God’s Love

“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”(Lamentations 3:21-23 ESV)

Much of my life, I have treated love as transactional—like the formation of a hypothesis lived out. If I do this, then I will receive this. I believe this is becoming an increasingly normal way to view love. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Love is rarely two people giving and receiving their true selves anymore, but is based on what that love provides in return. I remember the first time I told my future wife I loved her. I was breathless—terrified—like I had just released a most precious thing into the world and was waiting to see what the response would be. Would it be requited? It was, but something insidious entered the picture soon after. Questions, deep and needy, arose in my soul as I continued to pursue this woman.

Was I doing enough?

How could I prove my love?

Did her actions show she loved me?

Qualifiers. Before those words were spoken aloud, love was already there. Unspoken, yet just as potent as if we had screamed it from the rooftops. And yet, the instant they were brought into existence outside of our heads, something shifted. A battle was waged in our hearts, and continues to wage, the enemy striking at the most inopportune times to divide us. To remind us that if the affection, the efforts, the words stop, then love stops with it and we are lost.

Often, I treat God like this. Should my efforts to hate my sin prove insufficient, will He still love me? Am I doing enough to show the world—to show Him—that my true love is the Savior who gave it all on the cross to restore my relationship with the Father who loves me?

When this question becomes overwhelming and I’m drowning in things to do to earn that love, only then do I remember what true love is. I return to the Father, to He who created me and knew me from before time began, and I recall that the love of God is based on position. And the questions are suddenly boiled down to one: if God chose me, knowing the worst about me, how could I ever pay back a love so deep? Love is a giving of one’s whole self, and Jesus did so knowing we could never pay him back with effort. What he asked in return was our whole selves.

Nick Scholl

For Reflection

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)

• How has God’s love for you been made evident to you recently? Can you name a time in which you saw the Father pursue you?

• What does it mean to abide in love? What might that look like on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis?