
1 John 4:9-12 GW
Why does God save us from the law of sin and death? Why did God send Jesus to be the One who rescues us from the power of the evil one? There is only one reason. Only because He loves us.
There is no other reason. God is love. His very essence is life giving, redeeming, sacrificial, unselfish love.
Think of how humanity has survived this long. Life begets life. Every creature reproduces after its own kind. We care for the young. We make sacrifices and unselfishly seek the best for our offspring. That is the natural order of things. We want the next generation to be better than us.
Think of how God replicates Himself in believers. They become born again of the Spirit of God by faith in Jesus Christ. They become a new creation. They become the children of God, adopted into a heavenly family.
God reproduces after His own kind. We are made in His image and likeness. God sacrificed Himself to redeem sinful humanity. He places His Spirit inside of us, to bring us to life from death. He loves us continuously and provides for all of our needs unselfishly out of His abundance. After all, He created everything and everything belongs to Him. He can do with it what He chooses.
God is motivated by perfect love. The call of the Christ follower is to be the same.
Love keeps no record of wrongs suffered. The blood of Jesus has washed away our guilt. Father in heaven, forgive us our failures, as we forgive the failures of others.
Love is a stream that flows into a river that empties into the sea of forgetfulness. All of our sins and failures are removed as far as the east is from the west. God did it for us. Only because He loves us. Because He wants us to be where He is. Abiding in perfect love, all the time, in every season, in every circumstance.
God’s not grading on a curve. In fact, for the believer, there is no fear of judgment. My eyes were opened recently. We are saved by grace and we are sanctified by grace. Don’t depart from the Gospel of Grace for the religion of righteous works. Don’t start with the free gift of God only to return to the bondage of law keeping. There is a better way. Abide in Truth and Love.
If you live by the Spirit, you will do the works of the Spirit. Don’t worry about right and wrong and trying to police everyone else’s thoughts, words and intentions.
Focus on loving the one in front of you. The one to your left. The one to your right. Those that are following after you. Love them like Jesus loves them. Then you will be fulfilling the law. Pray for them, by name. Lift them up to God and pray His will be done in their lives.
Keep it simple. Love God above all else. Love people like God loves them. Not just the ones you prefer. Love all of them, equally. That’s what it means to be a Christian.
Why do I share this truth? Only because I love you. And I want you to know the freedom and joy and love and peace that living in Christ brings.
May God bless you with a new revelation of His love that never fails, never leaves and never forsakes us. May you abide in that love. And may that love inform everything you do and say today and everyday. In Jesus’ Name I pray. Amen.
Igniter Ministries 