In my previous post I acknowledged what is evident in the glory of the creation, in redemptive history as it is recorded in the Bible, and in the person and work of Jesus Christ, God the Son; namely that God’s love is the greatest love of all, far exceeding any love that man has for himself, for another man or women or even for God. When I speak of God’s love I am speaking of His deep affection for men and women created in His image and likeness, and His concurrent interest in and commitment to our eternal happiness and well being in Him, which impels Him to sacrifice His own interests for the benefit of those He loves.
However, the truth of God’s love being the greatest love of all is not evident to all. And thus, I would like to use the next few posts to give reasons why it should be.
The first and most important reason to see God’s love as the greatest love of all is because it is His love. We are told in Romans 5:8 that “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
His Love is inherent in His very being (1 John 4:8, Exodus 34:5-7), thus it is a Holy, infinite, eternal, immutable and all satisfying love.
His love is a love that is committed to the highest and ultimate good of His beloved.
His love is the infinitely glorious, infinitely valuable, infinitely satisfying love God has for God, which has been enjoyed throughout eternity within the eternal love relationship that has existed between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit who exist as one God, three divine persons; what we refer to as the Trinity. Each person of the Trinity, throughout eternity, has acted only to bring joy, pleasure and delight to one another in ways we cannot begin to conceive of or imagine (Matthew 3:16-17).
It is His love that moved Him to create man in His image and likeness as beings fully capable of knowing, loving and being loved by God and one another, forever enjoying the abundant goodness and kindness, the joys and pleasures that an infinitely good, infinitely wise and infinitely powerful God would display toward those He loves (Psalm 16:11), who would fully trust and put their faith in His love (Hebrews 11:6).
It is His love that motivated God to continue the human race even after Adam and everyone since Adam rebelled against Him, rejecting both His purpose for and rule over their lives by defying His righteous laws and commands. It is out of His love that He would promise the human race a Savior to reconcile us back to the glorious love relationship with God for which we were created (Genesis 3:15).
It is His love that Israel experienced in being rescued from over 400 years of slavery in Egypt and established as a nation in which God would dwell in covenant love, supernaturally displaying His abundant goodness and grace, mercy and compassion, despite Israel’s blatant sins of idolatry and ingratitude (Jeremiah 31:1-3).
It is His love He displays in this world in His daily expression of His mercy, grace, and kindness to all of sinful mankind, who are at enmity with God and one another; wherein even in the midst of our blatant sin and rebellion, He provides us with many good things, relationships and experiences to enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17), with the objective of leading us to repent of our sin so that we may experience the ultimate and eternal expression of His love (Romans 2:4).
And that ultimate expression of His love is found in the person and work of God the Son, Jesus Christ (John 3:16), who comes into this sin cursed world as a man to, at great cost to Himself (Isaiah 53), accomplish everything necessary to rescue from Hell and to qualify for Heaven all who would surrender their life to His love; repenting of our life of sin and rebellion against God and fully entrusting our life to God, pursuing Jesus Christ as the object of our deepest love and the source of our greatest joy.
It is in Jesus and Jesus alone that we can hope, rest and rejoice in God’s love above all other loves, both in this world and the world to come.
Grace and Truth ×