God's Love Is . . . . . .

Love is . . . . .

I want to take a bit more time on the subject of love. So much of who we are and what we believe in is based on love. God’s love for us and our love for our neighbours are the springboard of all we do for Jesus. I know you’ve all heard it before but let’s look one more time at Paul’s oft quoted passage on love from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 - “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

What beautiful words to start any day. As you can see, I have only quoted the middle section – the “Love is” section. This is the bit where Paul tells us what God’s love is like and what our love ought to be like

Always Patient - God is unfailingly patient with us when we really don’t deserve it.

Always Kind – God is ever ready to be kind, forgiving, and merciful – even when we sin and sin again.

Always Protecting – protecting us from ourselves and from those who would hurt or harm us.

Always Hoping – God is a loving Father who always hopes we will “do better next time”

Always Trusting – God always trusts us even when we don’t trust Him. But then, He is trustworthy whereas we may not be so.

Always Persevering – How many times has God forgiven us? As many times as we have gone wrong or turned aside from His way.

What a fabulous list and it is probably not a complete list of all the things that make up God’s love. Yet there is one attribute of love, God’s love and maybe rarely our love, love NEVER fails. For example, a mother’s love very rarely fails. A mother very rarely gives up on her child. Your Mum is your Mum, and you are her precious baby, until the day she dies. This has been so in every generation since Adam and Eve and will never change.

And so we came to the final attribute of God’s love and that is that His love for us is undeserved, unreserved, and unconditional. How many people can we say we love like this? One is most peoples limit although I do know of a couple of cases where the count is higher. But God’s love for every single one of us is just that - undeserved, unreserved, and unconditional. He loves us because He created us and He created us in order to love us. It matters not how bad or evil we have been, He still loves us and He can still forgive us all of our wrong doing if we fulfil our part of repentance and asking His mercy and forgiveness.

We don’t deserve it. We can never earn it. It was given and sealed at Calvary by Christ’s atoning death and His resurrection.