God Can Restore All Things (Even Your Marriage)Sýnishorn

God Exemplifies Perfect Love

We often allow non-Christian ideas to shape our vision for love, don’t we? 

Romantic comedies, romance stories, and similar narratives give us plenty of false ideas, but the Bible lays out the truest example of perfect love. 

1 John 4 gives us a picture of how God exemplified His love by giving His son to die for us. “The love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him”(1 John 4:9). 

God sacrificed. He suffered for our sake, and now we can live through Him. 

This sacrificial, selfless demonstration helps us see what true love looks like, and the greatest part is that because of His sacrificial love, we get to live through Him. In verse 8, John tells us that God is love, so knowing God allows us to know the truest form of love.

Notice the order of love in verse 10: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” The greatest demonstration of love is that Christ loved us first. Paul highlights this even more in Romans 5:6-9 when he reminds us that Christ died for us while we were still sinners. We did not deserve the love and sacrifice of God, but He gave it to us anyway in a beautiful act of grace.  

As you read the passages for today, seek to understand the perfect love of God. In difficult times, hold on to His love for you and look for ways that you can practice the sacrificial, humble love that He models for us.