Love is such a fascinating word. We use it often in conversation saying that we love our spouse, we love our children, we love our job, football, car, our pet or pizza. Love can mean many different things. When we think about the love of God our minds can quickly go to John 3:16, perhaps the most wonderful words ever spoken and the most beloved passage of Scripture:
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
The Roman’s Road teaches that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, that the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, and whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. In reading these passages it is quite natural to focus on our eternal destiny, that those who die in their sins will spend eternity separated from God, but that those who do know Him as their Lord and Savior will spend eternity with Him in Heaven. Many Gospel presentations begin with the question “Have you reached the point in your life where you know for certain that you will spend eternity with God in Heaven?” While that is certainly life’s ultimate question, is there more to the love of God than where we spend eternity?
God is love. It is His nature to love. He loved before the foundation of the earth and before we were born He knew our name and everything about us. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, nothing. When we were dead in our sins He allowed His only begotten Son to take our place on the cross and shed His blood for the remission of our sins. When we by faith confess our sins and ask Him to be our Savior and Lord, He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness and adopt us into His family for all eternity. But what happens next?
Because so much of our understanding of the Gospel is focused on eternity, for many people nothing changes after salvation. How tragic! When the Bible speaks of everlasting or eternal life it begins at the moment of salvation, not at the moment of our physical death. God created us in His image to have a relationship with Him. Our sin separated us from Him, but our salvation restored that relationship. From the moment of our salvation throughout eternity He desires to be as much a part of our lives as we will allow Him to be.
Satan’s strategy in the Garden of Eden was to convince Eve (and Adam) that God wasn’t good, that He was holding out on them, and that things would be better for them doing it their way and not God’s way. Through lies and deception his plan worked then and it is still working. Oswald Chambers in “My Utmost for His Highest” says that the root of all sin is the suspicion that God may not be good.
The life of faith is based on believing that God is good, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. That belief is based on the Truth of His Word.
In the parable of the Good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus said:
“The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.” (John 10:10, NLT)
That promise is not for the other side, but for the here and now! Imagine that for every area of your life: personal, private, public; your career, family, hobbies, interests, finances, health you had immediate access to the most successful, knowledgeable expert in that field. Imagine that this person knows you intimately; your strengths and weaknesses; your past, present, and even future; your successes and your failures; every past hurt and pain; and every hope and dream. Imagine that they fully believe in you and want you to succeed in every way, that they are fully committed and have every resource to make that happen. Does that sound too good to be true? That is the love of God!
But that is where the attack will come. The prophet Jeremiah tells us that God knows the plans that He has for us, to prosper and not harm us, giving us a future and a hope. Cultural Christianity would have us believe that God is here to help us accomplish the goals and plans that we would set for ourselves. That is an important distinction. The God of all creation is most certainly not here to serve us, but we are here to serve Him. King David, a man after God’s own heart, said “the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way,” and that as “we delight in the Lord, He will give us the desires of our heart.”
The love of God is beyond anything that we could ever hope or dream, but the degree to which we experience that love is based on what we believe to be true about Him. If our knowledge of Him is based on the Truth of His Word then we can grow to know Him as our dearest friend and watch as He does exceedingly and abundantly more than we could ever imagine in and through our lives. But if we succumb to the lies, doubt, and deception of the world, the flesh, and the devil, then we will surely miss the best He has for us and life’s ultimate privilege of knowing Him personally. Many times in life we miss His best for us by settling for something good, we sacrifice what we want most in order to have what we want now. When we seek Him first, everything else will fall into place, but when we seek everything else we may miss Him altogether. Missing Him altogether would be life’s ultimate tragedy.